Does Erickson Have a Problem with People of Color?

Does West Hollywood City Councilmember John Erickson have a problem with people of color who don’t know their place?

Not publicly, of course. Publicly, Erickson is West Hollywood’s most vocal progressive. The social justice vocabulary is pitch-perfect. But the moment a Black or brown candidate or ally becomes a credible threat to his political machine, the mask slips and the calls get made.

Today we learned that Public Safety Commissioner Tod Hallman has accused Erickson of calling him directly and threatening to remove him from his commission seat for the crime of supporting Jonathan Wilson’s City Council campaign. Wilson, for those keeping score, would become the first Black council member in West Hollywood’s 41-year history.

This story was also published in WEHOOnline. Excellent work, Mr. Holt. Erickson must be flooding Block’s phone demanding the article be taken down.

The self-styled progressive champion of West Hollywood picked up the phone and told a commissioner that supporting the city’s first Black councilmember would cost him his position. Hallman called it what it was in a formal letter to the City Attorney: a clear and direct threat.

Now rewind to September 2024.

Zekiah Wright, a Black person, had just secured the West Hollywood Chamber PAC endorsement, beating out Erickson’s ally Larry Block. Within days, Erickson triggered a “criminal” complaint he had been sitting on for months, a filing irregularity involving an LLC that could have been handled as a civil matter. Instead, it became felony charges. WEHOonline “reporters” somehow knew about the arrest before it happened. Wright’s campaign was destroyed.

The timeline is damning. Erickson learned about the filing issue in mid-spring 2024. He did nothing. Wright announced her candidacy. He did nothing. Wright won the Chamber endorsement on September 5. Block published a bitter op-ed on September 10. Erickson filed the complaint on September 11. The press was ready. The story was framed. A political rival was eliminated.

We asked Erickson about this last August. He never responded.

Now here we are, seven months later, and the pattern has repeated. Different target. Same playbook. A person of color rises. Erickson intervenes. The mechanism changes — a criminal referral one year, a phone call threatening a commissioner’s seat the next — but the function is identical: suppress the advancement of anyone who threatens the power structure he controls.

This is not a coincidence. This is a pattern.

And it is a pattern that West Hollywood’s progressive establishment has refused to confront, because confronting it would mean admitting that the man they elevated as their standard-bearer operates less like a champion of equity and more like a ward boss who uses institutional power to keep the wrong people (i.e. Black and brown people) out of the room.

Erickson doesn’t get to wear the progressive mantle while privately threatening people who support Black candidates. He doesn’t get to champion equity on camera while weaponizing law enforcement against Black people off camera. The politics of inclusion cannot coexist with the practice of suppression.

Commissioner Hallman was right to put it in writing. The City Attorney should take it seriously.

And the voters of West Hollywood should ask themselves a simple question: if John Erickson will threaten a commissioner over a phone call, what else has he done that nobody wrote down?