Irvine‘s first election in two decades with neither Larry Agran nor Beth Krom on the ballot has made the city more colorful, but expect the results to be Irvine boring.
Twelve Candidates are running for two spots on the city council
Christine Shea | Incumbent and front runner |
Melissa Fox | Beth Krom’s Agranista replacement |
Dale Cheema | Independent. Strong base in Woodbridge |
Anthony Kuo | Running with Shea |
Shiva Farivar | one-third of last spot on Agran slate. |
Farrah Kahn | one-third of last spot on Agran slate. |
Anila Ali | one-third of last spot on Agran slate. |
Matthew Ehorn | Gang Chen slate |
Ian Daelucian | Gang Chen slate |
Genii Ahn | Korean tutor, like Stephen Choi was |
Evan Chemers | one issue candidate: Traffic! |
Courtney Santos | Who? |
Colorful weirdness abounds.
- All twelve candidates have yard signs everywhere. Culver Drive has become a kaleidoscopic environmental art installation of colorful 2′ x 3′ quadroids.
- The two usual “Republican” and “Democratic” slates have formed up, but neither slate is publicly together running as a slate thus far. Weird.
- The Agranistas have endorsed four candidates for two city council seats. Weirder.
- The only slate running as a slate is three first time dudes that don’t seem to have much in common beyond being dudes running for the first time. Weirdos
- I have only received one slate mailer thus far. Truly Strange.
- Larry Agran’s fake newspaper continues to make its reliable weekly trip directly to Irvine’s recycle bins. There must somebody, somewhere, who finds it informative, but I haven’t been able to find them. Then again, nothing weird about Larry wasting money.
Despite the large field and lack of evident coordination amongst the usual suspects, it’s not really much of race. Past election results suggest the two winning candidates will each need about 28,000 votes. Christina Shea got 31,776 votes in her last run, and 35,481 votes when she ran for mayor in 2008. She’s had no major political setback since then, so Christina presumably already has the votes to retain her council seat. Likewise, Melissa Fox only lost by 210 votes in 2014 and is the obvious successor to the still-popular Beth Krom, so Melissa has to be considered the other front runner.
Some pollster seems to agree. Last week I received an automated poll for Irvine City Council which only gave four choices: Anthony Kuo, Christina Shea, Dale Cheema, and Melissa Fox. Dale Cheema is an interesting addition. He started with high name recognition from being a prominent Central Irvine realtor, has served on the board for Irvine’s largest village for years, nd has been running for over a year now.
Irvine’s council race may seem to be a multi-spectral free-for-all, don’t expect the unexpected: Christina Shea will retain her seat while Beth Krom passes the “Progressive” mantle to Melissa Fox.
All I can say is that if you think that “Agranistas” have endorsed four candidates for two seats, you’ve missed out on some interesting drama on the Democratic side of the aisle. More on that planned for later this week.
Here’s the confusion: ICN&V, (Lalrry’s fake newspaper) was paid for directly from Larry’s pockets last cycle. Given the modest levels of advertising (Kenny the Printer doesn’t deploy a large media budget), I assume Larry is still footing the bill. There’s been no change in staff, for example — it’s all still people closely associated with Larry.
ICN&V has come out strong for Gaido and Fox, and has been bashing the hell out of Shea (further evidence of who is behind ICN&V). But they haven’t really had a clear choice for that second city council seat.. However, in their official endorsement, they have endorsed ALL THREE!
That blew me away as totally weird.
I’d love to hear more of the story….
One theory about that is that the DPOC Establishment (to which Agran and Krom are closely tied) ONLY care about Fox winning, perhaps because they see Shea as likely taking one of the two seats.
In that case, endorsing both Khan and Faravar would serve two purposes.
(1) they would split the vote with each other, leaving Fox ahead of both, so she’s win one seat (along with Shea.) It’s a sad-but-true fact that voters who aren’t pretty well tuned-in often have trouble telling apart Farrah and Shiva.
(2) it would maintain good relations with Farrah and Shiva, who havecacgood chance of being the two leading Democratic contenders in 2018.
In other words, they’re not only not endorsing four, but in seeming to endorse three Agran’s paper may in effect only be endorsing *one*! Farrah is as big of a threat to Melissa as Shea is.
Thank you for the write-up. Since the link you used is not working, here is my website: https://courtneysantos.wordpress.com/.
I’m running for Irvine City Council on a platform of economic freedom, civil liberties, and greater transparency and accountability in government.
After graduating with magna cum laude honors from UC Irvine, I earned a master’s at UC Riverside. In ten years of employment at UC Irvine, I’ve taught and advised students, planned conferences, conducted competitive bids, and budgeted over nine million dollars. I’m a longtime Irvine renter, currently in Westpark, and use public transit. My campaign is self-funded, and I make many thoughtful, carefully-researched public comments at council meetings. Hope to meet you soon!