Christopher Gonzalez is challenging Irvine Mayor Sukhee Kang
There are seven candidates running for two seats on the Irvine City Council in this year’s November general election. The candidates include:
- Jeffrey Lalloway, Irvine Businessman/Commissioner
- Chris Moore, Student
- Larry Agran, Councilman
- Yunus Aksoy, Realtor/Businessman
- Shiva Farivar, Community Services Commissioner
- Bijan Mazarji, Army Reservist/Student
- and Lynn Schott, Irvine Business Owner
Irvine Mayor Sukhee Kang is also facing a challenge, by businessman/attorney Christopher Gonzalez – the only Latino running for for local office in Irvine. Gonzalez has vowed to protect “tax dollars and stop the unnecessary spending at City Hall and the Great Park,” which sounds good to me!
Agran’s bio doesn’t mention that he was once arrested, while running for President. Luckily we saved the picture, which you can see above.
Agran just got his ass handed to him, by our friend R. Scott Moxley, over at the OC Weekly. Here is an excerpt regarding Agran’s Great Pork, I mean Park:
By his own promises, Agran is now 120 months late and counting. The jackhammer parties haven’t materialized. The runways remain intact. Indeed, except for creating an impressive, if expensive, master design plan, not a single major-project goal has been achieved. There is no park—no soccer fields, no educational facilities, no lake, no garden, no wildlife park, no museum, no cemetery or war memorial—and yet he and his second-fiddle allies on the council, Beth Krom and Sukhee Kang, have already allocated or spent an extraordinary amount: more than $220 million.
Agran also recently got his ass handed to him by the O.C. Grand Jury, which found that:
- The terms of one of Irvine‟s park-financing mechanisms will make it difficult for regular payments to be made on a $134 million loan that the City made to its Redevelopment Agency.
- The City of Irvine has the authority to cancel the huge park-related debt owed to it by the City‟s Redevelopment Agency before it is fully repaid.
- A potential conflict of interest exists because Irvine City Council members also serve on two other city-related governing boards.
The Agranistas: Sukhee Kang, Beth Krom, Larry Agran and Lib OC lawyer Todd Gallinger
This very well might be Agran’s last election. I find it interesting that NONE of the other Irvine City Council candidates list Agran as an endorser, but you have to figure that some of these candidates, or at least one of them, is allied with him. Who is it and why won’t they acknowledge that they are an Agranista? Perhaps our readers might have a clue about this…
The most interesting, and compelling, candidate is Moore, who is only 19 years old but is wise beyond his years. Here is what he has to say about his campaign on his website:
Unfortunately our city is being misled by a group of well connected politicians more concerned with awarding no-bid contracts than with Irvine’s well being. I could wait a decade or two to run for office, but I can’t live with a clean conscience knowing that the whole time there are people in charge squandering our money. So instead of griping about it, I have decided to take bold action to bring about the change that we so desperately need.
Lalloway has the support of most of the County’s GOP establishment, including Irvine Council Members Christina Shea and Steven Choi, as well as new Supervisor Shawn Nelson. He told the OC Weekly, “I’m not a Larry Agran-hater. But I don’t admire his policies and tactics.”
Aksoy is a realtor and a former city employee in La Habra. He does not list his endorsements but he has over 500 friends on Facebook.
Farivar’s Facebook friends are a Who’s Who of O.C. Democrats, including my friends Sharon Quirk-Silva, John Santoianni and Ron Shepston. The most interesting tidbit about her is that she has a degree in German literature. Like Aksoy, she does not list any endorsements on her campaign website.
Mazarji has this to say on his campaign website, “Although Irvine has faired through the economic recession better than the majority of country, Irvine’s economy is still in trouble.” He’s right! And it is Agran’s fault…
Schott won a seat on the OC GOP Central Committee in June, in the 70th Assembly District. She is backed by an assortment of tea party types and other social conservatives.
With this many candidates running, you have to favor the incumbent, however the voters might have had their fill of Agran. This could in fact be a bad year for him to be on the ballot, particularly in light of the O.C. Grand Jury report I cited earlier in this post.
I would like to see Lalloway and Moore prevail, but I also like what Mazarji has to say on his website.
Shiva Farivar is Agran’s hand picked crony to run for Council.
Hey Art, this is a very strong article and you summarize the Grand Jury’s concerns well. I think a lot of people including myself want to see the Great Park get back on track.
One of my goals as a council member is to diversify the representation of the Great Park Board of Directors. It is understandable that all 5 members of our city council are represented on the Board to ensure Irvine’s priorities are met. But I think we a have an obligation to the county to give them a say on how the park will develop. Not only do we need Irvine’s interests represented at the Great Park because the Great Park is a part of Irvine, but we need people on the board with the ability to secure the regional and state resources to complete this project.
Another important point is to ensure Irvine residents aren’t left holding the tab for the Great Park. That is why I’d like to explore the idea of having a beautiful OC Great Park Convention Center to attract visitors and business while it helps pay for the Great Park and brings economic development for the area.
This editorial, well I have to say, reading this now in June 2021, did NOT AGE super well…
Yikes
Luis, you’ve dug so far down into our archives that you’ve struck Art Pedroza, founder and former owner and idiocratic Republican. But, rather than commenting on its dusty corpse — and I believe that this is the era when Art was mocking Beth Krom for her son’s death, which she believes was an accident and he asserted was a suicide, about which little more need be said — I’ll ask: why don’t you lay out what you don’t think has weathered well?
I think Luis was just reacting to Art’s unwise 2010 prediction that “This very well may be Agran’s last election.”
I’m pretty sure I deleted all that stuff about Beth Krom’s son. Back then that was a big fight between me and Art (and Sean Mill.)