Irvine folks… If you’re looking for some guidance on voting in the Mayor and city council races, here are my thoughts/endorsements for our mayor and city councilmembers. These are my opinion only. Would love to hear your thoughts or questions if you have any.
tl;dr
Mayor: Farrah Khan
Irvine City Council (vote 2): Anthony Kuo, John Park
One of the most pressing issues is the Veteran’s Cemetery. If you’re against the Veterans Cemetery being built in Irvine, these are the best votes. They have the best chance at defeating pro-cemetery candidates. Scott Hansen (city council candidate) is also against the cemetery. (More on cemetery below)
In 2020, after my role model Andrew Yang dropped out of the presidential race, I decided to get more informed on city politics. I felt like it more directly affected my life, and I could hopefully have a relatively bigger positive influence on it.
Mayor:
I’ve met Mayor Farrah Khan many times in her two years so far, and she’s been out in the community supporting the orgs I’ve been a part of and overall is very knowledgeable and things have gotten done under her watch. Farrah has been so accessible and has had great answers to any issues I ask her about. As I said about Andrew Yang, when you meet a politician and don’t immediately hate him/her, that’s a win. 🙂
City Council:
For the city council, it’s more of who I DON’T want on the council. As for who I am SUPPORTING, Kuo seems to have a lot of support, and I don’t have much negative feelings on him, so I’m OK supporting him. Between John Park and Scott Hansen, I chose Park because he came close in the previous election to defeating the person I don’t want. In the one time I did hear him speak, he said something that resonated with me. He said there’s a lot to be done, but “The sky is not falling.” In political campaigns where there’s so much outrage and attacks, we do need to remember we live in a pretty great city. Scott Hansen is closet “Yang Gang” so that immediately earned him points in my eyes 🙂 but I feel like Park has the better opportunity to win. If you’d like, you can vote Park and Hansen, because Kuo seems to have good support already.
If you’d like to learn about about the councilmember I do NOT support, I will explain in a later post. 🙂
Cemetery:
The proposed area where some want a veterans cemetery built is on a former air base. It makes sense why it could be an appropriate place for it. However, as of now, there are a lot of residential areas around that proposed land, and people don’t want to live near a cemetery for many reasons. The county has already moved forward with plans to build the cemetery in Anaheim Hills, with the support of pretty much every city and many veterans groups. Because of that, I am anti Irvine cemetery and pro Anaheim Hills cemetery. Seems like a win-win.
The Irvine cemetery group doesn’t want to give it up and is resorting to legal maneuvering to try to delay the Anaheim Hills effort. If their three candidates win mayor and city council, they will have the majority and probably throw everything at it to stop it. Hence, the endorsement of the three candidates above.