Will Lynn Schott join her colleagues on the Irvine City Council this November?
Now that the Open Primary Election is over it is time to have a look at the upcoming November General Election. In Irvine, the November 4, 2014 Election will be held to elect a Mayor and two members of the City Council. The Irvine Mayor serves a term of two years, while City Councilmembers each serve a term of four years. The Mayor and City Councilmembers may serve no more than two full consecutive terms. The terms of the Councilmembers are staggered, according to the Irvine City Clerk.
Irvine Council Members Beth Krom and Christina Shea were elected in 2012. That means that this year Irvine Councilmen Jeff Lalloway and Larry Agran are up for re-election as is Irvine Mayor Steven Choi.
Mayor Choi should have no problem earning re-election given that his Council majority, which includes Lalloway and Shea, has done such a great job over the past two years. Since they took control of Irvine they stopped the ridiculous public relations contracts at the Great Park and have even been able to make headway on the city’s pension liability. Their success will make it very difficult for their opponents, Agran and Krom, to field much opposition in November.
Choi is being challenged this year by two opponents, including Katherine Daigle, who ran unsuccessfully for Irvine Mayor in 2012. Daigle came in dead last in that election, garnering only 14% of the vote, according to Smart Voter. It is hard to take her seriously when her campaign website has been allowed to expire! Daigle is a Republican, as is Mayor Choi, and I continue to wonder why in the world she keeps running for office in Irvine when she has no chance of being elected. She is running as an outsider and thus cannot count on support from either the left or the right. Check out her campaign Facebook page here.
A fellow named Morton Irvine announced that he too was running for Mayor back in February of this year. But now his campaign page says he is running for the State Senate. Well he wasn’t on the ballot in the June Open Primary Election so unless he is planning on being a write-in candidate in November I have no idea what this guy is up to, but he certainly can’t be taken seriously as a Mayoral candidate.
There are four announced candidates running for the two open Irvine City Council seats. The candidates include:
- Lynn Schott, an Irvine Planning Commissioner, who also ran for the Irvine City Council in 2012. She just missed getting elected that year, by about 1,500 votes, according to Smart Voter. She was edged out by Shea, who had previously served on the Irvine City Council. Krom was the top vote-getter in that election. This time Shea has endorsed Schott, according to Schott’s campaign website. She has also been endorsed by Lalloway and Mayor Choi.
- Two Krom allies have also pulled papers for the Irvine City Council. One is former Irvine Mayor Sukhee Kang, who lost a disastrous campaign for Congress in 2012. He lost to the incumbent at the time, John Campbell, by almost 20,000 votes, according to Smart Voter. The other “Agranista” candidate is attorney Melissa Fox, who also lost badly the last time she ran, for the State Assembly, in 2010. Don Wagner beat her in that election by over 30,000 votes, according to Smart Voter.
- Evan Chemers, a local business owner, lost badly as well when he ran for the Irvine City Council in 2012. He came in last that year with just over 10% of the vote, according to Smart Voter. Click here to check out his campaign website.
I cannot imagine that Schott, Lalloway and Choi will not prevail in November. Agran is in big trouble. He lost to Choi in the 2012 Mayoral contest and since then we have heard nothing but awful news about what Agran and Krom did while they were running Irvine. Could the November election mark the end of Agran’s long career in politics? It just might. And if Kang and Fox lose as well then we might be looking at the end of the Agranistas altogether.