A half-dozen candidates in Irvine are hoping for enough votes to win one of two open seats on the City Council, and another five people are looking to claim the title of mayor.
Current Mayor Farrah Khan is facing challengers in: Tom Chomyn, a technology account executive; Katherine Daigle, an author and former legal consulting firm president who has previously run for Irvine mayor and City Council; Branda Lin, a paralegal who started the local blog Irvine Watchdog; and Simon Moon, an Irvine Onnuri Church pastor and an officer and chaplain in the Army Reserve.
Irvine is one of only a handful of major Orange County cities that still holds its elections at-large, meaning the candidates run to represent the entire city, and the top vote-getters among them win the open seats.
City Council incumbents Larry Agran and Anthony Kuo are looking to keep their seats for another term, but a quartet of other candidates are hoping to come out in the top two.
Those challenging Agran and Kuo are Kathleen Treseder, a biology professor at UC Irvine and climate activist; Scott Hansen, tech attorney and transportation commission vice president; Irvine Valley College student Navid Sadigh, who teaches kids coding; and John Park, an advertising agency president and founder who ran for City Council in 2018.
City Council members are elected to four-year terms in Irvine while the mayor serves a two-year term.
Among the issues the city’s leaders will likely face are ongoing calls for transparency in Irvine’s dealings with the controversial Orange County Power Authority, executing a vision for future development of the Great Park and achieving the city’s climate goals.
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