Month: October 2022

Ballots for the November 8th election have arrived. In the proud American tradition of local newspapers, Irvine Community News & Views (ICNV) endorses and urges support for those candidates for City office who have earned our community’s trust. 

Recognizing his proven record of faithful and remarkably effective service to the people of Irvine, ICNV endorses Councilman Larry Agran for re-election to the Irvine City Council. Over the years, Agran has remained committed to Irvine’s master-planning.  He has led the way or had a hand in just about every good thing in Irvine — open space preservation, the Great Park (instead of an airport!), an amazing community park system, and our award-winning senior and childcare centers.

As ballots were being mailed out, Irvine voters began receiving a slew of political attack mailers — funded by a political committee established just days earlier with tens of thousands of dollars in “dark money.” The dark money has now been traced back to mega-developers FivePoint and the Irvine Company.

On the other hand, Anthony Kuo has a history of relying on large sums of dark money to attack his political rivals and help himself get elected. Apparently, Kuo is relying on the same political funding scheme again … this time using developer money to attack Agran. (Kuo and Agran are running against each other for re-election to the Irvine City Council.)

As the founding publisher of Irvine Community News & Views, I have been privileged for 8 years to write my “Publisher’s Perspective” column — weighing-in on Irvine civic affairs.  With election season now upon us, I want to provide our readers with my initial review of the candidates and issues at the forefront of our City’s November 8th election.   

Councilman Anthony Kuo and Councilman Larry Agran both have years of local governing experience. Of course, both are now Councilmembers on the same City Council, sitting at the same dais. In fact, they are seated next to each other. But the commonalities stop right there. On the central issues of this campaign, Agran and Kuo couldn’t be more different. 

An Irvine Community News & Views investigation shows that a huge influx of “dark money” — funding an unprecedented deluge of political “hit piece” mailers against Irvine City Councilmember Larry Agran — originated from the two largest developers in Irvine: The Irvine Company and FivePoint.

So far, $355,000 from the developers has been funneled to the Building Industry Association of Southern California PAC (BIA), which then transferred the money to the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. The Party then sent a large portion of the money —  $270,000 — to a PAC (Working Families United), which has close ties to disgraced Democratic campaign consultant Melahat Rafiei and Irvine Mayor Farrah Khan. (Rafiei and Khan are the subjects of an ongoing FBI investigation into corruption in Irvine.)

In 2020, Farrah Khan won Irvine’s Mayoral race with just 47% of support from Irvine voters. Now, she’s running for re-election in November, hoping that her four opponents will split the vote, allowing her to win again.

During the 2020 election, Khan falsely told Irvine voters that she had already created and implemented a Climate Action Plan. It’s been nearly two years since Khan made that false claim and Irvine still doesn’t have a Climate Action Plan.
So, who are Khan’s challengers and where do they stand on these issues?