Author: Franklin J. Lunding

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. 

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?

Just days before ballots were mailed out, Irvine voters received political hit pieces in their mailboxes — funded by a Political Action Committee (PAC) established last week with tens of thousands of dollars in difficult-to-trace “dark money.” The PAC was created explicitly to attack Councilman Larry Agran.

Mayor Khan and her hand-picked Vice Mayor, Anthony Kuo (who is running for re-election against Agran) appear to be teaming up to spread lies about Agran’s record and his positions on the key issues in the November 8th election.

While much of the news in recent years has focused on the erosion of democratic norms and values at the national level, here in Irvine we’ve also witnessed an extraordinary assault on democracy by Mayor Farrah Khan and her appointed Vice Mayor, Anthony Kuo, who are now running together for re-election to the Irvine City Council.

Khan and Kuo also sought to stifle the public’s right to participate in local democratic government by pushing the public comment part of each City Council meeting to the very end of the meeting, often well past 10pm. After months of public outcry, Khan and Kuo backed off and allowed citizen comments to be made earlier during each meeting. However, they cut the time limit for each speaker from 3 minutes to a measly 90 seconds and instructed the City Attorney to interrupt speakers who stray, even slightly, off topic. So much for the First Amendment!