DGI Endorsement Results for City Council Districted Candidates

The July 3 Democrats of Greater Irvine (DGI) meeting was the biggest gathering of the year even for an evening before a Holiday weekend with about 75 people showing up in person and another 75 logged in via Zoom.  The results of the evening’s votes are below, but there are three takeaways:

• Democrats are offering a number of excellent candidates for brand new Irvine districts.  Some have already raised an impressive amout of money.
• DGI (and eventually DPOC) endorsement votes are city and county wide, so unless the vote is drilled down by members who live in the district, its possible the candidae with the most votes by the organization didn’t get the most votes by voters who can cast ballots for them in November.  DGI would not breakdown the vote by district.
• The candidates all gave great speeches about their backgrounds, their desire to be on the council, and what they hoped to accomplish.  My take is it sounded like they were running for mayor of their specific district.  I did not get the sense of what their strategy was to get to 4 votes.  There will likely be Republicans who get elected and there’s a schism of Democrats that allow a Republicans to be a swing vote.  I’d like to hear more about how each candidate plans to work with council colleagues; how do you get to 4?

Lastly, its not so much a takeaway as it is an observation.  For the candidates in District 2, which will represent the Great Park neighborhoods, all expressed concerns about the need to fully develop the area to make it more walkable, have more retail options, and the speed of development.  All three have lived in Irvine between 10 and 15 years and seemed blissfully unaware of the battle to create the Great Park and stop the El Toro Airport, all while council member Larry Agran sat right there.  Without Agran, former mayors and council members Beth Krom and Sukhee Kang, and their leadership these candidates wouldn’t have homes in this district and we’d be complaining about commercial air traffic.  Agran’s efforts for Measure D passed by voters in March led to these districts and council expansion in the first place.  That could have been done in 2022 except then Vice Mayor Tammy Kim killed that effort by calling for a committee to study  districts and council expansion — something only Kim supported.

Here’s the results email from DGI:

We are writing to share the outcomes of our recent endorsement support vote for our local races following our July 3rd meeting as conducted through OpaVote.
 
Please note: The Democratic Party of Orange County mandates a 60% threshold for endorsement based on ALL votes cast before OpaVote begins its rounds of instant runoffs and exhausting of ballots. This means the OpaVote percentages are almost always going to be higher than the actual percentages which must be based on the total number of votes submitted which is 120 votes in the City Council races.

Here are the final tallies after the instant runoff:

Irvine City Council – 120 votes were cast

District 1 

• Jackie Kan received 53 votes, or 44.2% of all ballots cast
• Melinda Liu received 46 votes, or 38.3% of all ballots cast
• Jeff Kitchen, Dr. Zainab Saadi, and No Endorsement were eliminated
• Since no candidate received 60%+ of all votes cast, our club position is No Endorsement for Irvine City Council, District 1 by the Club Representative at the DPOC Central Committee

District 2 

• William Go received 36 votes, or 30% of all ballots cast
• Alex Mohajer received 56 votes, or 46.7% of all ballots cast
• Jeff Starke and No Endorsement were eliminated
• Since no candidate received 60%+ of all votes cast, our club position is No Endorsement for Irvine City Council, District 2 by the Club Representative at the DPOC Central Committee

District 3 

• Tom Chomyn received 34 votes, or 28.3% of all ballots cast
• Jing Sun received 71 votes, or 592% of all ballots cast
• No Endorsement was eliminated
• Since no candidate received 60%+ of all votes cast, our club position is No Endorsement for Irvine City Council, District 3 

Director, Irvine Ranch Water District, Division 4 – 117 ballots cast

• Dr. Karen MacLaughlin was supported for endorsement by 86% of all voters, and will be supported for endorsement by the Club Representative at the DPOC Central Committee

Privacy Policy – 119 ballots cast

• Members supported the privacy policy by 95% of all voters

Detailed results and ballots are viewable at this link. Note that,

1. Though OpaVote reports a winner for the results, the threshold of 60% is not met for some races, so the Club’s position is to support No Endorsement for those positions, as described above;
2. The percentages are slightly different in the final rounds as OpaVote eliminates exhausted ballots from the total vote count. But our process maintains the exhausted ballots as part of the total vote count, as required by the DPOC.

And a note to candidates; please take more time to review voter comunication before sending it out.  Republican John Park sent a nice note on a glossy card that looked like a handwritten message, but it was printed and someone forgot to add the name of the voter on the card so it said “Dear _______ …..”

I won’t call out specific Democratic candidates, but have someone read your emails before you hit send.  Read the copy outloud.  The mistakes will jump out at you.

For the Demcorats running, email me your announcements to dchm@cox.net; send a flattering photo.