2020 OC Filings #6 (as of 8/3) for San Clemente, La Habra, Fountain Valley, Placentia

By
Greg Diamond
– August 4, 2020Posted in: "The OC", Fresh Juice

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As noted in our introduction to this year’s general election coverage, the filing period for all races is underway; it ends August 7 (or 8/6, for cities closed on 8/7, and with some extensions to 8/12) for all races that have made it this far.  Now we’ll look at the seventeenth through twentieth most populous cities in the county — San Clemente, La Habra, Fountain Valley, and Placentia — to see what’s going on.  Most of the election websites are really bad.  This will be updated as need be and time allows.

Laguna Niguel

Three offices open.  City Hall is closed, so you need to make an appointment with the clerk.

Laurie Davies is up, but as she’s running for another office I presume that she’s out.
Fred Minegar is not up.
Elaine Gennawey is not up.
John Mark Jennings is up.  No indication of whether he’s running.
Sandy Rains is not up.

So … I don’t see how three “not ups” out of five adds up to three open seats.  Call the clerk.

 

La Habra

Three open seats.  Terms expire this year for Mayor Tom Beamish, Vice-Mayor Rose Espinosa, and OCBOE member Tim Shaw.  No idea of who’s running or what their status is.

Fountain Valley

Apparently two seats are open, those of Cheryl Brothers and Steve Nagel.  No idea whether they’re running; no ideal whether anyone else has pulled or filed papers.  There’s a helpful link on the site for the General Election — but it’s the 2018 General Election.  There is also a PDF “List of Qualified City Council Candidates,” but it’s from — oh, just guess.  Did you guess 2018?  Wrong: it’s 2014!

Placentia

Placentia’s site is fairly good — if we presume that there’s only one candidate running for one open seat.  (Congratulations, Devon Gray of District 1, for getting onto the website!)  I suspect, however, that there may be more than one Council seat open (along with the City Clerk and City Treasurer seats, in each of which a single candidate is unopposed), and they really should tell us what’s open, even if no one is running.

For being literally the only person among these four cities who is acknowledged on a city website as running for City Council this year, Devon Gray becomes the default choice for this post’s cover image. (I know that that’s Kevin de Leon on the left — and I really hope that that is recent Stanford Law graduate Devon Gray on the right!)

And with that, we’re going to dip down to cities under with populations under 50,000, where I do not expect the situation to improve — but hey, maybe it will!

About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)