Irvine Candidates Brace for Close Finish in City Council Race

With 81.3 percent of Orange County ballots counted, as of 5:00 p.m. Nov. 6, the race for Irvine City Council remained close, though a clearer picture of Irvine’s new leadership began to emerge.

With Mayor Christina Shea conceding the race for mayor of Irvine to her opponent, Farrah Khan, a third seat became available in the Irvine City Council race. Khan, Irvine’s new mayor-elect, currently serves as an Irvine council member, but will vacate her seat once she is sworn in as mayor of Irvine.

The open seat will be filled by the candidate with the third-most votes.

For more insight as to what candidates are experiencing while tracking election results, Irvine’s top four candidates shared a mixture of emotion, surprise and hopefulness as Orange County entered a third day of ballot counting.

Tammy Kim, founder and managing director of the Korean American Center, currently leads all City Council candidates with 40,013 votes (15.10%). In an interview with Irvine Weekly, Kim explained that her campaign worked hard targeting multicultural groups, in a variety of languages.

“Our campaign was reaching out to people in Chinese, in Mandarin, both simplified, as well as traditional, as well as Korean, and Vietnamese — we reached out to all of them.”

Kim spoke about her election night experience, and said she was excited to learn she received more votes than any other candidate in Irvine history. Kim, who is a first-time candidate, pointed to her fundraising, which exceeded $70,000, credited multiple democratic endorsements, and the ability to campaign in different languages, as the keys to her success among voters in Irvine.

“I’m still in complete surprise. I think the voters spoke loud and clear. It’s amazing to be the highest vote-getter in Irvine history. As a first-time candidate, I was able to get really key strategic endorsements, ranging from Katie Porter to our State Controller Betty Yee, to [Congresswoman] Judy Chu,” Kim said Thursday during a phone call with Irvine Weekly.

By Thursday night, Kim had surpassed 40,000 votes in Irvine.

Trailing Kim by a few thousand votes is Larry Agran, with 34,991 votes (13.20%). Agran is a former Irvine mayor and councilmember who is very outspoken about building a veterans cemetery in Irvine.

In a phone call with Irvine Weekly on Thursday, Agran expressed happiness for the current Irvine election results. He added that while his election night experience was much different than years before, due to COVID-19, he was pleased with his initial position in the polls.

“It’s clear to me that the people of the city of Irvine decided to elect a new mayor and a new City Council, and I’m happy to be a part of that,” Agran said. “It was a good feeling. I’m looking forward to returning to the council.”

With Kim currently on pace to fill one council seat, the race for the second and third city council seat remains closely contested between Agran, Irvine resident and lawyer Lauren Johnson-Norris, and Irvine Vice Mayor Mike Carroll.

As of Thursday at 9:00 p.m. there was a difference of only 204 votes between the three candidates.

Johnson-Norris is currently in third with 36,142 (13.04%). Carroll has accumulated 36,086 votes (13.086%).

Carroll expressed optimism about his chances to continue serving on the Irvine City Council. Carroll added that he did not foresee a third seat opening up.

“I think it’s gone really well, I’m not here to declare that we won, but I’m optimistic that when the count is finished, that we will come out ahead,” Carroll said Thursday evening in a phone call with Irvine Weekly. “I was really surprised that it looks like we’ll have three seats open. It’s definitely a new fact that we have to take into account, and it provides another opportunity for me to try and continue to serve on the City Council.”

In a statement via text provided to Irvine Weekly, Johnson-Norris explained, “We are hopeful that the returns will continue to support a win for our campaign and the other top Democratic candidates. This year voters rejected campaigns funded or outsourced to developers and special interest groups. We ran a positive, clean money campaign, focused on our residents and believe that resonated with voters.”

Here’s the latest update from the Orange County Registrar of Voters.