Onetime Irvine Mayor Wants Job Again

Irvine City Councilman Larry Agran announced Friday that he will run for mayor in the November election.

Agran, who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. presidency in 1992, has twice held the independently elected mayor’s seat and has served as a councilman on and off since the late 1970s.

He hopes to replace outgoing Mayor Christina L. Shea, who has served in the city’s highest office since 1996. Term limits prevent Shea from running again.

Agran said he wants to use the mayor’s seat to quash the Orange County Board of Supervisors’ plan to build an international airport at the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

“I think it’s time for the city to shift its anti-airport strategy into a new realm that is pursuing this concept of a great park at El Toro, and I think I can provide the leadership, time, energy and ideas to get us there,” he said.

Councilman Dave Christensen has endorsed Agran in a direct mailer expected to hit Irvine homes next week.

“Nobody played a bigger role in Measure F’s victory this past March than Larry Agran,” Christensen wrote in the mailer.

Agran was first elected to the City Council in 1978. He served two terms as mayor and left office in 1990. He was elected to a four-year council term in 1998.