In a Picturesque City, Things Get Ugly

If there’s something broken in Irvine, it sure doesn’t show in the tidy streets, neat shopping plazas and other outward signs of municipal wellness.

Still, candidates in next week’s council elections warn of an unsightly stain spreading through city leadership.

Charges of political corruption and unethical behavior surfaced last summer, when Councilman Chris Mears, a longtime supporter of Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, announced he would not seek a second term. Mears said he was leaving out of disgust for Agran, whom he accused of manipulating city business to financially enrich his chief political backer, Ed Dornan.

Agran said Mears was lying and insisted that neither he nor Dornan, who has lobbied the city to create a privately run electrical utility, had done anything wrong. He called Mears troubled and bitter because he hadn’t prevailed in a key city appointment.

Two other Agran allies then broke ranks and joined Mears in endorsing candidates running against Agran and his slate. The fight was on.

At issue is whether voters will return Agran, a council member for an unprecedented 18 years, to another term on the panel he dominated for so long. He has served his maximum two two-year terms as mayor.

Also hanging in the balance is control of the five-member City Council. Agran has endorsed Councilwoman Beth Krom to replace him as mayor. While seeking one of the two contested council seats for himself, Agran also has endorsed two candidates for the other open council seat -- Debbie Coven, a school board member, and Suhkee Kang, a member of the city’s finance commission.

Opposing Agran’s slate are Councilman Mike Ward for mayor, and council candidates Greg Smith, a former councilman; Mike House, who narrowly lost to Agran for mayor in 2002; and school board member Steven Choi. Candidates running independently include Earl Zucht and Ron Allen for mayor and council candidate Mohsen Alinaghian.

The stakes are high, if campaign spending is an indication. By election day, nearly $1 million will be spent on mailings promoting the pro- and anti-Agran slates, according to those familiar with the pace of spending -- an amount unheard of in an Orange County municipal election.

Besides Agran’s fate, the council elections also will determine who will oversee the $1.4-billion redevelopment of the former El Toro Marine base, which was annexed by Irvine this year.

Orange County voters in 2002 overturned the county’s plans for an international airport at the base in favor of an urban central park. The city has since added residential and commercial development to help pay for the parkland.

Critics of Agran say he has been favoring companies owned by friends and political supporters lining up to do future business at El Toro, which the city calls the Great Park.

Irvine’s nonpartisan elections have generated the unusual involvement of political parties because of Republican animus toward Agran, prompting Democrats to close ranks behind Agran, a Democrat who ran for president in 1992.

“There’s a universal distaste for how [Agran] has comported himself,” said Tracy Price, president of the Lincoln Club of Orange County, a Republican group that has spent $49,000 so far to defeat Agran. “We’re focusing our efforts on supporting the good-government, pro-business candidates, and that wouldn’t be Larry,” he said.

Price declined to say how much the group intended to spend to urge Irvine voters -- Republicans and Democrats -- to defeat Agran.

This week, some of Lincoln Club’s expenditures funded an open letter from Mears to Irvine Democrats, who make up 29% of voters. The letter countered a pro-Agran letter sent last week by Orange County Democratic Party Chairman Frank Barbaro. That mailer, in which Barbaro described the tension between Agran and Mears as akin to Cain and Abel, was funded by the Agran and Krom campaigns.

Agran said he expected to be hit by the Lincoln Club, which he stereotyped as a group of Newport Beach-based donors who favored building an airport at the closed El Toro base. The club in 2002 successfully challenged Irvine’s campaign law that had limited how much money independent groups such as itself could collect and spend on behalf of candidates.

The city still has a $360-per-person donation limit for candidates.

Orange County’s GOP central committee spent $33,600 through mid-October criticizing Agran in letters and brochures to Irvine’s 36,000 registered GOP voters, who make up 47% of the electorate.

Injecting partisanship into the race “is just terrible,” Agran said. “Irvine voters won’t stand for it.”

He said Mears had launched a personal vendetta, aided by former friends with their own agendas. His critics have engaged in mudslinging, he said, while he’s been focusing on continuing city efforts to build the Great Park.

On Agran’s side is Dornan, who for years has distributed the Hometown Voter Guide, a slate mailer backing Agran while attacking challengers. Slate mailers aren’t subject to contribution limits.

In November 2002, Hometown Voter Guide spent about $225,000 on 11 brochures supporting Agran’s candidates and issues. Most of the money came from developers doing or seeking to do business in the city.

Through mid-October, Dornan reported receiving $65,000 for the current guide, through which he has produced at least a dozen mailers. A quirk in reporting requirements means that the bulk of the spending won’t be accounted for until January, well after the election.