Election Season
By Jacob Levy, editor and publisher
The Irvine city elections are looking to be among the most significant in recent memory. In the next few months, Irvine City News will dive deep into the candidates’ qualifications, records and recommendations on how to keep Irvine the amazing, world-class city it already is, and will certainly continue to be.
In this issue, we offered the mayoral candidates the opportunity to share their positions and opinions in response to six questions we posed. You can read the responsive statements of Gang Chen, Katherine Daigle and MaryAnn Gaido and Don Wagner in this issue.
We’ll provide a similar forum for city council candidates in an upcoming issue.
One aspect of the Irvine city election we’ll be tracking closely is how much gloom and doom and fear-based messaging creeps into a candidate’s campaign. Certainly the city faces challenges, but we’re well positioned to overcome them because Irvine remains a well-planned model among Southern California cities.
The city’s superlatives are well known. Irvine is one of the safest cities in the country. We benefit from a team of highly professional and courteous first responders, who in turn are respected in the community. We’re a modern, multicultural metropolis, and the city’s economic vitality and steady growth is enviable.
So let’s take a hard look at the status quo, and keep in mind how good we’ve got it, before signing up for overreaching and unrealistic “change” for the sake of the same.
We’ll get into those issues and more as the election approaches. The national elections look to be the most divisive in memory, if not history, and there are extremely serious issues facing the country. Irvine’s problems pale in comparison, and our politics should likewise be reasonable and responsible. I’m putting in a plug for patience, collegiality and a grown-up attitude in the coming election cycle.
In this issue, we offered the mayoral candidates the opportunity to share their positions and opinions in response to six questions we posed. You can read the responsive statements of Gang Chen, Katherine Daigle and MaryAnn Gaido and Don Wagner in this issue.
We’ll provide a similar forum for city council candidates in an upcoming issue.
One aspect of the Irvine city election we’ll be tracking closely is how much gloom and doom and fear-based messaging creeps into a candidate’s campaign. Certainly the city faces challenges, but we’re well positioned to overcome them because Irvine remains a well-planned model among Southern California cities.
The city’s superlatives are well known. Irvine is one of the safest cities in the country. We benefit from a team of highly professional and courteous first responders, who in turn are respected in the community. We’re a modern, multicultural metropolis, and the city’s economic vitality and steady growth is enviable.
So let’s take a hard look at the status quo, and keep in mind how good we’ve got it, before signing up for overreaching and unrealistic “change” for the sake of the same.
We’ll get into those issues and more as the election approaches. The national elections look to be the most divisive in memory, if not history, and there are extremely serious issues facing the country. Irvine’s problems pale in comparison, and our politics should likewise be reasonable and responsible. I’m putting in a plug for patience, collegiality and a grown-up attitude in the coming election cycle.
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