Ballots go out next week for voters to decide who will be the next county supervisor for Orange County’s eastern edge, with two candidates facing off for control of the county’s third district in a race that could shift the balance of power on the board.
Democrats currently have a slight majority on the five-member Orange County Board of Supervisors, which is responsible for overseeing a $9.3 billion budget that finances the county health agency, sheriff’s department, social services, the district attorney’s office and other critical services.
Republican Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner is running to keep the seat he first won in 2019, while Democratic Irvine Mayor Farrah Khan is pushing for higher office as she wraps up her final term as mayor in the city.
Regardless of who wins, there may not be a runoff election in the fall – if any candidate wins over 50% of the vote in a primary, they win the race.
With only two candidates one of them is most likely guaranteed the margin of victory.
This is the first time the third district’s new voting map will be used after it was approved in 2022, placing cities like, Irvine, Lake Forest, Tustin, Orange, Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita, Yorba Linda, the Anaheim Hills neighborhood and other unincorporated areas like the county canyons in the third district.
While Republicans have a slight edge in voter registration in the new district according to data from the county registrar, around one in five voters are listed as having no party preference, leaving neither party with a decisive majority.
Wagner’s Runs for Reelection
Wagner joined the board in 2019 after winning a special election, his fourth seat in public office after terms as Irvine’s mayor, a trustee for the South Orange County Community College District’s Board of Trustees and a state Assemblyman.
[Read: New OC Supervisor Don Wagner to Take Office Wednesday]
For the past year, he’s served as chair of the board, and highlighted his work supporting law enforcement along with being one of the leading voices pushing for a state veterans cemetery on county owned land at Gypsum Canyon on his campaign website.
In a Thursday interview, Wagner also said he felt the county needed to review some of their spending on homelessness and argued that a “housing first,” model championed by many advocates isn’t working.
“When you haven’t fixed any of the underlying issues that result in homelessness, it’s not going to work long term,” Wagner said. “You’ve got to give people the skills to in fact live in a housed environment and maintain it.”
Wagner was also one of the most vocal local opponents of mask mandates and repeatedly called for Gov. Gavin Newsom to relax regulations and let businesses reopen in 2020 and 2021.
Wagner recently faced criticisms for voting down a proposal requiring supervisors to disclose when family members receive contracts.
[Read: OC Supervisors Decide Against Disclosing Family Contracts]
When asked about both issues, Wagner stood by his votes, praising the county’s work during COVID and criticized a recent proposal to disclose family contracts was “full of loopholes.”
“I do believe the last year or two have proved me right,” Wagner said of the pandemic. “If you want to criticize my handling of COVID, it’s a free country, you can do that. But the facts show the governor overreacted. His plans weren’t well thought out or following the science and we were right here in Orange County.”
He’s so far received endorsements from OC Sheriff Don Barnes, the county firefighters union, and a host of Republican elected leaders at the county government and cities such as Anaheim, Tustin, Newport Beach and Lake Forest.
Khan Seeks a New Seat
Khan first entered local politics in 2018 when she won a seat on the Irvine City Council, and two years later beat then-Mayor Christina Shea to take over the city’s highest position.
In an interview with Voice of OC, Khan highlighted her work on the council in creating the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee and in helping distribute emergency funds to small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I had to keep asking the county for more funding,” Khan said. “I ended up using $5 million of our (American Rescue Plan Act) funding to help small businesses. The votes, the track record, it’s all there.”
Khan criticized Wagner’s recent vote on Sarmiento’s transparency proposal, saying she would “definitely support” more transparency on how supervisors shared their funds.
Wagner said he’s disclosed “every dime,” of discretionary spending he’d ever used publicly, and that the proposed plan was “grotesquely overbroad.”
“How do you even enforce it mechanically?” Wagner said. “I’ll bet you dollars to donuts Farrah hasn’t done the work to ask those questions.”
But her term as mayor has faced some major hurdles, with the biggest coming after her campaign manager and top advisor Melahat Rafiei pleaded guilty to attempted wire fraud last year and admitted she tried to bribe two Irvine City Council members before Khan was elected to the council.
It’s also unclear when Rafiei actually stopped working for Khan, with records obtained by Voice of OC showing she continued speaking with city staff after the two publicly said they cut ties and claiming it was on Khan’s behalf – a claim Khan has said isn’t true.
[Read: Did Irvine’s Mayor Keep Working With Consultant Caught Up in FBI Corruption Probe?]
When asked about the issue, Khan said she stood by her statement that Rafiei had stopped working for her months earlier, and that she’d never figured out why Rafiei claimed to be working on her behalf.
“You have people who are available who are consulting, and when you don’t want them anymore you fire them,” Khan said. “I’m not going to go back and forth with anyone on things like that, I made my statement and I stand by it.”
Khan also said she wanted to focus on homelessness and housing as a supervisor, saying the county should audit all the money they’ve spent on the issue to see which programs are working and which haven’t, noting she was a strong proponent of the controversial CARE Court program.
[Read: Orange County Leaders Question CARE Court Promises]
“I think it’s important for the county to put more funding in social services so that they have actual case workers that are able to work with our unhoused population on a case by case basis,” Khan said. “We can’t have people that don’t understand how to use that money wisely.”
However, Khan said she wasn’t interested in building any new homeless shelters, saying she wanted to focus instead on providing services to the unhoused and that she was not “100% sold” on shelters aiding in that.
She also declined to state whether or not she would redirect funding from other areas like the Sheriff’s Department – which gets nearly $1 billion of the $9 billion budget – to fund more homeless services.
“There’s a lot of information I do not have in front of me, not being a supervisor. I’d have to look into that a bit more before any decision is made,” Khan said. “That’s really what I’m looking forward to, understanding how the money is spent.”
Differences at Power and Transportation Authorities
Khan also served as one of the founding board members of the OC Power Authority, which failed four audits that all found the agency failed to properly disclose what they were doing to the public.
[Read: Is OC’s Green Power Agency on the Way to Being Clean?]
Wagner also served on that board, and argued that the transparency problems were fixable before the county ultimately pulled out of the agency, at which point he started calling for the agency to be dissolved altogether.
[Read: OC Green Power Agency Survives Dissolution Vote as County Exits]
Khan said she stood by the work she did on the agency’s board, saying things got “too political,” and said she would support having the county rejoin the agency.
Another area where the two have clashed is at the Orange County Transportation Authority where Khan has voted to support the County Auditor Controller’s request to heighten auditing over local road taxes, called Measure M.
[Read: Santana: OC Transit Officials Want to Gut Oversight on Local Road Taxes]
Wager has opposed additional auditing proposed by the County Auditor Controller arguing it goes against decades of practice and is not cost-effective.
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.
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