Despite their role in overseeing Orange County’s $9.3-billion budget, county supervisors often fly under the radar. This year’s March election in the race for the third district — encompassing central and southern inland areas — pits incumbent Board Chairman Don Wagner against Irvine Mayor Farrah Khan. It may be a low-visibility race, but it’s an important one.
Supervisor seats are officially nonpartisan, but one needn’t look deeply to find usual partisan battle lines. Wagner, who was elected to the board in 2019, is a Republican who served in the California Assembly from 2010-2016 and as Irvine mayor. Khan is a Democrat, a relative newcomer who was elected to Irvine City Council before becoming mayor.
We often disagree with Wagner, but given the choices, we think Orange County will be better off with Wagner on the board than with Khan on the board. Wagner isn’t the most charismatic figure, but has spent years dealing capably with the nuts-and-bolts of county governance. In our Editorial Board interview, he explained the county has made progress on dealing with homelessness, has kept crime rates low and maintained tight reins on the budget. Maintaining that restrained approach to county government is what Wagner offers and has demonstrated.
Whereas Wagner is a conservative problem-solver, Khan tilts left and has a penchant for attracting controversy. In our interview, she focused on some issues we like (e.g., promoting market-based housing), but her bio and track record is full of mostly predictable left-wing positions. This includes her efforts to promote “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” “carbon neutrality” and “hero” pay for workers. She championed a nanny-state smoking ban in Irvine. She’s backed by unions and the usual progressive coalition.
A key role of supervisors is negotiating with powerful public-employee unions. Yet as mayor Khan promoted union-only Project Labor Agreements that drive up the cost of public projects. She has been an outspoken supporter of the county’s disastrous public-power agency, which has been slammed for a lack of transparency.
On the point of transparency and ethics, we’re not particularly pleased with how Wagner has handled the fallout around revelations about his colleague and council ally Andrew Do. Do, it has been learned, steered millions of dollars of public funds to a nonprofit led by his daughter without disclosing his daughter’s position in the nonprofit. Wagner has given mixed messages about whether he even thinks Do did anything wrong, but recently blocked a proposal by Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento to require disclosure.
Wagner was also quite slow to take the situation at Orange County Animal Care seriously and even took to the radio to wave away concerns raised by Sen. Janet Nguyen in these pages. Neither Wagner nor Khan seem to have any degree of skepticism about the influence of police unions in government. And neither are ideal candidates by any means.
But we have the choices we have.
While Wagner has quietly pushed to improve county government, Khan has championed high-profile progressive priorities. Wagner is the clear choice — and it’s much clearer considering a Khan victory would give Democrats a 4-1 board majority. We don’t care about partisan labels per se, but dropping a fiscally conservative supervisor to create a supermajority with an expansive view of government would be a costly mistake.
