The biggest beneficiary of IEs in Irvine City Council races this cycle is John Park who is making his fifth attempt to get elected to the city council. The 1962 Lincoln Club PAC has attacked both of his Democratic opponents for District 1 – Melinda Liu and Sukhee Kang – blaming them for the fiscal crisis in Irvine, while ignoring hisown small part in the same thing.
Park’s platform is “back to basics” approach which includes and hiring freeze and reassessments of city staffing. He cites his experience as a City Commissioner for Traffic, Planning and Finance under various Republican council members and developed a reputation for rarely attending meetings and, when attending, saying little to nothing. Did he learn anything? Hard to say.
Councilmember James Mai hired Park’s marketing firm – Eight Horses – for an eight month contract at $5,500 a month ($44K total) in a no bid contract using Mai’s city council budget all to promote Mai. And Mai claims using a contractor — Park — instead of a staffer –would be less expensive (savings in the thousands not tens of thousands). I question why a city council member needs to promote their work when promoting work done by the city ought to go through city staff.
Park’s platform would curtail the sort of work his agency benefitted from. But he already got his cash, so there’s that.
But since Park has run for office multiple times, voters ought to look to his positions in previous elections to see how far his promises carry from one election to this one.
According to an interview published in the Korea Daily (JoongAng Ilbo) on July 31, 2024, Irvine City Council candidate John Park declared his “3 NOs” pledge on his campaign website (johnparkforcitycouncil.com).
He pledged not to accept a single penny in campaign contributions from three sources:
- Political Action Committees (PACs)
- Special Interest Groups
- Corporations
Park stated:
“I will be a City Councilmember who works solely for the residents. To do that, I must remain free of political obligations. If I accept campaign contributions from developers and then get elected, I would not be able to oppose their development projects.”
Technically, a candidate and an IE cannot coordinate efforts with a candidate’s campaign.
But in 2026, Park broke every 2024 campaign promise.
Based on all the negative mail generated to tear down Park’s opponents to promote Park’s candidacy, Park has some explaning to do. Couple this with Park promoting his commissioner “experience,” which was uneventful, can Voters trust Park to be true to his word?
We will find out on election day.