Update Tuesday, Jan. 17: With just a couple hours left before filing deadline at 5 p.m. today, Monday, Jan. 16, the final of five candidates for two Arcadia City Council seats up for election in March/April filed the required paperwork at City Hall.
The candidates include current Mayor Gary Kovacic, former Mayor John Wuo, community leader and three-time former candidate Sho Tay, former School Board President Mary Dougherty, and local developer Henry Nunez.
Voters will receive a mail-in ballot in March that must be completed, returned, and received (not just postmarked) no later than 30 days later.
Wuo was first to file a couple weeks ago and his required 20 petition signatures from Arcadia voters have been approved by the County Recorder’s office, according to City officials. Kovacic and Tay submitted their petitions last week, and those petitions were sent to begin an approximate one-week approval process at the Recorder’s office, which is closed today due to the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday observed by most government agencies.
Nunez‘s likely candidacy was first reported here last October – he submitted his petition today. Nunez caused a stir during the preliminary stages of the last City Council campaign in 2010 with stunts such as a hunger strike and laying on railroad tracks to challenge incumbent candidates to make more changes and progress in Arcadia. But he decided just before the deadline not to file to run his own campaign. He has said there will be no such antics this time around. Nunez was on the recent General Plan Action Committee of volunteers tasked to lay out a growth strategy for Arcadia for the next 25 years and became disgruntled during the process when the City Council did not endorse all the initial mixed-use residential/retail building options the GPAC recommended.
Dougherty, who was the last to file late Monday, is a former multi-term President of the Arcadia School Board who was unsuccessful in her first bid for City Council in 2000. In that election there were six candidates for two seats, including Vince Foley, former Councilman Gino Roncelli, former Mayor Dr. Sheng Chang, and current Councilman and former Mayor Mickey Segal. Dougherty has remained very active in many local organizations, leading Home Owner Association issues with the City and co-chairing the Government Affairs Forum of the Arcadia Chamber of Commerce, among other activities. She has long lobbied for new faces on the City Council.
The Council is currently made up entirely of Caucasian men for the first time in many years. No women ran for the three Council seats in 2010, and all three Chinese-American candidates were defeated in that election, including Sho Tay, who got the most votes of the three and is making his fourth run this year.
Wuo, who was termed out in 2010 after winning the first of two consecutive four-year terms in 2002, has sat out the required two years before being eligible to run again.
Kovacic, who series of terms first began in 1996, is completing his first four-year term since being re-elected in 2008 after sitting out for two years. He is widely expected to garner the most votes for his re-election bid, leaving the other four candidates to battle for the one remaining seat being vacated by Councilman and former Mayor Roger Chandler when his second consecutive four-year term expires.
Tay, an owner of multiple independent businesses who sits on the boards of numerous local organizations and is the Arcadia Chamber of Commerce’s current Citizen of the Year, made his intentions known last August about running for Council this year.
— By Scott Hettrick (Scott’s articles on ArcadiasBest.com are not intended to reflect any position of the Arcadia Chamber of Commerce, where he is Executive Director.)