Larry Agran

Larry Agran
Member of the Irvine City Council
In office December 14, 2004 – December 9, 2014
In office December 8, 1998 – November 7, 2000
In office July 10, 1984 – July 8, 1986
Mayor of Irvine
In office November 7, 2000 – December 14, 2004
Preceded by	Christina Shea
Succeeded by	Beth Krom
In office July 8, 1986 – July 20, 1990
Preceded by	Dave Baker
Succeeded by	Sally Anne Sheridan
In office July 13, 1982 – July 10, 1984
Preceded by	David Sills
Succeeded by	David Sills
Personal details
Born	Lawrence Alan Agran February 2, 1945 (1945-02-02) (age 73) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Nationality	American
Political party	Democratic
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley Harvard University
Profession	Politician, lawyer

Lawrence Alan Agran (born February 2, 1945) is a former mayor and city councilman of Irvine, California.

Early life

Agran was born in Chicago, the son of Selma Elizabeth (Meyerson) and Reuben Agran (originally "Agranowsky").^[1][2] He was raised in a "politically liberal Jewish household".^[3] Agran graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966 with a Bachelor of Science degree in both history and economics. He then earned a juris doctor (with honors) from Harvard Law School in 1969, specializing in public interest law.

Agran served as legal counsel to the California State Senate Committee on Health and Welfare, and taught legislation and public policy at the UCLA School of Law and the University of California, Irvine Graduate School of Management.

City government

Between 1979 and 1990, he served on the Irvine City Council, including six years as mayor (Irvine employs a council-manager government).

Agran rejoined the city council and has, for many years, served as a city councilman; he chaired the city’s Great Park board until February 2011. (The board is charged with planning, constructing and operating a new park of nearly 1,500 acres (6.1 km²) at the former Marine Corps Air Base El Toro in Irvine.) The fully funded, nearly $70 million Great Park Western Sector Park Development plan is in its first phase, and the North Lawn multi-use area was expected to open to the public in spring 2011. Construction was about to begin in early 2011 on an arts and culture area, to be followed by construction of three lighted soccer fields. A leased agricultural area of 114 acres (0.46 km²) produced its first crop of strawberries and the newly opened Great Park Carousel had more than 25,000 riders in the first two months of 2011.

Presidential candidacy

In 1992, Agran unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party nomination for president. Agran was generally ignored by the media during his candidacy, a topic heavily covered in the 1995 Brian Springer documentary Spin.^[4] The media did not report his polling numbers even as he met or exceeded the support of other candidates such as Jerry Brown. Party officials excluded him from most debates on various grounds, even having him arrested when he interrupted to ask to participate. When he managed to join the other candidates in a forum, his ideas went unreported.

Despite holding only a local office and being unknown outside California, in a poll on January 22, 1992, he tied with two well-known national politicians: Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa and the former governor of his home state, Jerry Brown.^[5]

ARG pollster Dick Bennett thought that, had that surprise strength in the polls been played up by news organizations, the result might well have been a further rise in the polls.^[5] However, Bennett said, the press completely ignored the story, and he began to sink.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors led to the first significant mention of his campaign in The New York Times. In a January 24 article, Richard Berke noted that, after listening to the candidates, "dozens of Mayors . . . seemed to agree on one thing: the single candidate who truly understands urban needs is Larry Agran".^[6] Some major candidates also participated. Although Agran was regarded by his colleagues as the most experienced in the urban area themes, his performance did not meet a big response in media.

According to Carole Florman, organizer of the Global Warming Leadership Forum in Tallahassee in February (in which Agran participated), "the audience "was more enthusiastic about Larry Agran than about Bill Clinton".^[7]

Despite his success in these events, Agran performed poorly in the New Hampshire primary, but did pick up modest support in later primaries as a protest candidate with appeal to those unhappy with the other candidates. He received three votes at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

Agran was barred from every TV debate, along with some other minor candidates, such as Eugene McCarthy.

Return to city government

In 1998, Agran re-entered public service as an Irvine City Council member. Agran was elected to serve as mayor once more on November 7, 2000, and was re-elected on November 5, 2002. The current mayor of Irvine as of November 2017 is Donald Wagner, preceded by Steven Choi (2012-2016). Agran was defeated in his re-election bid for the city council in 2014.

Great Park controversy

As an Irvine City Council member, Agran served as the chair of the board of directors of the Orange County Great Park project from 2004 through 2010. Despite $220 million in spending for the project, the promised Great Park remained incomplete as of 2010.^[8] An independent review by Hagen, Streiff, Newton & Oshiro Accountants (HSNO) in 2014 found that, in spite of being awarded large contracts, some contractors lacked "defined deliverables for tasks" and charged invoices for items out of the scope of the project, "at the direction of Larry Agran". Moreover, the communications firm Forde & Mollrich received between $50,000 and $100,000 per month from the project, under contracts that were reserved for design services; they refused to speak to investigators about the contract, as did the employee who was responsible for their invoices.^[9] Forde had previously served as a strategist in several of Agran's political campaigns.^[10] Additionally, PR consultant George Urch was found to have performed services for individual city council members, including 387 hours for Larry Agran, 30 hours for Beth Krom, and 6 hours for Sukhee Kang, which were billed under to the project, but unrelated to its execution. Agran disputed these charges, arguing that they "made tremendous progress on the Great Park with an award-winning master design and projects completed on time... The audit has yet to reveal a single dollar that is unaccounted for or misspent."^[10] The investigation is ongoing, and there was to be an Irvine ballot measure on the November 2014 election seeking to establish policies relating to fiscal transparency and reforms for the Orange County Great Park project.^[11]

Veterans Cemetery Controversy

In 2017, Agran spearheaded a campaign to stop the land swap required to establish a Veterans Cemetery in Irvine, California. Instead of attempting to build a cemetery on polluted land adjacent to the "Great Park" it was proposed to swap acre-for-acre with land near the "El Toro Y" that is free of buildings and is not polluted. This land was also adjacent to the "Great Park" and on land that was the former El Toro Marine Base. The land owner, FivePoints agreed to donate $10 million dollars to begin immediate construction of the cemetery. With entitlements unchanged (the swap would have allowed the exact same square footage of development be moved from one site to the other). Agran funded signature gatherers who lied about the merits of the proposition they proposed. for this purpose. The lies were so egregious that a new law in the State of California has been proposed to stop such outright dirty tactics and prevent paying signature gatherers by the signature. Agran worked to create a website claiming to save the cemetery while he worked behind the scenes to stop the land exchange - endangering the hope that a cemetery would ever come to fruition. The measure, "B" did not pass in the election held in June, 2018 and, as a result, there is no current proposed location for the Veteran's Cemetery. It is uncertain if there will be a Veteran's Cemetery in Irvine - Larry Agran and Ed Pope were the driving force behind stopping measure B.

Electoral history

Race for Mayor of Irvine, 2002^[12]

• Larry Agran (nonpartisan) – 19,886 (53.39%)
• Mike House (nonpartisan) – 17,358 (46.61%)

Note: Although Agran is a Democrat, offices in Irvine are formally nonpartisan.

Race for Mayor of Irvine, 2000^[13]

• Larry Agran (nonpartisan) – 34,905 (100.00%) (unopposed)

1992 Democratic National Convention

• Bill Clinton – 3,372 (80.27%)
• Jerry Brown – 596 (14.19%)
• Paul Tsongas – 209 (4.98%)
• Robert P. Casey – 10 (0.24%)
• Patricia Schroeder – 8 (0.19%)
• Larry Agran – 3 (0.07%)
• Ron Daniels – 1 (0.02%)
• Al Gore – 1 (0.02%)
• Joe Simonetta 1 (0.02%)

United States presidential election, 1992 (Democratic primary)^[14]

• Bill Clinton – 10,482,411 (52.01%)
• Jerry Brown – 4,071,232 (20.20%)
• Paul Tsongas – 3,656,010 (18.14%)
• Unpledged – 750,873 (3.73%)
• Bob Kerrey – 318,457 (1.58%)
• Tom Harkin – 280,304 (1.39%)
• Lyndon LaRouche – 154,599 (0.77%)
• Eugene McCarthy – 108,678 (0.54%)
• Charles Woods – 88,948 (0.44%)
• Larry Agran – 58,611 (0.29%)
• Ross Perot – 54,755 (0.27%)
• Ralph Nader – 35,935 (0.18%)
• Louis Stokes – 29,983 (0.15%)
• Angus Wheeler McDonald – 9,900 (0.05%)
• J. Louis McAlpine – 7,911 (0.04%)
• George W. Benns – 7,887 (0.04%)
• Rufus T. Higginbotham – 7,705 (0.04%)
• Tom Howard Hawks – 7,434 (0.04%)
• Stephen Bruke – 5,261 (0.03%)
• Tom Laughlin – 5,202 (0.03%)
• Tom Shiekman – 4,965 (0.03%)
• Jeffrey F. Marsh – 2,445 (0.01%)
• George Ballard – 2,067 (0.01%)
• Ray Rollinson – 1,206 (0.01%)
• Lenora Fulani – 402 (0.00%)
• Douglas Wilder – 240 (0.00%)

Including write-in candidates.

References

External links

• City of Irvine biography
• NNDB profile
• Joshua Meyrowitz (March 1, 1992), The press rejects a candidate. (coverage of presidential candidate Larry Agran). Columbia Journalism Review.