Whoever wins the Orange County Board of Supervisors seat in the newly drawn District 2 on June 7 will have a historic opportunity to represent the county’s first Latino majority voting district.

Five candidates, all with prior experience in elected office, are running for the seat that covers Santa Ana and parts of Anaheim, Garden Grove, Orange and Tustin.

On the ballot are Orange Councilman Jon Dumitru; Cecilia Iglesias, a former councilwoman and school board trustee from Santa Ana; Garden Grove Councilwoman Kim Bernice Nguyen; Santa Ana Mayor Vicente Sarmiento; and former Santa Ana councilman Juan Villegas.

The new boundaries came out of the once-a-decade redistricting process, and they were designed to give the county’s Latino residents – who now make up about a third of OC’s population – the opportunity for a more substantial voice in county government.

While the Board of Supervisors is nonpartisan (candidates’ party affiliation doesn’t appear on the ballot), the county’s Democratic and Republican groups closely watch and typically get involved in its elections. County data shows Democrats have a clear registration advantage in District 2, accounting for more than 48% of voters; those not affiliated with a party make up nearly 24%; and Republicans sit just above 22%.

Because the boundaries were just redrawn, the area’s current representative, Supervisor Katrina Foley, is seeking election in a different district – so District 2 is essentially an open seat.

The candidates all touted how they’d try to improve county government, and most had criticisms of how it’s been operating.

Sarmiento, 57, a Democrat and attorney who has been on the Santa Ana City Council since 2007 and was elected mayor in 2020, said he saw “some real mistakes”  in the county’s handling of the pandemic, such as the decision to send some of the first COVID-19 vaccines that arrived in OC to communities facing less serious impacts than his city.

In early 2021, as vaccines were being rolled out widely, the county health agency opened mass vaccination sites in Anaheim and Aliso Viejo, but “they never came to Santa Ana until we actually sort of forced the hand of the county to do it, but we were trying to be as clear as possible with the county that we really wanted to partner with them,” Sarmiento said.

There was also a lag in adding languages other than English to the county’s vaccine scheduling app and it was slow to add options for people without internet access, he said.

Nguyen, a health care analyst and Democrat, also expressed frustration with a “lack of leadership” on the board that she thinks put county staff’s health at risk and led the former health officer to quit after receiving threats over a mask mandate. (The next health officer almost immediately relaxed the rule, and the county never enforced it.)

“I think I have proven this example on the Garden Grove City Council, to put the needs of my constituents above my own personal beliefs,” she said. Nguyen is in her second term on the council.

The other three candidates also said they see room for improvement in how the county has handled the pandemic, but added that they don’t think the government should mandate health measures such as masks or vaccines.

Dumitru, a Republican who in 2020 returned for a third term on the Orange City Council after taking an eight-year break, said he would focus on making sure residents have access to information and resources to deal with COVID-19 or other public health concerns – but he wouldn’t support policing mask use.

“It is a personal choice of the individual,” he said. “That’s just not the role the county should be taking.”

The candidates also were split on how to address homelessness, which poses challenges in nearly every part of the county.

Villegas, an Army veteran who retired in March after 32 years with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and doesn’t belong to a political party, said during his four years on the Santa Ana City Council, some of his colleagues pushed back against the county’s plans to build a homeless shelter in the city, after previously agreeing to cooperate on the project.

Villegas supported the Yale Street shelter project because it was “better to have a seat at the table and have an input,” he said, adding that since opening, the shelter reportedly hasn’t garnered any major complaints and it could be a good model for other communities.

County supervisors “have to work together to do what’s right, regardless of what district you represent,” he said.

Iglesias, a Republican and director of education and community relations at a nonprofit who won two terms on the Santa Ana Unified School District board and served on the Santa Ana City Council from 2018 until she was recalled in 2020, said the county is doing its best to address homelessness, but it hasn’t always been fair to some communities, which have had to bear more of the burden.

(Iglesias said she was recalled because she was “standing up for taxpayers” voting against raises for the Police Department that were projected to increase the deficit by several million dollars.)

South county cities have so far largely declined to build shelters, but Iglesias said city and county officials could put more effort into working together to find a site that wouldn’t affect neighborhoods, “and then this way, the whole county as a whole is taking care of the residents,” she said.

Dumitru said with some people facing serious addiction and mental health challenges and state law allowing early release of convicts, the homeless issue has become much more complex.

Local leaders need to “start fresh” by working closely with churches and nonprofits that serve the homeless, and perhaps even creating a safe camping site with basic services for those who won’t go to a congregate shelter – but communities need the ability to prevent camping on playgrounds and in business parking lots, he said.

Iglesias and Sarmiento both said open space, in short supply in District 2, is a priority for them.

Iglesias suggested turning largely unused space along the Santa Ana River into a “riverwalk”-style park with spots for kids to play and perhaps street vendors during the day.

Sarmiento said he’d like to see the county partner with Santa Ana to purchase the Willowick Golf Course property, which is in Santa Ana but owned by Garden Grove, and preserve it as green space for residents.

The candidates also had a few other priorities and ideas on a range of issues.

Villegas said crime is a big concern for residents, so he’d ensure law enforcement is fully funded – and he knows how to collaborate for residents’ benefit.

“If you work with everyone, you get invited to things, to work on projects, and it’s nice to see something get done,” he said.

Iglesias said she’d like to see the county build a community center in District 2, and she wants the board to meet at a time that’s more convenient for working people who might want to attend.

“The reason I am running is because I believe for too long Santa Ana and Anaheim have been left out of the conversations and also away from having a seat at the table when it comes to policy and when it comes to resources,” she said.

Nguyen said she wants to focus on helping residents thrive to improve community health, such as by increasing access to healthy food and making sure people know about job training, rental assistance and other aid the county has to offer.

She also wants to help educate people who may not know what county government does and advocate for the people and cities in District 2. To connect cities with the funding, programs and other resources the county has, it takes “someone who’s served on a city council, who understands these communities, who understands the issues and concerns,” she said.

For Dumitru, being a county supervisor is about public service, he said, so he would hire his staff from within the district and have pop-up events to be accessible to the community.

Also, he said, “I’m a person that likes to get into the nuts and bolts of the budget and find waste, find duplication and then eliminate it and then repurpose it.”

Sarmiento said for years there hasn’t been a good working relationship between Santa Ana and its supervisor, but the newly drawn district creates “an opportunity that you can have a county supervisor work with local government here in Santa Ana.”

The board hasn’t had a supervisor from Santa Ana for nearly three-quarters of a century, which makes it harder to have “a robust and thorough, comprehensive conservation about what are the needs of the entire county,” including its core, he said.

Orange County’s five-member Board of Supervisors oversees a budget of more than $7 billion that funds the offices of the Sheriff, District Attorney and Public Defender, social services, 60,000 acres of public parks, beaches and open space, and the public health department that’s been leading the local COVID-19 response.

Ballots will be mailed to all registered voters in the county starting May 9. If none of the five District 2 candidates gets more than 50% of the vote, the top two proceed to a November runoff.

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