DISTRICT 1 - CANDIDATES
General Information
All candidates listed are for Council District 1. We have listed them in the order that they will appear on the official ballot sent to you. This order is determined by a random drawing of letters by the Secretary of State of California. This letter is published online and you can view the drawing results with this link (Click Here).
We are asking that council candidates provide a brief campaign description. We will also add information, documents, links, videos, etc. to help people do the research they are looking for. We are not supporting a particular candidate and will try and remain neutral on the election of candidates. We will also indicate what was provided by the candidate themselves versus what we find and publish on the page.
You can view both district candidate pages we have put together here.
District 1-Candidates (This Page)
District 3-Candidates (Click Here)
UPDATE: We have emailed all Candidates from both Districts. As of 10/14/2020 we have only heard back from one candidate in District 1. The other two candidates have not declined to provide information or offered any information to be posted. We started posting information about each candidate that we find useful to the residents, good or bad.
Brian Tabatabai
Provided by Brian Tabatabai:
Thank you again for providing this resource.
Bio:
Brian Tabatabai and his wife, Celenia, chose to raise their son in West Covina because of its schools, beautiful neighborhoods, and vibrant community.
Raised in the San Gabriel Valley, Brian was active in sports and thrived academically. It was during his years at Walnut High School that Brian first became politically engaged. Mentored by outstanding educators and coaches, Brian would ultimately gain acceptance to UCLA. While at UCLA, Brian would emerge as a student leader involved in many student actions regarding equity and inclusion. Brian would also begin his long career as an educator, mentoring and tutoring students from South Los Angeles High Schools through the USC Med-Cor program. In 1999, Brian would graduate from UCLA with degrees in Political Science and History.
In 2000, Brian would begin his professional career as an elementary school teacher of students with special needs in Baldwin Park, while continuing his education at Cal Poly, Pomona. After three, wonderful years at Kenmore Elementary School, Brian would transfer to the El Monte Union High School District to pursue his other passion, coaching. While at El Monte High School, Brian would excel both in the classroom as an English and Social Science teacher, on the basketball court and on the football field, as the record breaking offensive coordinator during the school’s first football title in three decades and being named Coach of the Year. After a successful run, Brian would step away from coaching to obtain his Masters degree from Cal State Los Angeles and spend more time with his family, returning to coach youth sports and ultimately joining the coaching staff at Charter Oak High School.
Endorsements:
- Former Mayor, James Toma
- Former Mayor, Fred Sykes
- WCUSD Board Member, Dr. Rose Lopez
- CSULA Chair, Dr. Nana Lawson Bush
- VCOUSD Board Member, Jeanette FloresLocal
- Business Owner/District 1 Resident, Jesse O'Campo
- UCLA Professor/WC Resident, Dr. Elisa Perez-Luna
(Mr. Tabatabai also included some links to a few videos. We have provided those videos here. - WC Politics Editors)
Comments by WC Politics Editors:
Brian Tabatabai is a new resident to West Covina according to his comments he has only moved to the city about 5 years ago. He talks about why he moved here and the reasons he decided to put his name on the ballot. We have learned that he is a high school football coach and has coached at El Monte High School. He points out in social media and other avenues that he will be coaching at Charter Oak High School when the COVID shut downs are eliminated.
Mr. Tabatabai speaks fairly frequently at city council meetings and recently spends the first minute (rough estimate) talking about the original inhabitants of this area. While we are not sure if he is advocating for the relinquishing of our properties to award them back to the original inhabitants, we must continue to learn why he states this or is there a political benefit that this continued speech will provide. Based on social media posts, most people are stating they don't understand the purpose either and some are complaining about the "waste of time" that is used. To Mr. Tabatabai's defense, he does have the right to say anything he wants in his five minutes of public comment.
Mr. Tabatabai has been speaking to the council recently about defunding the police and also about the posting of booking photo's of arrested persons on the West Covina Police Department social media pages. He has advocated that there are more of people of his color of skin and less of those of other colors (using his words here or paraphrasing at least). This has been a topic that he has recently abandoned but we feel he is just finding other topics as most community activists usually do.
Mr. Tabatabai has been criticized about his "defunding the police" comments and has retracted some of that on social media and other outlets. An email was shown that he sent to the West Covina City Council where he openly advocated for the defunding of the police. While this topics is very polarizing we are going to leave this as we have written and leave you to get more info.
A group called "Change West Covina" has gotten behind Mr. Tabatabai and his campaign pretty solidly. That group is formed by some 17-21 year old's that got involved in the city after all of the protests about the passing of George Floyd in Minnesota. The involvement of this group of young people is not a problem unless there is more to this than we are aware of. It has been very apparent that the city council members have been trying to pander to this group at council meetings with Mayor Tony Wu basically begging some of the members to come speak at the public comment portion. We hope that we do not continue to see this.
Mr. Tabatabai is concerning to us for a couple of reason. The biggest one is his lack of time in the city. While that could also be a positive and he may have fresh ideas, he also lacks the knowledge of the city's history and what has happened in the city over the last several decades when it relates to developments and ordinances. We also can see where his stance on the "defund" part can be problematic when most of the residents seem to want to increase the presence of police officers in the community. His beliefs could go against that desire of residents.
Brian Gutierrez
Brian Gutierrez
Has not responded to our request for any information on this website.
Comments by WC Politics Editors:
Brian Gutierrez has ran for city council in the City of West Covina at least three times that we are aware of. Currently he is running for city council in district 1. However, in 2018 he ran for city council in district 2. And if you go back to 2015 he ran for city council then too. In 2015 the city was electing council members on a city wide election as district based elections were not put into place until 2017. We find the desire to be on the city council admirable but we have some serious concerns that he appears to have moved into the district 1 boundaries just to run for office. Mr. Gutierrez had lived at the district 2 address for quite some time and all of a sudden he moved to district 1 just before the nomination period. It does raise some serious concerns about his actual residence and ethics of running for office in a possibly false address. We are confident that if he is elected residents will scrutinize that fact with much vigor.
Mr. Gutierrez does not involve himself much in the city except for election time. He has been involved in the "Shop with a Cop" program and also with his former high school, Nogales High School. Brian uses the same pictures on all of his mailing for all of the years he has been trying to get elected. While many people have reused pictures, it appears that Mr. Gutierrez has nothing new in his playbook. At least other candidates have added newer pictures to the old ones in an effort to so current involvement. Also, he seems to like to post pictures of him with high profile celebrities. We are not sure what this has to do with his political dealings in West Covina but they appear in many of his mailings and handouts over the years.
We also do not find many instances of Mr. Gutierrez speaking at city council meetings on topics related to city issues. We have posted the little we have found. It appears that he only shows up to the city to run for office or speak on highly controversial issues. Nothing related to everyday issues or topics. He did serve on a state commission and to the best of our knowledge at this time is no longer serving on that commission. With all of his pictures of celebrities, he has posted pictures of him with President Obama and other high ranking Democratic politicians. We assume again that is to cater to specific type of voter. While we do not like this type of political pandering we understand that to be common in politics today.
We are concerned about Mr. Gutierrez as he had a very tough time at the Candidate Forum for district 1 on September 25, 2020. He seemed to read all of his answers for questions from prepared remarks in front of him. It did not seem that he could answer many questions from memory or knowledge of the topic being discussed. To add to this problem, many of his comments were very vague and lacked substance for the city. They sounded like a stump speech from a national or state level candidate. In our opinion he lacked the knowledge about the city and the intimate issues that are going on in this city. We did not need carefully written answers that sound like they were written for a Governor or Senator.
Lloyd Johnson
Lloyd Johnson
Has not responded to our request for any information on this website.
Comments by WC Politics Editors:
Lloyd Johnson is the incumbent for this city council seat. He is a Purple Heart recipient and a veteran of the Vietnam War. He has indicated that he was "Combat Wounded" during his service in Vietnam. We have no reason to question this and thank him for his service. He has been a active community volunteer and advocate for a couple of decades. Before being elected he was at council meetings very often advocating for residents.
Mr. Johnson ran for city council in 2013 and lost by only a couple of votes in a much watched campaign that ended up going to a recount at great personal expense. It was largely reported that he lost to Mike Spence, and that could be true since the couple votes separated the two candidates. But in reality he came in fourth for three seats (in 2013 it was a city wide election). He then placed his name on the ballot for 2015 and won the election to the term he is currently serving.
With Mr. Johnson you get some obvious experience that not many others can have. However, Mr. Johnson does have one problem that residents get frustrated about. He tends to "change his mind" a lot as a council member. There have been several occurrences where he has brought an issue back up to the council and changed his vote on the topic after it has been decided weeks, months or even years ago. This has caused many residents to be vocal at council meetings.
Where our concerns come into play are the recent events that Mr. Johnson has changed his mind again on the sale of alcohol at gas stations. We actually do not have a problem with this either way and do not see much concern with the sales. But many residents have spoken out against him on this and have pointed out a possible campaign donation to help change his mind. Mr. Johnson has stated that he was not swayed because of the contribution. We cannot say for sure that the allegation is true or even relevant.
Mr. Johnson also voted in favor of the 12% pay increases to the police in October 2019 and then abstained from the vote for the firefighters 12% pay increase. These raises have been proven to be unaffordable to the city and currently the city is fighting to stay out of bankruptcy.