SANTA ANA : Veteran Campaigners Crowd Council Race

If the candidates running for office look familiar to voters this year, that’s because they are. The field includes four current and former council members and several candidates who failed to win seats in earlier elections.

Engineer Gordon Bricken and retired businessman Harry K. Yamamoto, both former councilmen who served in the 1970s and early 1980s, are running for council again. Meanwhile, the mayoral race pits Councilman John Acosta as a dark horse candidate against incumbent Daniel H. Young.

Yamamoto said Wednesday that the city’s high crime rate is one major issue that has prompted his return.

“It’s gotten worse,” he said. “I firmly believe now that there are more people concerned about the crime rate because they are not going out at night. It’s going to get a lot worse if something isn’t done about it.”

Yamamoto served two full terms and another unexpired term in the 1970s before term limits forced him out of office.

Bricken, who stepped down after 10 years in 1984, said he decided to return to politics largely to become a peacemaker on the council and unite warring factions.

“Over the last eight years there has been created a kind of factionalism between the mayor’s group of people and other people,” he said. “There’s been a kind of lobbing of shells at each election and I think that that’s been terribly counterproductive.”

The races for other council seats also include repeat candidates who ran unsuccessfully in pervious elections, including attorney Glenn Mondo, transportation commissioner Lisa Mills and businessman Zeke Hernandez.

Vying for the Ward 1 slot are Mondo, businessman Henry Le, and business consultant Ted R. Moreno. The open Ward 3 seat attracted four candidates including Bricken, Mills, businesswoman Frances M. Williams and contractor John Michael Patterson. Business owner Thomas E. Lutz, title service representative Sean H. Mill, Hernandez and Yamamoto have all declared their candidacy for the Ward 5 seat.