Betty Martinez Franco makes history as first Latina elected to the Irvine City Council
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The balance of power on the Irvine City Council is poised to shift when Betty Martinez Franco takes her seat next month.
The District 5 seat opened up when Larry Agran successfully ran for mayor in November while on the council. Martinez Franco, a Democrat, took an early lead in the April 15 special election — and never looked back. She won roughly 49% of the vote with former Irvine City Councilmember Anthony Kuo, a Republican, placing second with 41.5%.
“As a woman, as a minority, and as a person that was always told that there’s no chance that I could win a race in Irvine, I thought that I needed to be extra prepared,” Martinez Franco said. “I pledged to run the first opportunity that I got, and that first opportunity was the special election.”
Martinez Franco, who said she will be the first Latina ever seated on the City Council, has a backstory not common to most local politicians.
She immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico without authorization. She is a domestic violence survivor, raised her two daughters as a single mother and worked as a housekeeper at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel when it first opened in 2001.
Martinez Franco originally moved to a Section 8 apartment in Irvine more than 20 years ago with the help of Human Options, an Irvine-based nonprofit that works with domestic violence survivors. In 2016, she became a U.S. citizen.
Later on, the pandemic and its unequal strain on the Latino community motivated her to enroll at USC, where she earned a master’s degree in public administration. She got involved locally by serving on Irvine’s diversity, equity and inclusion committee.
“I have more in common with people that live here,” said Martinez Franco. “I am the same as any other person from any other ethnicity with the same experiences, and I think that’s what I can offer to my community.”
Jessie Lopez and Johnathan Hernandez, a pair of progressives from Santa Ana City Council, seek to push the heavily Latino Democrat district to the left as they have now entered the race.
As Irvine makes its full transition to single-member districts, residents in District 5 did not have the opportunity to elect their own council member until the special election.
Straddling both sides of the 405 Freeway, the district leans Democrat. According to Orange County Registrar of Voters data, 40% of registered voters are Democrat while 26% are Republicans and 28% are independents.
The district is 63% white, 14% Latino and 17% Asian American and Pacific Islander.
“We had no track record for what an election would look like for that district,” said Lauren Johnson-Norris, executive vice chair of the Democratic Party of Orange County. “Now we have a definitive answer about what the voters care about and want.”
A lawsuit and big spending characterized the contentious special election.
Former council member Tammy Kim, also a Democrat, dropped out of the race to settle a suit brought forth by Ron Scolesdang that challenged her eligibility based on residency requirements.
In the aftermath, Kuo outraised Martinez Franco on individual campaign contributions by more than $10,000. Independent expenditures, which are not coordinated with respective campaigns, also swayed heavily in support of Kuo.
Lincoln Club of Orange County PACs spent more than $75,000 for the race. Another PAC funded by fast-food franchises spent $66,500.
The six-figure spending sum did not deter Martinez Franco.
“If I only knock on enough doors, if I only talk to enough people, those are the people that are going to vote for me, not money,” she said.
Unite Here Local 11, a hotel workers union, spent an estimated $25,000 in support of Martinez Franco’s campaign.
Even though the City Council is nonpartisan, the race took partisan overtones, especially when a mailer paid for by the 1962 PAC of the Lincoln Club of Orange County featured Kuo pictured between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
The mailer suggested “liberals win if conservatives don’t vote” and that Kuo would rid Irvine City Hall of “waste, fraud and abuse.”
Johnson-Norris, a District 5 voter, claimed the mailer was a huge mistake.
“Why they thought the mailer was going to help, I don’t know,” she said. “There’s no chance it did, especially in this district at this time.”
With Martinez Franco set to become Irvine’s fifth Democrat on its seven-member council, the local party is hopeful her victory can spur a number of key policy objectives, from passing a climate action plan to strengthening hotel worker protections.
Irvine’s move to potentially withdraw from the Orange County Power Authority this year paused a revised climate action plan draft. On Tuesday, the City Council declined to vote on approving the plan, further delaying action on it.
In January, the council voted 4-2 to strip double pay for heavy workloads from a hotel worker law first passed in 2022.
Having worked as a housekeeper before, Martinez Franco is supportive of revisiting the law.
“I know the struggles that housekeepers go through,” she said. “They deserve better protections.”
Affordable housing, traffic congestion, parks, libraries and environmentalism are other top priorities.
A factor in how a climate action plan goes forward, Irvine is poised to withdraw from the Orange County Power Authority sometime this year.
Once sworn in, Martinez Franco wants to talk to OCPA and see what they have done, in particular, for low-income communities to meet their clean energy needs at affordable prices.
Before getting to work on the City Council, she hopes that her election stands as an example, one that already inspired a UC Irvine student to consider a future in electoral politics along the campaign trail, a moment Martinez Franco called a “dream.”
Latinas have proven to be an emerging force in Orange County politics, with more candidates running for office in recent years than ever before. Next month, Irvine joins the political trend.
“You have the right to run in a city that you love,” Martinez Franco said. “If you’re going to do better for your community, if you have the passion, nothing can stop you.”
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