Council hopeful misses chance

Newport Beach resident Jorge Lopez failed to come up with enough valid signatures to run for the District 2 City Council seat and will not be on the ballot in November.

Each candidate must have at least 20 signatures, but no more than 30, from registered voters within the district they are nominated. The Orange County Registrar of Voters determined that Lopez had only five valid signatures out of 29, with the majority of signatures coming from residents outside his district — including a couple from Costa Mesa — according to the City Clerk’s office.

“I waited to the last minute unfortunately, gave myself no room for error,” Lopez said. “I was pretty nervous, never done anything like this. If I would have handed it in one day earlier, I might have gotten it in.”

Lopez had filed papers to run for the District 2 seat, which is now held by incumbent Steve Rosansky. The nomination period for Newport Beach closed Friday, and since all incumbents filed their papers, the nomination period was not extended.

The news narrows what was once a three-person race down to one between Rosansky and Gloria Alkire. Alkire’s papers were authorized by the Registrar of Voters over the weekend.

In Costa Mesa, seven of the eight contenders who filed nomination papers were given the green light by the Registrar of Voters.

Only Chris Bunyan, who went through the process once before in 2006 when he ran for City Council, did not have his 20 required signatures verified Monday, but the city clerk’s office expects it will probably be done today.

The process of collecting signatures in Costa Mesa is simpler than Newport Beach because elections are not divided into districts. That means signatures are not required to come from particular neighborhoods.

Council hopefuls still have until 5 p.m. Wednesday to file papers because of an extension caused by incumbent Councilwoman Linda Dixon’s decision not to run. As of Monday evening, no one else had added their name to the list of candidates.

— Daniel Tedford and Alan Blank