Ahead of the November general election, the Southern California News Group compiled a list of questions to pose to the candidates who wish to represent you. You can find the full questionnaire below.

Name: Bobby Lapointe

Age: 41

Current job title: Retail Investor

Incumbent: No

Other political positions held: None

City where you reside: Orange

Campaign website or social media: Lapointe2026.com

Tell us what your No. 1 priority is for this office, should you be elected. (Please answer in 200 words or less.)

My top priority is making sure Orange County has a plan for less imported water, because our local supply depends on imported water too.

About two-thirds of the county’s water comes from the groundwater basin under north and central Orange County. That basin is managed, not unlimited. OCWD caps how much agencies may pump, currently at 85% of demand, and refilling it takes recycled water, captured storm flow, and purchased imported water. When imported supply tightens, both halves of our portfolio tighten together.

The rules on the Colorado River just changed. The seven basin states failed to agree, so in August the federal government imposed its own framework and issued guidelines covering only 2027 and 2028. The long-term allocation is unresolved, and the next MWDOC board will serve while it is decided.

MWDOC does not negotiate that alone, but it appoints four of Orange County’s representatives to Metropolitan’s board. Making sure Orange County is heard in that room is the most consequential thing this seat does.

What does this department do for citizens? What do you view as its most important role for residents, and why? (Please answer in 200 words or less.)

Most residents will never interact directly with the Municipal Water District of Orange County, yet its work affects something they depend upon every day. It is a low-visibility but high-impact position.

Its most important role is simple: When you turn on the tap, safe water should be there, and the bill should be one a family can absorb. Every dollar MWDOC spends flows through your local agency and onto your bill, so cost discipline isn’t separate from reliability; it’s a cornerstone of it. Achieving that requires more than technical expertise. A director must be a coalition builder.

Orange County’s water future depends on cooperation among local water agencies, cities, regional partners, state and federal governments, community stakeholders and people with competing priorities. No single agency can solve these challenges alone.

A director’s job is governance: listen to technical experts, scrutinize costs, ask difficult questions, build consensus where possible and advocate effectively for the people we represent.

Your neighbors may not be so familiar with this office on their ballot. How would you promote more general knowledge of the district and the importance of its work? (Please answer in 200 words or less.)

MWDOC has run one of Southern California’s oldest water education programs since 1973, reaching about 70,000 students a year. The district isn’t silent. But its outreach reaches children, while the people paying the bills and casting the votes are adults.

I’d close that gap three ways.

First, use the channel residents already open: their water bill. MWDOC doesn’t bill anyone directly, but its 27 member agencies do. A short annual insert saying where your water came from, what it cost, and what’s coming would reach nearly every household. Not only in English and Spanish, but in Vietnamese, Korean, and Chinese. Orange County is federally required to print ballots in those four languages. Water bills deserve the same standard.

Second, show up in person. City councils, chambers, and neighborhood groups all take public comment. A director who appears at 10 of those a year does more than any brochure.

Third, make the board’s own work legible. Agendas that explain items in ordinary language instead of acronyms, and rate changes explained before they take effect, not after.

And measure it. If outreach doesn’t change what residents can tell you about their water, it’s marketing, not education

What experiences and priorities do you bring to this role? What have you learned in prior leadership roles that makes you the person for the job? (Please answer in 200 words or less.)

I served as an Army Sergeant and deployed to Iraq. I learned leadership where failure was not hypothetical, where the job was to stay calm, make decisions with incomplete information, and the expectation to keep my team working when conditions turned bad.

Droughts, earthquakes, pipeline failures, and cyberattacks do not arrive on a convenient schedule. Plans that have never been stress-tested tend to be binders no one has opened.

My priorities are: First, treat cybersecurity as core infrastructure, not an IT line item. Water systems are a documented target. Second, plan honestly for a smaller Colorado River rather than assuming past allocations hold. Third, set policy on large industrial water users, including data centers, before that demand arrives.

I studied history and women and gender studies at Cal State Fullerton, shaping how I approach leadership. History teaches you to think beyond the next election, to ask what a decision will mean decades from now. Women and gender studies teaches you to ask an equally important question: Who is missing from the room, and who will bear the consequences of the decision? On a board that sets rates and makes infrastructure decisions affecting millions of people, both are practical skills.

What will you do to establish trust with your community that you will tackle this job well? (Please answer in 200 words or less.)

Trust is built by being specific and then being checkable.

I am not going to promise to lower your water bill. No single director controls rates, and a candidate who tells you otherwise is either misinformed or counting on you not to check.

What I can promise is how I will operate. I will explain my votes in public, in plain terms, before they are cast and not after. When I do not know something, I will say so and then go find out, rather than repeating staff language I do not understand. And I will show up where residents already are instead of waiting for them to find a board meeting in Fountain Valley.

I would rather be judged on a record than a slogan. If elected, I will publish what I said I would work on and report annually on whether I did it. That is an uncomfortable standard, which is the point.

What I bring is the Army’s discipline and leadership training, the foresight history teaches about decisions that outlast the people who make them, and the passion to build an argument and carry it into a room where it is not welcome.

Bonus question: What is the best book you’ve read this year? Explain why you found it compelling.

The best book I have read this year is “Let’s Call Her Barbie” by Renée Rosen.

It came to me through one of the book clubs I belong to, and it was exactly the kind of book I did not know I needed. I read a lot of heavy material. Policy, history, institutions, and long explanations of how things went wrong. This was joyful, but I still came away having learned something.

Rosen uses historical fiction to tell the story of Ruth Handler, Mattel, and the team that created Barbie. In the 1950s, when dolls marketed to girls largely encouraged them to imagine themselves as mothers, Handler pushed the radical idea of an adult woman doll who could represent a future instead. The book follows the resistance, personalities, arguments, and persistence behind what became one of the most recognizable toys in the world. Underneath all that pink, it is really a story about moving an organization that has already made up its mind, and about who gets listened to. Not a bad thing to read before running for a board seat.

You get a few looks reading a bright pink Barbie book in public as a grown man. By page 30, you stop noticing.