Garden Grove voters this November will choose three candidates from a lineup of 10 to represent Districts 1, 3 and 4.
Those elected to represent the three City Council districts will see the county’s fifth-largest city through a four-year term that could involve several developments, pressure to meet state housing mandates and lingering community concerns surrounding safety regarding GKN Aerospace.
We invited the candidates to answer questions about housing, city finances, transparency, and more, which you can read in our voter guide.
District 1
District 1 encompasses the westernmost portion of the city that’s bordered by the cities of Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Cypress, Stanton and Westminster and includes the commercial stretch of Valley View Boulevard.
District 1, or West Garden Grove, is also considered the city’s industrial core, which includes the Garden Grove Army Base, the OC Food Bank and various companies including GKN Aerospace, which, since the chemical scare in May, has been the center of ongoing community concerns.
With incumbent George Brietigam termed out, three candidates vie for the seat: Garden Grove Planning Commissioner Roger Flanders, urgent care doctor Long Tran Nguyen and William Zylla, a retired senior emergency trauma technician.
Flanders, who has served in several city positions, such as police officer, traffic commissioner and neighborhood improvement and conservation commissioner, said of the needs facing Garden Grove, “The city needs to cut costs and spend wisely as we have employee contracts coming up that we need to stay competitive with.”
“The biggest need is for the state and federal governments to stop mandating things that deplete our resources and diminish our quality of life,” Flanders said. Pivotal, he said, is supporting new hotel resorts.
“These combined projects will add significant revenue to the city to balance rising costs, pay off debts, and meet the needs of residents, which the city already does quite well,” he said.
Nguyen said in his campaign statement for the ballot that he “grew up in Garden Grove and attended GGUSD schools from elementary to high school.”
“Like in medicine, I believe taking a preventative approach toward our city’s issues, like our aging infrastructure and homelessness, can help prepare us for the problems of tomorrow,” he said in the statement, he did not respond to the voter guide. “I will continue supporting our local economy and work to revitalize the business community in key areas like the Valley View corridor and attract more investment.”
Zylla said “the biggest need Garden Grove faces right now is community resilience — both in our local economy and our emergency preparedness.”
He proposed turning “underperforming commercial spaces into thriving retail and dining hubs that keep tax dollars right here in our city,” investing in neighborhoods and essential services, and “immediately” bolstering emergency preparedness in light of the “wake-up call” from the chemical threat at GKN.
“I will push to expand community safety programs, including our CERT volunteer capabilities, and ensure first responders have the training and resources needed for industrial incidents,” he said. “We also have to establish strict local oversight to hold corporate facilities completely accountable so a crisis like this never happens again.”
District 3
Contenders for Garden Grove’s District 3 seat seek to represent the city’s central-most area that contains parts of Little Saigon — home to the largest population of Vietnamese outside of Vietnam and hundreds of small businesses — and Orange County Koreatown, a two-mile stretch along Garden Grove Boulevard.
Amanda Nguyen, a senior paralegal at Orange County Alternate Public Defender; media businessman Thomas Quoc Thai Nguyen; and incumbent and engineer Cindy Ngoc Tran are asking District 3 voters for that responsibility.
Amanda Nguyen and Thomas Quoc Thai Nguyen named uplifting public safety as one of Garden Grove’s most pressing needs.
“Residents I talk to, across every part of District 3, tell me the same thing: they want to see officers in their neighborhoods, faster response times, and a city that takes public safety seriously as a budget priority, not an afterthought,” Amanda Nguyen said, adding her support for a “data-driven staffing study” that would inform a funded plan to support “competitive pay and retention incentives” for the city’s police officers.
“Public safety and accountability are not in conflict. I support independent oversight that gives residents confidence that when something goes wrong, it gets investigated fairly,” she said. “A safe Garden Grove and an accountable Garden Grove are the same goal, and I will not choose one over the other.”
Along with public safety, Thomas Quoc Thai Nguyen emphasized “quality of life” issues in infrastructure and commercial revitalization and mentioned the chemical incident at GKN and the need to improve industrial safety.
He named several issues challenging Garden Grove, including rising housing costs, scarcity in affordable housing, local demographics shifting “toward a younger unhoused population with fentanyl abuse,” homelessness and proposed the city “implement rigorous, independent safety audits for all high-risk facilities operating near neighborhoods and local schools.”
Tran, in her bid for a second term, said “homelessness and affordable housing remain the most pressing challenges for Garden Grove.”
“For homelessness, Garden Grove city is working with county and state to find more options of helping individuals exiting the Central Cities Navigation Center to long-term housing,” she said.
Developed jointly and opened in 2024 by the cities of Garden Grove, Westminster, and Fountain Valley, the Central Cities Navigation Center on West Street is a transitional shelter with some 85 beds.
“For affordable housing, the city needs to provide more incentives to encourage builders with providing more affordable units to low-income families, senior, and vulnerable populations,” Tran said.
District 4
Incumbent Joe DoVinh is running for a second term against Patrick Phat Bui, a business owner and nonprofit chairman who has previously served two terms on the council; Amanda Mohr, a student and astrophysicist; and principal consultant Hieu Nguyen.
District 4 in south Garden Grove includes parts of Little Saigon and the city’s Historical Main Street.
“Garden Grove’s three most pressing challenges are public safety, fiscal responsibility, and homelessness,” Bui said, adding if elected for a third go in office, he’d “make fully staffing GGPD a top priority and ensure officers have the technology, training, and resources needed to reduce vehicle thefts, robberies, and other crimes.”
Bui, in his proposal to create new jobs and boost local investment and economy, said he would “oppose any new taxes or fee increases and insist that taxpayer dollars be spent responsibly.”
He also named homelessness as a growing issue in the city, and said he’d “enforce city laws to remove illegal encampments from parks, commercial areas, and neighborhoods, while holding homeless programs accountable through measurable outcomes. “
DoVinh said maintaining a balanced budget so as to not tap into the city’s reserves is a priority.
“This means that our resources have to be watched closely and we have to maintain a high level of service for minimal cost. Wasteful ordinances and resolutions must be limited, and every contract should be open and competitive,” he said.
About city finances, he also said, “We must be fiscally conservative and continue to develop tourism-related hotels to generate TOT revenue as well as attract international and institutional investors.”
Mohr, a mechanical engineering graduate student from Johns Hopkins University and an astrophysics graduate from UC Santa Cruz, said, “I have built my career on analyzing complex problems, designing efficient systems, and delivering results through research and collaboration,” and she plans to apply those skills when serving the city her family has lived in since 1974.
“These skills translate to improving city infrastructure, creating a faster, more reliable, and more affordable public transportation system that gives residents mobility while reducing dependence on rising gas costs,” she said in her campaign statement for the ballot. She did not respond to the voter guide. “I am equally committed to establishing a no-kill humane society that protects companion animals while lowering long-term animal care costs through efficient operations, partnerships, and responsible planning.”
Nguyen said, “The biggest challenge our city faces is the affordability crisis and rising cost of living.”
“That is why my top priority on City Council is to strengthen city services to meet the needs of residents and make Garden Grove more affordable to live and raise our families in,” he said, emphasizing his support for public programming and city services.
“Further, we need more affordable housing supply to support the growing need from our community,” Nguyen said. “Paired with smart development, we can build a city that works for everyone and is sustainable for generations to come.”
Read more of the voter guide, including what the candidates said would make them good leaders and how they would represent the city’s diverse community at ocregister.com/voter-guide.
Ballots may be returned by mail (must be postmarked by Nov. 3 and received within a week of Election Day) or to the OC Registrar of Voters’ drop boxes around town now, and the first vote centers will open for casting ballots in person on Oct. 24.