{"id":270817,"date":"2026-04-16T14:21:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T14:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/270817\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T14:21:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T14:21:10","slug":"katrina-foley-for-orange-countys-5th-district-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/270817\/","title":{"rendered":"Katrina Foley for Orange County\u2019s 5th District \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Orange County Board of Supervisors race for the 5th\u00a0district, which represents Aliso Viejo, Costa Mesa\u00a0and\u00a0several coastal cities, pits incumbent Democrat Katrina Foley against Republican Assembly member Diane Dixon. (There\u2019s also a longshot independent candidate, educator Lucy Vellema.) Supervisor races are officially nonpartisan, but this race pits high-profile candidates from both parties in a district with a\u00a0Republican lean<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Foley first won a seat in the 2nd District in 2021 after Michelle Steel was elected to Congress. We had endorsed Republican John Moorlach because of his history as a financial watchdog at the county and in the state Capitol and defended him against unfair union attacks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2022, Foley faced off against Republican Pat Bates<\/a>, a well-respected political veteran, in the general election in the redrawn 5th\u00a0District. We praised Foley for her \u201cyeoman\u2019s work battling board secrecy,\u201d but were dismayed by her coziness with the public-employee unions and endorsed Bates.<\/p>\n

So here we are again, with both parties vying for a board majority.<\/p>\n

Dixon<\/a>\u00a0won her Assembly seat in 2022 and was re-elected in 2024. She isn\u2019t termed out and had an easy path to another term, but decided to run for supervisor. She has been a capable and sensible conservative legislator. We\u00a0endorsed<\/a>\u00a0her in both of her races.<\/p>\n

In this race, however, we offer our hearty endorsement to Foley. We\u2019ve had a chance to watch her for five years and she has acted exactly as she\u2019s described herself: an anti-tax-increase Democrat with a mastery of the details and a penchant for\u00a0transparency<\/a>. Unlike in the Legislature, county boards tend to operate in a bipartisan manner handling the nuts-and-bolts of managing a large budget.<\/p>\n

One of the core underappreciated aspects of board governance is transparency, especially after a COVID\u00a0bribery scandal<\/a>\u00a0last year sent former board member Andrew Do to prison. The transparency issue also became important after the board embarrassed itself by quietly boosting board members\u2019 pay by 25% \u2014\u00a0with Foley being the only member opposed.\u00a0Foley has been the one board member who has forthrightly stood up for oversight and accountability\u00a0on every key issue. She almost always is the board\u2019s designated adult\u2014 a thankless but critical role.<\/p>\n

We believe Dixon would be a capable supervisor and would get up to speed, but we know exactly how Foley has operated. She always\u00a0defends the public\u2019s right to know,\u00a0and knows the\u00a0details<\/a> of county governance. That matters.<\/p>\n

We much prefer Foley\u2019s approach to housing than Dixon\u2019s. Foley is committed to permitting more housing, by reducing the bureaucratic hurdles and, most important, to jumpstart the construction of market-rate housing. Dixon focuses on \u201clocal control\u201d and is committed to fighting Sacramento mandates. However, most of the recent\u00a0\u201cmandates\u201d<\/a>\u00a0are deregulatory in nature, so we fear her approach would mirror those of anti-housing activists.<\/p>\n

Our main disagreement with Foley has been her reflexive support for public-employee unions. However, Dixon praised Jerry Brown for his pension-reform law, but recently voted in favor of a\u00a0bill<\/a> that would gut those reforms. She, too, touted herself as an advocate for public-safety unions, and offered this unusually poor answer when asked about her vote for Assembly Bill 1383: \u201cI could take a stand for the right thing, but they are really powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n

With that issue a wash, we find that Foley rises to the top on almost everything else. We urge a vote for\u00a0Katrina Foley<\/a>\u00a0in the 5th\u00a0District.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Orange County Board of Supervisors race for the 5th\u00a0district, which represents Aliso Viejo, Costa Mesa\u00a0and\u00a0several coastal cities,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,1965,9198,975],"class_list":{"0":"post-270817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-editorials","12":"tag-endorsements","13":"tag-opinion"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}