Isaac Wang
Isaac Wang ran for election to the San Diego City Council to represent District 5 in California. He lost in the primary on March 3, 2020.
Wang completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Isaac Wang earned a bachelor's degree in public policy from Duke University in 2009. Wang served in the United States Navy on active duty from 2010 to 2014. As of February 2020, Wang had served in the U.S. Navy Reserve since 2014. His career experience includes working as a military officer, urban planner, and as a tech entrepreneur.[1]
Elections
2020
See also: City elections in San Diego, California (2020)
General election
General election for San Diego City Council District 5
Marni von Wilpert defeated Joe Leventhal in the general election for San Diego City Council District 5 on November 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Marni von Wilpert (Nonpartisan) | 53.2 | 43,630 |
| Joe Leventhal (Nonpartisan) | 46.8 | 38,308 | ||
| Total votes: 81,938 | |||
 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Nonpartisan primary election
Nonpartisan primary for San Diego City Council District 5
Marni von Wilpert and Joe Leventhal defeated Isaac Wang and Simon Moghadam in the primary for San Diego City Council District 5 on March 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Marni von Wilpert (Nonpartisan) | 39.8 | 18,084 |
| ✔ | Joe Leventhal (Nonpartisan) | 36.9 | 16,778 | |
 | Isaac Wang (Nonpartisan) | 19.3 | 8,764 | |
| Simon Moghadam (Nonpartisan) | 4.0 | 1,836 | ||
| Total votes: 45,462 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Campaign themes
2020
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Isaac Wang completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Wang's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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I served active duty as a Surface Warfare Officer for 4 years and currently still in the Reserves (5+ years).
I loved reading about cities so I got a certificate in Urban Planning + Design at Harvard Graduate School of Design, and I went on to work at a local firm doing street design. I also serve on the Kearny Mesa Planning Group to help shape the future of Convoy District.
I now run a tech startup that produces geo-spatial analysis and data visualization software for political campaigns.
I firmly believe we need to re-think how we design our physical, digital, and civic infrastructure.
Our current process is broken because we have a flawed design methodology that doesn't follow the principles of Human-Centered Design. Other fields call this "Design-Thinking" or "Agile".
Whether we're building software, streets, or communities, we need to design from the lens of solving the end-user's problems. Too many people follow a checklist of requirements generated from top-down leadership without ever asking for user input, nor do they continue to iterate and improve on a product with new feedback.
Voting and Civic Engagement is the feedback loop for our democracy. Local governments need to modernize their design process, and we need citizens like yourself to participate in the feedback loop.
Join the Urban Reformation. ( www.isaac.vote )- Urban Planning: "Build cities for Humans, not cars." This simple mindset shift will change how you view topics like land-use, housing, transportation, parking, public spaces, and a variety of urban issues.
- Digital Modernization of Government: "The two biggest levers for improving people's lives at scale are technology and government." Putting those two together will be of profound importance in the 21st century. Improving digital delivery of government services, data infrastructure, UX/UI, and creating feedback loops will make interactions with government much more efficient and user-friendly.
- Design for Civic Engagement: "People want to participate, they just don't know how." Our current community input process are convoluted, slow, and not inclusive. People have to feel that their input matters; otherwise, they won't engage. We need to design for collaboration, openness, speed, and inclusion.
Civic Technology (Design, UX/UI, Procurement Reform, Crowdsourcing Ideas, Usability Testing)
Electoral Reform: (Ranked Choice Voting, Democracy Dollars, Reducing power of Special Interests, Improving Voter Registration)
With cities you get access to jobs, services, knowledge, culture, and collaboration.
Our urban form and our transportation system facilitates these connections.
If we don't get our transit, housing, job centers, and shared public spaces to work correctly, we lose opportunities and waste our potential.
City Council gets to shape the urban form and the transportation system that facilitates connectivity.
We need to be focused on solving problems.
I believe political campaigns need to be driven by substance and great ideas.
I'm not fan of viewing politics like sports teams. The "I win, You lose" mindset is toxic.
It's a disservice to the American people.
I plan to be a problem solver on City Council, driven by data and best practices.
I'm not here to play the Democratic or Republican Party's partisan culture wars.
By Charles Marohn Jr.
Read anything on the concept of Design Thinking.
Below is the reading list from Stanford University's Design school.
Our movement begins with a single question: What is our relationship with government?
When I explore the different personal relationships in my life - wife, son, parents, God, friends, community - I find a recurring theme:
Successful relationships require a model built on RECIPROCATED LOVE.
Sustainable, healthy relationships are rarely transactional correspondences.
The best relationships are ones where both sides get to know each other and ENGAGE with each other.
I am deeply concerned about our relationship with government in this country.
Our status quo is: I begrudgingly pay taxes and only interact with government when absolutely necessary.
Our aspiration is: I maintain stewardship of my community, organize for causes I care about, and build the future I wish to see.
If our social contract with government is "I pay taxes; therefore, I demand effective government", then we're missing the point.
Governments are not Vending Machines.
Elected officials should get to know their people, and people should pass their concerns to their elected officials. This is done through civic engagement. Input from citizens is used by elected officials to make better policy.
In tech, this known as Feedback Loops. We take user input and go through rapidly iterative processes of: Design, Build, Test, Learn...repeat...
In democracy, we know this as: SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER.
Speaking the truth to the people in power
But how do we get there?
Most people want to engage with government, but they don't know how.
Most elected officials want to get constructive feedback from citizens, but they don't know how.
The lazy person's analysis is that our society is apathetic, and our culture is to blame.
But my core belief is that "civic engagement" is a function of design.
1 Shape the destiny of the city through improving connectivity in physical, digital, and civic infrastructure
2. Serve the needs of your constituents. Facilitate a functioning feedback loop.
Our current relationship with local government is broken.
Right now, there's little to no intentional design within San Diego to activate civic engagement and bolster the feedback loops of democracy.
I'm going to need your help.
Citizen-centric design is a movement that requires people like you.
In order to fundamentally transform our relationship, we have to design for civic engagement to achieve a true PARTICIPATORY GOVERNMENT.
I've outlined 21 policy ideas to improve our physical, digital, and civic infrastructure:
2. I want San Diego to become a medium-sized city of international importance like San Francisco, Boston, DC, and Seattle. Our leadership has not made the investments in our urban form to facilitate that. San Diego is no longer a sleepy beach town for military folks and retirees.
3. I want Asian-Americans to feel valued and have a voice in local government. We currently do not.
2. Falling off a moped while carrying 2 jugs of water.
- BE confident. Look sharp.
- Memorize the Menu. Know what you're talking about. Know how to present it.
- Make no wasted trips. That's the key to multi-tasking.
- Earn everything.
As an adult, I best resonate with Deadpool and Magneto.
I think everyone thinks they're the hero in their own narrative.
At best, I'm a complex anti-hero.
At worst, I'm an anti-villain.
If you're looking for a silver-tongued politician, I am not your man.
35000 people die a year in the US from car-related fatalities. We can make streets much safer through simple changes.
Traffic calming measures, stop signs, roundabouts, flashing crosswalks, etc.
If you want a City Council candidate to be driven by data and best practices, you pick someone who understands city planning.
1. Pick someone who understands cities. (Land-use, zoning, housing, transportation, parking). Urban planning knowledge matters.
We don't really have significant power over culture war issues.
2. Leadership experience. You learn to lead by leading. I led a division of 40 people at the age of 23 as an officer of the United States Navy. I've managed projects and programs with teams of people. On City Council, you manage a team of people to get stuff done and serve your community. Communication and execution are incredibly important, and I've found that to be sorely lacking in many industries. There's a reason why corporations hire military folks to lead, despite a lack of industry knowledge.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2020 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on February 17, 2020
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