Juan Ovalle
From Ballotpedia
This page was current at the end of the individual's last campaign covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.
Juan Ovalle ran for election to the Long Beach City Council to represent District 8 in California. He lost in the primary on March 3, 2020.
Ovalle completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Juan Ovalle was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala. He pursued his undergraduate education at Long Beach City College and California State University, Long Beach, and his graduate education at California State University, Long Beach. His career experience includes working as the owner and manager of residential housing in the Los Angeles area. [1]
Elections
2020
See also: City elections in Long Beach, California (2020)
General election
General election for Long Beach City Council District 8
Incumbent Al Austin defeated Tunua Thrash-Ntuk in the general election for Long Beach City Council District 8 on November 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Al Austin (Nonpartisan) | 56.8 | 10,839 |
 | Tunua Thrash-Ntuk (Nonpartisan) | 43.2 | 8,253 | |
| Total votes: 19,092 | |||
 = 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 Long Beach City Council District 8
Tunua Thrash-Ntuk and incumbent Al Austin defeated Juan Ovalle in the primary for Long Beach City Council District 8 on March 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Tunua Thrash-Ntuk (Nonpartisan) | 38.0 | 3,585 |
| ✔ | | Al Austin (Nonpartisan) | 31.7 | 2,995 |
 | Juan Ovalle (Nonpartisan) | 30.3 | 2,854 | |
| Total votes: 9,434 | |||
| = 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
Juan Ovalle completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Ovalle'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 feel that my story is a tale of the American Dream right here in our western Long Beach. As immigrants, my parents had to work hard to make ends meet. I still remember helping my mother clean houses in the neighborhood I now call home and watching how hard my parents struggled. Nonetheless, they persevered, and all five kids went on to college and greater opportunity in life.
I graduated from Long Beach State with a degree in political science/public administration, and went on to work for 15-years at Long Beach Water Dept. as an administrative analyst, before transitioning to work in the private sector and eventually to my current career, a full-time housing provider.
Now the hard-won nest eggs of so many, are under threat from irresponsible budgeting, forcing us to pay some of the highest local taxes in America. And all the while, we lack sufficient public investment and services, from our parks to public safety, while failing to address our massive liabilities.
I made the decision to run for office to help protect those who have invested their life savings in Long Beach, and help improve the inequality we see around us. It's time for change!- Restore: We must immediately and fully restore the 200 sworn officers deficit, cut from our LBPD budget during the recession, including the Field -Gang Unit, to protect our residents from gang violence, vandalism, and rising burglaries. We must make the immediate reopening of our Fire Station No. 9 our highest priority. The sudden and poorly explained closure of Fire Station 9 is a true scandal and an urgent, extreme public safety emergency.
- Oppose: We must oppose tax increases by reforming our City Budget top to bottom. Currently it is shot through with special interests-driven (i.e. those big money organized interest groups) wasteful spending. It is truly a crime the way-in a city with the most amazing revenue assets (longstanding publicly-owned money generating assets like our global port, our tideland and upland oil extraction revenue, our airport, our convention center, and our occupancy tax-paying hotels)-City Hall always pleads poverty when residents ask why their parks aren't maintained, their infrastructure like streets and public safety buildings are crumbling, and there are not even enough police to patrol the streets (nearly 20% less than we had in the 90s!).
- Increase: We must increase focus on Environmental Health and Safety along the 710 corridor (a.k.a. the "Diesel Death Zone") by addressing port, freeway, and refinery-related emissions. Residents along this entire corridor, including the 8th District, suffer disproportionately from asthma and other lung problems, heart disease, and various forms of cancer.
GOVERNMENTAL REFORM & ACCOUNTABILITY: We must end special interest influence and make city government less arrogant, more accountable, and more transparent. The influence of special interest power brokers is apparent in all aspects of City government when one looks beneath the surface, and it has resulted in gross inefficiency and wasted resources. We must always remind ourselves of our most basic civic declaration, that GOVERNMENT IS OF, BY, AND FOR THE PEOPLE!
Our highest reform priorities should include:
• revising the new "Ethics Commission" to provide true investigatory powers, and the power to hire outside investigators independent of city management,• and hiring an outside auditor to review City finances and waste
• adopting on a local level the principles of the national political reform organization Represent.Us, as elaborated in its proposed American Anti-Corruption Act
• catching Long Beach up with the City of Los Angeles's new 6:1 matching funds rate
• ending all campaign cash transfers
• restoring officeholder accounts to the original limits placed on them in the Long Beach Campaign Reform Act (1994),
• greatly improving the usability of the public campaign finance portal on the City Clerk's web page, perhaps similar to OpenSecrets.org,
• immediately ending the practice of City funded mailers in support of ballot measure campaigns, unless equal space is given to the authorized opponents of the ballot measures,
I look up to my father and mother, the reason why we came to this country was not an easy decision, but one that my father had to make in order to stay alive. My father was a very ethical person a person that almost gave his life to protect others and address issues of corruption in the country of his birth. He was threatened and given up for dead, in a ravine, he survived and made the decision to move his family to America to provide all of his children a better future. My parents where very hard working with an ethical backbone that carried us through the tough times and eventually to realizing their American Dream to see their five children succeed in our respective careers.
My parents are my heroes and their example of hard work, education, humility, living life to its fullest and being exemplary citizens is what I will always follow. My family owes our freedom and our life to my wonderful parents, they gave much for us as we hope to give for our children and others along the way.
My parents are my heroes and their example of hard work, education, humility, living life to its fullest and being exemplary citizens is what I will always follow. My family owes our freedom and our life to my wonderful parents, they gave much for us as we hope to give for our children and others along the way.
https://represent.us/anticorruption-act/
"Fiscal Therapy" by William G. Gale
"Fiscal Therapy" by William G. Gale
Ethical, Accountable, Responsible
Team Builder, Ethical, Responsible, Accountable
A city council is an elected legislative body of the City of Long Beach. The city council's ability to determine city government, administration policies, as well as adopting budgets and legislation. In addition making progress is very closely related to the council's ability to provide direction to the city manager and staff. That direction will be determined by the needs of my residents, small business entrepreneurs and not special interest.
Restoring our local democratic process, ending the hold special interest influence has on our political process, and make city government less arrogant, more accountable, and more transparent. The influence of special interest power brokers is apparent in all aspects of City government when one looks beneath the surface, and it has resulted in gross inefficiency and wasted resources. We must always remind ourselves of our most basic civic declaration, that GOVERNMENT IS OF, BY, AND FOR THE PEOPLE!
The first historical event that happened in my life was moving to the USA at the age of two and eventually settling in Long Beach. I fondly remember my the childhood friends I made along the way, some of whom live only a block or two away and others across town and attending my first Kindergarten class at Lafayette Elementary School.
I had a number of odd jobs as a kid and young man, from helping my father and mother doing handyman jobs, to cleaning houses, cutting neighbors lawns to painting homes. My very first real job was a part time job for Long Beach City College as a Peer Advisor, assigned to work at the Houghton Park Community Center in North Long Beach and at Centro de La Raza on Anaheim St. My role was to encourage other youth and adults to attend Long Beach City College and set up appointments with a college counselor. I worked in this position for a couple of years, it gave me the opportunity to meet great people and hopefully I gave someone the nudge needed to go to college. To this date, over thirty years later, I still call some of the people I met my friends and seek their advice even for this campaign.
100 years of solitude - I often felt that many of the scenes where those of the stories my mother and father would talk to me about from their childhood back in Guatemala. It was such an amazing book that took you from just being a reader to entering a new world. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is an amazing writer I recommend it to everyone that loves a fabulous novel.
I love horses and the life my grandparents lived as ranchers. I guess I sometimes see myself as a cowboy or vaquero.
Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony #5
Public Speaking.
Only when individual council member desires are "elevated" to a policy or program supported by all or at least a majority of the city council can one's own agenda be realized. Unfortunately, there are many forces at work making unity and a team approach difficult for a city council to achieve. Therefore, city council-directed goals process resulting in a council-adopted goals statement can be very helpful in clarifying its priorities to the staff and community as a whole.
The responsibilities of a city council member generally involve determining city government and administration policies, as well as adopting budgets and legislation. Therefore, it is extremely important that we end special interest influence and increase community engagement and restore the democratic principals including.
The responsibilities of a city council member generally involve determining city government and administration policies, as well as adopting budgets and legislation. Therefore, it is extremely important that we end special interest influence and increase community engagement and restore the democratic principals including.
Beside some of the common qualifications to become a city council member, that you be at least 18 years old and have resided in the community for a specified period time and or be bared from serving if the candidate has a felony conviction or any bribery or fraud-related conviction. I believe the candidate must have a desire to serve the community, have aspirations for a better society, to be an advocate of the democratic principles.
The aspiring candidate must also understand the responsibility the position holds and that the decisions made as a Council Member may affect all of our City. Having experience in government work such as an engineer, technician, accountant, manager or analyst may be of help in navigating the City, Having experience in government politics, may not be necessarily beneficial. On the contrary, we often need new blood in government, that is why we need term limits and provide folks the opportunity to run for office in order to continue to refresh ideas and inject new energy in local and national government. The following site also has some great ideas: https://represent.us/anticorruption-act/.
The aspiring candidate must also understand the responsibility the position holds and that the decisions made as a Council Member may affect all of our City. Having experience in government work such as an engineer, technician, accountant, manager or analyst may be of help in navigating the City, Having experience in government politics, may not be necessarily beneficial. On the contrary, we often need new blood in government, that is why we need term limits and provide folks the opportunity to run for office in order to continue to refresh ideas and inject new energy in local and national government. The following site also has some great ideas: https://represent.us/anticorruption-act/.
Ethical, Accountable, Responsible
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 19, 2020
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