Endorsed by the Orange County Register and tax-fighting organizations, Republican Sen. Bates will be facing former Costa Mesa Democrat Mayor Foley, who has secured union backing and the support of Planned Parenthood.
This past year, redistricting across California has redrawn district boundaries, moving sitting elected officials into new territories. Such is the case with the Orange County Board of Supervisors’ 5th District seat, which now includes Laguna Beach. Though currently serving as 2nd District Supervisor, Democrat Katrina Foley is now running for 5th District Supervisor against Republican State Senate Minority Leader Pat Bates.
Senator Bates was the first mayor of Laguna Niguel and previously served as the 5th District Supervisor from 2007-2014. Since then has been elected to California’s 73rd State Assembly District and California’s 36th State Senate. Though she has a wide range of political experience, Sen. Bates has shared that she actually fell into politics after her time as a social worker in Los Angeles revealed to her how she thought the government had shortcomings, and how she wanted to change that.
“I was engaged with government as a bureaucrat, and I had a jaundiced view of government programs because they were not helping people move out of poverty,” she shared in an interview with her alma mater, Occidental College’s OXY magazine in 2018. “My interest in government probably was to be a reformer, if anything, and that isn’t always what you need to do when you’re a housewife and a mom.”
While serving as a state senator, Sen. Bates has authored and sponsored legislation geared toward protecting victims of violent crimes, curbing opioid addiction, and preventing mismanagement of tax dollars.
Supervisor Katrina Foley comes from similar political beginnings, as she was Costa Mesa’s first directly elected mayor in 2018. While Mayor, Supervisor Foley unsuccessfully ran for California’s 37th State Senate District and then pivoted to run as the Democrat in the March 2021 special election for Orange County Board of Supervisors Second District after Congresswoman Michelle Steel (CD-45) vacated her seat.
“I ran on a platform of recovering from COVID, particularly getting this vaccine distributed in a more efficient manner so we could get back to our normal lives – I think that is what people want overwhelmingly,” Supervisor Foley said in the Orange County Register after her election which flipped a longtime Republican seat blue.
Supervisor Foley has rounded up endorsements from many labor unions, the Democratic Party of Orange County, and Planned Parenthood. Senator Bates, running on a platform of having been “Orange County’s proven taxfighter,” has been endorsed by the Orange County Register, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association PAC, and the California Congress of Republicans OC.
In the primary election, Foley received 37% of the vote and Bates received 19.7% of the vote, but two other Republicans split the rest of the vote 16.4% and 15.5%. In November’s general election, no other candidates will be in the running as Foley and Bates go head to head.
