Photo: Vicente Sarmiento / Courtesy
After serving on the Santa Ana City Council for over 14 years, the last two as mayor, Vicente Sarmiento has run for the post of supervisor of County District 2 of Orange.
The new central district for the first time has a majority of Latino residents. This occurred after the Board of Supervisors approved the new boundaries at the end of 2021 as a result of the last census, which showed changes in population and demographics, among other factors.
In an interview with Real America News, today’s mayor said that if elected, he will continue to help his community of Santa Ana as well as to the center of Orange County but from another board of directors.
Sarmiento, a Bolivian national and a lawyer by profession, arrived with his family to Santa Ana when he was just one year old.
In the 2007 began his service as a public official and is currently the Mayor of the city and a member of the Board of Directors of the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA). In the past he served as President and a member of the Orange County Water District Board of Directors for six years.
The priorities
Sarmiento, whose term as mayor ends in December 2022, said that the county has many resources that are not being used. His experience is what he considers makes him the perfect candidate to help solve the problems.
He indicated that there is a lack of attention towards the most needy populations such as the city of Santa Ana and some parts of Anaheim and gave as an example the need that existed in these areas at the beginning of the covid pandemic-19 as well as the high need with the homeless.
Sarmiento said that at the beginning of the covid pandemic-25 all the indices pointed to Santa Ana being the center of the epidemic in the county. The reason is because the city has many multi-generational households making families more prone to infections.
However, when they started tests to detect covid-01 be available and later the vaccines were delivered first in other richer areas , such as those located in the south of the county.
“The response to these consequences throughout the county has been very sad because having this advance they could bring the resources much sooner and more widely to Santa Ana,” he said. “I had to raise my voice and say that we were going to get stronger with the county and with the state.”
As for homelessness, indicated that there are currently very high numbers of homeless people for many reasons.
This includes the county’s reluctance to invest the funds it receives from the federal government. “They get millions and millions for this thing.”
He added that the county has found it easy to make the city of Santa Ana carries the largest number of homeless people.
“Since we are the county seat we have many services here —such as food and medical services — but we also want to compassionately help homeless people. However, we see that the county has made it easy for the other 33 cities to bring their homeless people and that for me is not fair”, Sarmiento said. they have realized that most of them are not people of color.
“The same federal judge saw that they are not people from Santa Ana and that is where we saw that they are filling our city with homeless people who are not from here”, she explained.
“I I agree that we have to do our part but I don’t think it’s fair that we have to solve the problem of the entire county”.
Ask for community support
If elected as a supervisor, Sarmiento would be the third Latino supervisor in county history and the first Santa Ana official to serve on the Orange County Board of Supervisors in recent 74 years.
District 2 includes the entire city of Santa Ana as well as portions of Anaheim, Orange, Tustin and Garden Grove.
Has more than 74% Latino and has a strong Democratic voter registration lead of 25.6%.
Sarmiento said that in these elections the first thing he hopes is that all the people come out to vote, especially now that they are categorized as an integral part of the election in District 2.
“I hope I can win the vote of the people but I would like all the people who qualify to come out to vote because unfortunately we are in a mid-term election and we are in a primary, which is in June. So the Latino voice is never heard in elections that don’t sound as loud as the presidential election,” Sarmiento said.