Huntington Beach Councilmember Tony Strickland announced this week that he will run for state Senate in District 36, hoping to replace Sen. Janet Nguyen who is running for the OC Board of Supervisors.
“We are unbelievably on the wrong track in every category,” Strickland said when asked why he was running. “Gov. (Gavin) Newsom and this (Democrat) supermajority seem dead set on turning California into San Francisco, and families around the state don’t want to turn into San Francisco.”
Strickland, a Republican, has been in the state legislature before. He was an assemblymember from 1998 to 2004 and served a term in the state Senate from 2008 to 2012. He’s made unsuccessful bids to become the California State Controller and to serve in the U.S. Congress.
He said the state legislature’s Democrat supermajority has stifled growth in the state and there needs to be a different type of leadership.
“I think the leadership that I can provide will be the leadership that’s absolutely needed in Sacramento,” Strickland said.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates the state’s budget deficit for the next fiscal year beginning in July to be as much as $73 billion. Strickland said ways to address the gap include canceling the planned high-speed rail from Anaheim to San Francisco and ending “giveaways” to non-citizens. He called the current legislature the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of California.
Strickland was elected to the Huntington Beach City Council in 2022 with a united slate of conservatives candidates and served the first year as mayor. He pushed for the city to enact a voter ID policy, which the state this week sued the city over, to fight state laws to build more housing and to withdraw from the Orange County Power Authority.
Strickland believes Nguyen will win her race this fall to return to the Board of Supervisors. If she does win, Strickland said a special election would be held sometime in the spring of next year to fill the vacancy and he would run for that and in 2026.
Nguyen received 43.4% of the vote against four other candidates in the March primary for the First District race for county supervisor and advances to the November runoff with Frances Marquez, a member of the Cypress City Council.
The 36th Senate District includes communities along Orange County’s coast from San Clemente to Seal Beach. It also includes the cities of Fountain Valley, Westminster, Stanton, Garden Grove, Cypress and a small portion of Los Angeles County with Cerritos.
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