Larry Agran

Lawrence Alan Agran (born February 2, 1945) is an American lawyer and the former mayor and a current city councilmember of Irvine, California.

In May 2023, Agran announced that he would be running as a candidate for the 2024 Irvine mayoral election; if elected, it would be his sixth non-consecutive term as mayor of Irvine.

Agran was born in Chicago, the son of Selma Elizabeth (Meyerson) and Reuben Agran (originally "Agranowsky").

He was raised in a "politically liberal Jewish household".

Agran graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966 with a Bachelor of Science degree in both history and economics.

He then earned a juris doctor (with honors) from Harvard Law School in 1969, specializing in public interest law.

Agran served as legal counsel to the California State Senate Committee on Health and Welfare and taught legislation and public policy at the UCLA School of Law and the University of California, Irvine Graduate School of Management.

Between 1978 and 1990, Larry Agran served on the Irvine City Council, including six years as mayor (Irvine employs a council-manager government).

By 1978, Larry Agran had become an active member of various community organizations and was a local attorney.

Agran supported increased class integration and the use of federal funding for moderate-income housing in Irvine.

Agran's calls for the use of zoning and changes to Irvine's general plan to slow the pace of suburban sprawl and protect open space gained him considerable support from the influential citizen group Irvine Tomorrow, which initiated a door-to-door campaign that helped elect Agran to one of two open seats on the Irvine City Council.

Larry Agran won the most votes in his first election for Irvine City Council on March 7, 1978, being elected to his first four-year term in Irvine's City Council.

The organizations prioritized support for the 1981 Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign.

Eventually, the organizations aimed at broader diplomatic issues, including sanctuary cities and sister cities in Central America.

In the last decade of the Cold War, the networks grew to over 6,000 local officials and activists.

CID and LEO-USA merged, under the CID name, and its headquarters moved to Irvine.

The merger was followed by the foundation of the Bulletin of Municipal Foreign Policy, a journal that focused on the "municipal foreign policy movement."

Larry Agran won the most votes again in the regular municipal election on June 8, 1982, and first served as mayor of Irvine in 1982, continuing through 1984, with a second term starting in 1986.

Meanwhile, in 1982, the non-profit Center for Innovative Diplomacy (CID) was established in San Francisco by Michael Shuman to advocate for citizen diplomacy and local government action to end the nuclear arms race.

In 1983, then-Mayor Agran established the Local Elected Officials of America (LEO-USA) project, which founded what became a network of over 250 U.S. local officials advocating for municipal priorities that had an international scope, including the end of the arms race, reduction in U.S. defense spending, and the prioritizing of increased federal spending in economically disadvantaged American cities.

Agran garnered support in the 1986 election by calling for restraints on excessive growth in the city and the preservation of hillsides and farmlands, as well as arguing against new freeways in the Irvine area and advocating for the withdrawal of the city from the Transportation Corridor Agencies.

In 1988, Agran won the first-ever direct-election for mayor in Irvine's history.

As Mayor in 1988, Larry Agran led Irvine's City Council to establish the first human rights ordinance of its kind in Orange County, prohibiting discrimination on basis of "race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, marital status, physical handicap," as well as sexual orientation.

The city ordinance was patterned on state and federal law, but went further to protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

The Irvine City Council voted 4-0 to pass the ordinance.

In 1989, Agran implemented the first city-level CFC ban in the country (see below) and is credited with starting "the world’s largest international environmental city government network, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability (formerly, International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives)."

"Indeed, the stirrings of a city-led sustainability network can be traced in part to City of Irvine, CA, where, in summer 1989, then-Mayor Larry Agran ushered a first-of-its-kind local ordinance restricting the use of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Mayor Agran predicted other cities would follow and they did. By July, a two-day conference in Irvine convened 24 U.S. and Canadian cities to explore how local governments could combat the depletion of the ozone layer. They called themselves the North American Congress of Local Governments for a Stratospheric Protection Accord. City of Irvine’s national and global peers transitioned their scope beyond CFCs to consider all environmental pollution the following year during the UN conference mentioned above."

A digital archive was created at the University of California, Irvine of CID's work, as well as the founding of ICLEI.

In 1989, a ballot measure (Measure N), led by Christina Shea and her husband, struck "sexual orientation" as a protected class from the human rights ordinance.

In 1990, Agran was recognized as an elected Democratic Socialists of America "DSAer" by Democratic Left magazine.

He lost reelection in the subsequent 1990 mayoral election.

In 1998, Agran re-entered public service as an Irvine City Councillor.

He was again elected mayor in the 2000 election (in which he was unopposed), and in 2002.

Agran rejoined the city council in 2004 and has, for many years, served as a councilor, being most recently re-elected in 2020.

He later, unsuccessfully, sought the mayoralty in 2012.

In 2019, Agran worked with University of California, Irvine doctoral student Ben Leffel to chronicle the role Irvine had to play in establishing CID/LEO-USA its municipal foreign policy network, using original issues of the Bulletin, with articles largely written by the Center's expansive network.

In September 2020, Larry Agran was recognized by ICLEI as playing a crucial role in founding the international organization that now includes over 1,750 cities, towns, and counties in 84 countries:

In June 2020, the initiative was repealed by a unanimous vote of the Irvine City Council.

Agran, Rowland and Molina, championed what was described as one of "the most far reaching measures" in banning commercial process and consumer product use of CFCs.

The ordinance is recognized as jumpstarting municipal, state, national, and international efforts to craft legislation that banned CFCs.