He’s a long-shot Aliso Viejo city council candidate with an intriguing message

Steven Von der Porten is an unknown in Orange County politics. That’s because he is the furthest thing from a politician.

Steven Von der Porten: Prom ready.

By Caleb Otte

Special to The Truth OC

Aliso Viejo’s city council tried to ban the pride flag on government property last year. They also paid the new city manager around $70,000 more than what the last one made, without any resident input into the search or contract. And just last week the city’s mayor posted a picture with a confederate flag on social media.

The growing MAGA agenda on the city council is far from representative of a municipality that voted for Kamala Harris, and every district voted “yes” on Prop 50 last year.

Steven Von der Porten is fed up with all of that.

He isn’t a career politician. Nowhere close to it. He’s the opposite. He’s just a guy—a very smart one at that. Graduating with a degree in physics from Harvey Mudd College, Von der Porten works as an aerospace engineer at Turion Space.

VDP thinks his experience would be largely beneficial to Aliso Viejo’s city council, which is why he’s running for the District 2 seat. What makes his campaign interesting is that, despite being at a hyper local level, he is running staunchly on an anti-MAGA platform. It’s all about accountability, authenticity, rationality and a return to community driven solutions to problems.

If voters don’t respond to that message, don’t expect VDP to switch tracks.

“If I can’t win my values, why run?” he told Truth OC in a recent interview.

But what are VDP’s values and why does he think this long-shot campaign can work? According to his website, “affordability,” “security,” and “accountability” encompass his broader goals. After chatting with him for about half an hour, the picture becomes a lot more nuanced.

At a recent No Kings rally.

Why is VDP running and why is he specifically the right man for the job?

These were the first two — and perhaps most important — questions I asked during my talk with VDP. This is what he had to say.

Q: Why are you running for Aliso Viejo city council?

A: I feel like we’re stronger when we’re united together, when we have a community where everyone feels welcome and feels like they have a place where we can invest in the community, and (families) can put down roots. I think all those things are going to be extremely important as we face some of the pressures that are affecting our communities, like a lot of the Trump administration’s failed policies.

So, we need to be able to work together as a community, and I want to be a member of the council in order to help build that sense, and give people a chance to engage with their leaders and trust their leaders.

Q: Why do you feel like you can provide that sense of community?

A: The biggest reason is that I care. I think that now is not a time for cautious decisions. We need to make bold choices to really get people to come back together, to come back to our values as a community, because right now we aren’t really represented in terms of what the community believes on our city council.

Q: What do some of those bold decisions look like?

A: One of the things I’m looking at is … addressing some of the housing market issues by generating more housing … and particularly emphasizing primary home ownership by the homeowner. And so when you do that, then it gives a chance for more of the community to be kind of a permanent fixture in the community, right? They can invest in what they’re doing because they know that next year they’re not going to be priced out of their rental. And in order to do that, we need to increase the amount of housing we’ve got. I mean, the state’s already requiring us to do that, but we need to really put in an effort to increase housing, to drive down the ridiculous cost of housing.

Just from a personal perspective, you know, I’m a homeowner and I’m not planning on moving. I like where I live. I love Aliso Viejo. But what I don’t want to see is the community kind of just age to the point where it loses its vibrancy, right? Because the only people that can afford to be here are people who are already here or people who have a huge amount of investment money. What I care about is who my neighbors are, and that everyone has an opportunity to be my neighbor.

What does he think the city council is doing wrong?

Pretty much everything. Four out of five members—all but Tiffany Ackley—subscribe to the MAGA agenda and hard-right politics. In VDP’s eyes, they aren’t representative of their constituents. And they certainly don’t take accountability or listen to residents.

VDP will be running against the current mayor, Max Duncan. The one who posed with a confederate flag and posted about it on Facebook. That, in a nutshell, is what VDP said he sees as the error in the ways of the council.

“He had no shame,” VDP said. “These are not the values that my neighbors hold.”

VDP also explained more about how, last year, after the previous city manager passed away, the council started the search for a new one. And they did it with no input from residents.

“We see this all the time from the Trump administration, that ethics and accountability are not something that they care about,” he said. “And guess what? (The city council) realized that they can do the same thing. Our city council has been allocating lots of money … without any sort of community input. They hired a new city manager and they flaunted that they saved $50,000 from hiring a consulting firm to hire the city manager. Then the committee of two, with no transparency or oversight, ended up paying the new city manager $70,000 more than the previous woman was in the position. So in order to pay more money, they got rid of oversight and community input.”

So how has the city council strayed so far from being representative or beholden to the people of Aliso Viejo?

“I think a lot of it is that people haven’t been paying attention. A lot of people in Aliso Viejo are reasonably comfortable. They like the city. I mean, it’s a beautiful city. It’s a wonderful place. But we can’t afford to be complacent anymore,” he said.

That is, from my understanding, the crux of this campaign. Bringing accountability back to the city government, and doing so by waking people up to the true dangers that a MAGA run council brings.

The anti-MAGA driven campaign

What has interested me from the moment I learned about VDP’s campaign is how heavily he is leaning on an anti-MAGA platform. It is a playbook usually used for higher profile campaigns. The reason MAGA supporting people are able to win city council elections is because they present themselves as your average person, just wanting to help the city. It works because not enough people pay attention to who they truly are, but VDP wants people to start looking deeper at how their city is run.

But still, why go so hard-line anti-MAGA when the city is moderate at best? Like he said, it’s all about winning with his values. And to him, the best way to fight the Trump administration is at a local level.

“Responding to these national things, these national events, they’re not going to be solved on a national level,” he said. “We’ve seen very clearly that our national leaders are willing to completely ignore the rule of law when it suits them. None of the branches of government are prepared to fix that right now. That leaves the levels of resistance at the local level. If we’re going to push back, we need to do that as communities. We need to do it together. We need to stand up for each other because we have to understand that when one of us is separated from us, we’re all weaker and we need strength right now.”

VDP’s website also focuses on ICE and how cities need to do everything they can to protect due process. When asked if ICE is really a problem in Aliso Viejo, he wanted to make it clear that even though his city hasn’t had high profile cases like Santa Ana that it is becoming an increasingly larger problem.

“It’s not as sensational, but we have had instances. They are already here and they’re already making arrests and people are disappearing,” VDP said. “And the fact of the matter is, it’s coming in a much stronger way. This sort of enforcement isn’t something that just fizzles out. It’s only going to increase and it’s going to be here much more strongly. I think we need to be able to respond to that as a city. Our leadership doesn’t have any sort of will to do that. We need to take concrete actions that protect people, that allow us to document what’s happening, that help people when an incident occurs, that help people with resources to track their loved ones. That sort of thing.”

That’s where VDP’s values lie: in protecting his community and bringing people together. The biggest question, however, is whether or not any of this will reach voters in a meaningful way by the time November comes around.

Max Duncan, the current mayor/hat wearer.

How can his campaign succeed?

It was extremely evident during the interview that VDP has not done this before. He has not been interviewed by a political website to discuss his plans for a city council race. He is not adept at campaigning or saying “the right thing” just because it sounds good. He is candid. VDP says what he truly believes and can back it up. Running a campaign is completely new to him. Whether that is a strength or not will have to be decided, but despite a lack of experience in politics he is more well informed than most people.

When asked about how he will get his message out, VDP had no worries.

“I think a lot of it is talking to people. I’m going to be out there, asking people what’s important to them. I’m going to be telling them a little about who I am and why I think that my role can help make their lives and their neighbor’s lives better.”

And, truly, he is not the type to bullshit anybody. You can tell just by talking to him for two minutes.

“I’m not a very filtered person. What you see is what you get.”

With around 6,000 registered voters in Aliso Viejo District 2, however, it will be almost impossible for VDP to reach them all via chats in the street or at community events. What he needs, and what could be a crucial piece to this entire puzzle, is a good social media presence and enough money to get his name and face in front of as many people as possible.

Strong social media will lead to more donations. As of now, however, VDP only has 59 Instagram followers and three posts on his account. Unfortunately, that won’t cut it when facing an incumbent.

It would be unfortunate if a lack of name recognition killed his campaign, because VDP is one of the more down-to-earth (yet truly smart) people to ever run for political office. When he says that he isn’t running to stroke his ego, I believe him. Because what the hell does a successful aerospace engineer need an ego boost for?

In fact, when it comes to his expertise, VDP believes he has an advantage over people like Max Duncan.

“What matters at a city council level is the ability to integrate new information, right? Cause that’s what’s going to happen for every meeting. City staff and the public are going to provide input, and we have to look at that information as a whole and make rational decisions that benefit the city. That process is exactly what an engineer does. I think in terms of what needs to be done on city council, I’m not planning on spending 90% of my time campaigning. I’m planning on spending most of my time doing as much as I can with the information I can get.”

VDP also talked about the need to trust experts. If he wins the council seat, he doesn’t want to act like he knows everything. He wants to hear from city staff and outside firms and all of these people who know more about running a city than him. He wants to hear the residents and integrate their worries into his decisions.

If that message truly reaches voters, then VDP will be the no-brainer choice. Reaching voters, however, will be the biggest challenge of his campaign.

It’s as he told me: “We’re out of time, we can’t play games. We need to approach (the issues) in ways that work.”