Meet Rod
I chose this place
on purpose.
I grew up not far from here and moved to Rancho Santa Margarita ten years ago. It was untouched enough to still feel like a neighborhood, but it was still a city. No gridlock feeling. Easy to make friends. A decade later I am raising five kids here and I have not once regretted the choice.
The generation that built this city left us something worth building on. Now it is our turn. I am running to represent the young families of Rancho Santa Margarita — roughly one in three households here has a child under 18 at home, and I am one of them.
Our whole story happened at that lake.
I met my wife here. We got engaged at the lake. Then COVID took the wedding we had planned, so we got married there too, on the grass, looking at the water and the houses on the other side.
So when I talk about the lake and the trails and the parks, understand that I am not talking about line items. I am talking about the place my family started. That is also why I am unsentimental about maintaining it properly: things you love should not be allowed to quietly fall apart until somebody proposes a bond measure.
Five kids, all in local schools.
Which means I have skin in the game on every decision this council makes about youth programs, fields, traffic and schools. I am not studying these issues. I am living them on a Tuesday afternoon.
- CTOof a large Orange County law firm
- Pop Warner coachthree seasons with Santa Margarita
- San Francisco Solanoparish, active member
- Reform CrossFit RSMweekends walking the lake
- Wafflesour Mastiff, and the reason for most weekend laps around the lake
Why I am running
The day the Club closed.
Every seat on this ballot is open. No incumbent is eligible to run in 2026, so District 2 is not a contest between somebody who has the job and somebody who wants it. It is a straight question about who should do it next.
What decided it for me was the day the Boys and Girls Club closed. For about thirteen years it gave working families here an affordable place for their kids after school. Mine were among them. Then it was gone, and the cost landed on parents. A city with our resources should not have let it end that way, and I was not willing to just be angry about it.
I run technology for a large Orange County law firm. My actual job is reading contracts, interrogating budgets and telling vendors no. That is not a glamorous skill. It is exactly the skill this job needs.
I read the budget. You should see what’s in it.
The seven of us. This is the whole argument, really.
What I will actually do about it.
Five priorities and three things I will fight for, with the numbers attached.
See where I stand