Know Your Candidate: Ryan Soon, OC Board of Supervisors District 4

Ryan Soon, candidate for Orange County Board of Supervisors District 4. (Photo Credit: Courtesy of Ryan Soon)

This interview is the first in a series intended to give readers an overview of local political candidates and what they believe. Check in throughout the upcoming week to read responses from the other candidates for Orange County Board of Supervisors District 4.

(Note: Responses may be edited for length or clarity.)

Can you tell us about your background?

I'm originally from Honolulu, Hawaii. I was born and raised there, and basically my background has always been in some kind of public service. Right after I graduated high school, I joined the Hawaii Army National Guard and have actually been serving in the Army National Guard for one state or another for the last 22 years. I enlisted about five months prior to 9/11 and served on three different combat tours to Iraq and Kuwait.

After I finished my active-duty tours around January 2007, I started with the Department of Defense Police Department out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. While I served as a police officer, a bunch of folks got together and wanted a better labor union to represent them. We were looking around and I couldn't really find one. I founded an independent labor union called the Federal Police Officers of Hawaii and Affiliates. I left the police department to run the labor union full-time. I ended up going to law school when I was in the police department and also as I was running the union, graduated and became an attorney in 2019.

Today, I am the deputy director for negotiations for the National Treasury Employees Union. I live in Rhoadesville with my wife, April, and we have four children together.

Do you have any previous political experience?

Prior to this, no political experience per se. Working with the labor union, it is an elected position, so I did have to run for office. And of course, all the rules of ethics and reporting and all that fun stuff under the Labor Management Disclosure and Reporting Act applied. But outside of that, my experience working as the founder, president, and even the director of operations for a nonprofit organization meant dealing with a lot of our constitution bylaws and making sure that it was a member-run organization.

Any community involvement outside of politics?

When I moved into Rhoadesville in 2020, our HOA was completely defunct. Nobody knew who it was or what they were doing. One person started trying to revive it, and we quickly realized that all she wanted to do was kind of just fine everybody, make people mow their lawns and everything like that. So, myself and a bunch of our neighbors kind of forced an annual meeting, and I was elected as a president of the HOA for Black Walnut Run Estates, which is where I live now. Over the last year, it's really just been a matter of getting the HOA up to compliance with all the federal and state laws, and mainly getting the community back involved because they were not operating for nearly a decade.

What motivated you to run for a position on the Orange County Board of Supervisors?

Growing up in Hawaii, we were raised with the community mindset of it takes a village to raise a child, and everybody was auntie and uncle just out of respect. It was really a family-based community, and I see Orange much in the same light. As much as everybody is geographically separated, the community still comes together, and they all work toward a common goal.

The scary thing I'm seeing just in the few years that I've been living here is that the community's not informed. Because we live so far away from each other, there's not as much information flowing out to the members of the community for them to know what's going on and to voice their opinion. That's something that doesn't sit right.

With Wilderness Crossing getting passed after all these people stood up and said no, I couldn't understand how an elected body could do something so negligent and contrary to their community's interest. I understand that you can't always just go with the majority and there are other factors to it, but this is kind of a no-brainer. Especially with the lack of the transparency, that made it even worse. So, my main motivating factor is that I'm a strong believer that the community gets a say in what happens in our district.

The second piece kind of goes back to growing up in Hawaii as well. We started off in a very quaint town, just like the town of Orange. You could go down, ride your bike in the middle of the street and maybe have to move out of the way when a car passes by. Over the years, I've watched my hometown get developed. There are Targets and Macy's where there used to be mom-and-pop stores, and places where we could walk in between stores are now major roads. Our entire economy shifted away from agriculture, which was of course our coffee and our pineapple. It shifted to tourism, and it shifted from learning these values of taking care of the land and taking care of your community, to learning how to speak Japanese so you can get a good job in the tourism industry and go work at one of the hotels.

That's kind of the mentality I saw develop over 20 years, and now I see the same thing starting in Orange County. Orange is a county with such rich history, great people, good values, and we can't lose that. Orange County should be the example of what happens when you do it right and you keep the country, country. That's not to say that there should be no economic development ever. It just needs to be controlled and responsible.

What is your understanding of the role of a county supervisor?

The role of a county supervisor, at least from my understanding, is to take care of the governance and administration of the county. So, everything from zoning to taxes to ordinances and things that are delegated down from the state government.

At the recent Chamber of Commerce candidate showcase, virtually all of the candidates stated their desire to preserve the county’s rural character. What sets you apart in that regard?

One of the things that sets me apart — and I think this is especially important for this election — is that I am legally trained as an attorney. It's speculation, but one of the things that I think the board of supervisors was missing with this whole Wilderness Crossing ordeal was that I don't think they knew what they could or couldn't do, despite the fact that some of them have been on there for years. With this next election, we potentially could have a very freshman-based board of supervisors, and having somebody who understands how to read, interpret and write laws is going to be extremely important. And I don't think any of my other candidates can say they have that training or expertise.

Not only that, in my current role, I'm the deputy director of negotiations. My whole job is interpreting public policy regulations and finding out how to identify the interests of our bargaining unit for the employees that we represent, and making sure I develop policies or contracts or agreements that meet those interests while still keeping the spirit and intent of the laws that are passed by the federal government.

In the most recent fiscal year, Orange County Public Schools experienced a $1.2 million shortfall in funding from the Board of Supervisors, forcing the school district to make cuts on facilities improvements and hiring for new positions. What are your views on increasing school funding in the county budget?

It has to be increased. I don't think we have an option or a choice. Now, do I know where that money is going to come from off the cuff? I do not. I'd have to take a real hard look at the budget and see what grants are available because one major thing I'm not interested in is raising any property taxes or other kinds of taxes to ensure that that funding is available.

But [school funding] does need to happen. I have so many neighbors and friends who are educators and support staff within Orange County, and we can't retain staff with the pay that we have. We've got kids sitting on a bus for almost two hours because there's such a shortage in bus drivers. So, unless something gives — and the only thing I can see is having better pay or benefits that can attract more educators and staff into the schools — we're just not going to be able to make it. I know it's a 40-year project down the road, but it's only going to get worse with Wilderness Crossing coming up because there are going to be more kids that need educated and less resources to get them educated.

What does transparency look like in practice for you?

At the street festival, I shook my head walking up and down. It's an election year, so you see all these politicians out there shaking hands and kissing babies. But you don't see that outside of election years, and I'm wondering why. For me, transparency would be continuing exactly what we were doing at the festival, even on a micro scale. One thing we like to use in my profession is called lunch-and-learns, just going out and inviting a whole bunch of people to come over and talk about what’s going on. We need to keep people informed outside of just, hey, here's the notice of our schedule for the board of supervisors meetings. It's insufficient nowadays.

Outside of that, it’s just being honest and open with what's being talked about behind closed doors. I get it — the public's not going to be involved or even interested in coming to every possible meeting. That's why we have elected officials, but we can at least give them the highlights. One of the first things that we need to do is overhaul our county's website. When you want to learn about your supervisor and you go there and all you figure out is what their boundaries are, it's not a really good website. So, I would love to get those kinds of initiatives going. Those are the things that I've done with the HOA that really boosted people's interest because when you're informed, you become invested.

The social media page for your campaign states that you’re the “only solution to have your voice heard.” In your opinion, what makes you a better candidate than your opponents in regard to citizens having their voices heard?

One thing is that I’m the newcomer, which some people might see as a downfall, but I also don't have any allegiances to things outside of our community. No businesses, no high school friends who might be business owners now or developers. I don't have any of that, so I'm taking this from a fresh perspective. My best friend across the street who I might have a couple beers with at the end of the night means just as much to me as a stranger at the farm up the road that I've never met. I think that works to my advantage in the sense that I don't know a whole lot of people, but I also don't have any loyalties that would create a conflict of interest that would cause me to vote against 37 people standing up and saying no.

Let’s wrap this up with a few apolitical get-to-know-you questions. Favorite ice cream flavor?

Chocolate chip cookie dough.

Musical artist or band?

Right now, Phil Wickham.

Hobby or way to relax? 

Read county ordinances? No, just anything I can do with my family.

To learn more about Ryan Soon, visit his Facebook page here. For more information on Orange County elections, visit www.orangecountyva.gov/354/Voter-Registration-Elections or call the Orange County Office of Voter Registration and Elections at (540) 672-5262.