Renewable Energy Professional John Doyle Launches 2024 Campaign for City Council’s District 4 Seat

All the uncertainty created by the pandemic could make it difficult for some people to plan for next week, let alone years ahead.

Then again, with society finally appearing to rebound from the COVID-19 crisis, this really might be a good time to start thinking about such things as starting a family, a business, even a career in local politics.

For John Doyle, a renewable energy professional focused on solar wind farms as director of land acquisition and entitlements for Photosol U. S. Renewable Energy, now — as city government begins what is likely to be a yearslong social and economic period of recovery from the coronavirus — appears to be the right time to make known his intentions to run for the District 4 seat on the City Council in 2024.

“The main reasons that I’m running are to get Pasadena Water and Power to accept clean energy, push environmental climate change initiatives, and to broaden the definition of safety,” Doyle said in a recent interview with Pasadena Now.

“What is the definition of a safety increase?” Doyle asked. “More of it is an outcomes approach to safety, meaning that I’d like to have more money put into the Health Department where we’ve got social workers, health and mental health professionals out responding to 911 calls. Most importantly, I’d like to increase the social safety net with our unhoused and really solve this problem with actual housing that people can live in. And also more support as in potential jobs for them, and jobs for all Pasadenans as well.”

Doyle will have something of a choir to preach to from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday when he attends the Democrats of Pasadena Foothills’ Democrats Reunited July 4th In-person Celebration. The event, which will feature appearances by Democratic U.S. Rep. Judy Chu, state Sen. Anthony Portantino, and Assemblymember Chris Holden, is being hosted at an outdoor space of a Pasadena home. The address will be provided after the purchase of tickets to the catered boxed-lunch event.

A board member with the local Democratic club, Doyle is passionate about reversing climate change, initiating criminal justice reform, developing affordable housing, providing universal health care, ending homelessness, creating jobs, and investing capital in marginalized communities to help solve the city’s economic inequities.

He’s a contributor to Black Lives Matter, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) and the ACLU. He’s also a member of the NAACP, the Democratic Socialist Party LA, the Sierra Club of Pasadena, and the Sunrise Movement LA.

But winning District 4, which covers much of the city’s east side, bounded by Washington Boulevard, Palo Verde Avenue, Villa Street, Roosevelt Avenue and Michillinda Avenue, and whose last three council representatives, including incumbent Councilmember Gene Masuda, were fiscal conservatives, might be more of a challenge than it first appears.

Masuda was elected to the City Council in April, 2011. From 2015 to 2017 he served as vice-mayor and currently serves on the council’s Legislative Policy Committee and represents the city on the Gold Line Construction Authority and the Gold Line Joint Powers Authority. Masuda is dedicated to maintaining the city’s fiscal discipline while protecting police and fire services.

Prior to Masuda, Steve Haderlein, a former commercial banker who is a social studies teacher and golf coach at La Salle High School, served on the council beginning in 1999. Before Haderlein was Bill Paparian, an ex-Marine and a former Republican who was elected in 1987. Paparian, a lawyer, eventually became an independent, and even ran for Congress as a Green Party member in 2006. Although known for taking on controversial causes, Paparian still maintained strong support for the Police and Fire departments.

With all that said, Doyle doesn’t appear to be easily deterred.

“Where I’m going with this (campaign) is the foundation, which I think is jobs. And what I’m trying to do, especially in District 4, is work to solve the problem with the unhoused and stopping the kind of train of people that are going to be unhoused,” Doyle said.

Doyle considers himself to be a parent citizen activist who is running for the council because he perceives “a difference between what the budget is and what the money’s actually spent on in the annual report. And so I’d like to investigate appropriations a little more closely and look at where money can be used to solve some of the social problems that would increase the social safety net.”

True, “I’m ramping up, getting started, getting volunteers. taking contributions in the sense that I haven’t taken a lot of contributions.” But, he said, one has to start somewhere, and “I’m setting up the ability to do so,” he said.