Former Cerritos Mayor Grace Hu will run for City Council.
By Brian Hews
Four candidates travelled down to Cerritos City Hall this past week and “pulled papers” to run for Cerritos City Council in March 2017.
Pulling papers is the first step of the election process; the candidates now need to officially file with Cerritos City Clerk Vida Barone by mid January.
Grace Hu, Bruce Barrows, Chong Vo, and Sam Sultan Ahmad all pulled papers, but none of them have officially filed.
The filing began December 19 with the cut off date of January 13.
Current Cerritos Mayor George Ray has told HMG-CN that he will not run for reelection. But other sources are telling HMG-CN that, “certain people are placing pressure on Ray to run again, so we don’t know if he will run again or not. ”
In the case of Ray not running, two seats will now be open, Ray’s and termed out Councilwoman Carol Chen’s seat.
Hu and Barrows are both former Council members and Mayors of Cerritos, while Chong Vo, who ran in 2015, placed sixth out of nine candidates.
Sam Sultan Ahmad placed eighth.
Three seats were up for grabs in 2015 with Mark Pulido garnering the most votes at 3,417; Jim Edwards received 3,053 votes, Naresh Solanki received 2,533 votes.
Frank Yokoyama lost by 96 votes and received 2,472 votes; Grace Hu: 2,437 votes, Chuong Vo 1,732 votes; Sophia Tse 1,597 votes; Sam Sultan Ahmad: 511 votes; and Manny Maninder Sethi: 210 votes.
