One question has lingered around Joseph Ungoco since he first ran for City Council in 2017, only two years after arriving in Manhattan Beach from New York City and points further afield: who is this man, and why is he running for elected office so soon after arriving in town?
The answer is in the story of his life.
Ungoco grew up in Garden Grove, the only son of a successful immigrant family from the Philippines,
“I was a typical ‘Type A’ Asian, kid, like the other stereotype, without the tiger mom,” he said. “I AP’ed my way through high school, went to Boston University, got my undergrad in two years and went straight into medical school. I’d skipped a grade in grammar school so I went into med school at 19.”
After completing a year of medical school, he doubled down, jointly pursuing a master’s in medical science. By the time he was 22, he’d worked with the United Nations and written a thesis paper on nutrition and HIV infection, research that was so cutting-edge at the time that he ended up presenting at the International Conference at the Hague. Afterward, Ungoco entered a joint MBA and med school program. Armed with an MBA and two medical degrees, he worked in Massachusetts for the rollout of the “Romneycare” state health plan, then moved to Washington D.C. to work on federal policy. He eventually worked for the Surgeon General, traveling to every Naval base with a hospital on it to perform health care analysis.
“That was a great experience, meeting so many people who served in the military,” said Ungoco. “It was inspirational to me.”
Then, in his late 20s, he moved to New York City and founded a PR firm that did work both for local political campaigns and within the fashion industry. He invested in real estate, did well, and found himself living a New York dream of a life. He’d just purchased a Phillip Starck-designed apartment in the financial district and was preparing to move in when 9/11 hit.
“I was in my car driving up 6th Avenue after the first tower had fallen, and was looking in my rearview mirror and saw the second tower fall,” Ungoco said. “People were just stunned on the street, and there was just a wave of people running.”
The events of that time left a lasting mark. He lived near and was friends with the firefighters from NYFD Station #1, who’d along with so much else also lost their fire dog in the terrorist attack, so Ungoco would frequently stop by with his own dog for the firefighters to spend time with. He would spend a total of 15 years in NYC. His firm produced a lot of fashion shows and he was eventually hired as a journalist for a new magazine called Suede, flying to shoots on a helicopter with champagne.
“That was a great little foray,” Ungoco said.
But eventually, his 84-year-old father got rear-ended on a freeway and his 86 year old mother slipped and fell and Ungoco realized it was time to come back home to Southern California.
“I thought, ‘I’m the only kid, I shouldn’t be a five-hour flight away,’” he recalled.
Back in California, he tended to his parent’s affairs, obtained his real estate license to help manage the family’s holdings, and then, through politics, found his way to Manhattan Beach. He’d been active in the GOP in New York, serving as spokesperson for the Log Cabin Republicans and as an appointee to the state election board. He worked as a volunteer on David Hadley’s assembly campaign and reacquainted himself with Manhattan Beach, where he’d spent time as a kid with his dad, working on real estate holdings and fishing at nearby piers. He fell in love with the El Porto neighborhood and moved there in December 2014.
“Neighborhood Watch I joined the minute I got here and became a block captain,” Ungoco said. “I was surprised there’d never been a block captain [in his neighborhood], and no one was stepping up to be area coordinator. So I did that.”
He also became a board member of the Manhattan Beach Conservancy, the Residents Association, and Leadership Manhattan.
“People are like, who is this guy and where did he come from? How is he in the Residents Association, how is he on the founding board of the Conservancy, how did he get to know all these people? And the answer is because I was interested, and I just actively went after it.”
Ungoco believes his relative newness to the city is something that needs to be represented on the council.
“I keep hearing these statistics, like more than 60 percent of the population have lived here less than 10 years,” he said. “The new one is that 20 percent have lived here less than five years. Well, 20 percent of our council is one of the five seats. The past of Manhattan Beach is very well guarded on our council. The future is not represented.”
As such, at front and center of his campaign is the issue of environmental sustainability. Ungoco said he appreciates how the city has been at the forefront of such issues as plastic bag and polystyrene bans, but believes Manhattan Beach is perfectly poised to do substantively more — providing better incentives in local building codes, for example, for green building, and building better infrastructure to support multi-modal transportation.
“I’m the only candidate with a strong message of sustainability,” Ungoco said.
Ultimately, Ungoco simply believes that he offers something lacking on the current council: a fresh face bringing new perspective.
“I value institutional memory highly and have tremendous respect for anyone who has served on Council previously. That said, I believe that the ‘ghosts of councils past’ should haunt the chamber, be the voices of experience and provide sage advice and wise counsel — to new leaders,” Ungoco said. “As the sustainability candidate, I’m for recycling everything — except our past councilmembers.”
“The conventional wisdom is you should live here 20 years before you start to care, let alone do anything about it. I don’t believe that’s necessary. I care now, and I want to contribute to my community.”
