Irvine Mayor Agran Swept From Office : Orange County: The outcome could have a profound impact on development in the city. Voters also cast ballots against a new county jail in Santa Ana.

In elections that could mark new directions for two Orange County cities, voters swept nationally known Irvine Mayor Larry Agran from office and spared the city of Santa Ana from becoming a repository for future county jails.

Agran, who used Irvine as a crucible for innovative policies that gained national attention, lost to longtime political nemesis Councilwoman Sally Anne Sheridan and supporters who said they were weary of a liberal council majority that had turned the city into a model for experimental policy-making.

“What this all means is that we get back to basics,” Sheridan said. “It means that we deal with issues that concern Irvine rather than global, international issues.”

The outcome of the election could have a profound impact on how development in Irvine will proceed. Agran had espoused environmental protection and developing a vital downtown by redesigning a major commercial center to include a concentrated mix of residential, retail and office uses linked to the rest of the city by a monorail.

Sheridan said she supports a more traditional approach to growth, favoring approvals of pending projects of major developers. She also questioned Agran’s effort to use the monorail to reduce congestion, saying instead she wants to build new roads and widen existing ones.

During his tenure, Agran emphasized the global impact of local policies, dabbled with Asian and Central American policy and stressed the need for cities to wean local industry from defense contracts--what he called the “warfare state.”

Trying to set an example for other cities, he fought for open space, rapid transit and a host of environmental measures from curbside recycling to a ban on chemicals that damaged the Earth’s ozone layer.

Some of those ideas contributed to his downfall, Agran said Wednesday.

“We were bringing about innovations and people were weary of it and wanted to slow down,” Agran said of his defeat. “Politically, I am much more progressive than the landscape that surrounds me, and I incurred the wrath of some of the most reactionary forces in the county, which could back up their positions with tens of thousands of dollars.”

The countywide defeat of Measure A, the Centralized Jail Initiative, by a 2-1 margin means county supervisors are likely to proceed with a plan to build a new jail in Gypsum Canyon, near the Riverside County line.

Measure A would have confined such facilities to the county seat, Santa Ana. But opponents branded the effort as racist for attempting to dump the jail in a city with a predominantly Latino population.

Orange County Supervisor Roger Stanton said Wednesday that county officials have no choice but to proceed with plans to build a new jail in Gypsum Canyon, a move that has been vehemently opposed by nearby residents.

At the same time, Stanton expressed a willingness to join Board of Supervisors Chairman Don R. Roth in talking with Riverside County leaders about building the 6,700-bed jail complex there.

Roth, whose district includes Gypsum Canyon, said the county is flirting with legal challenges from the powerful Irvine Co., which owns the proposed jail site, if it continues to pursue it.

Times staff writers Dan Weikel, Lily Eng and Carla Rivera contributed to this report.