Four candidates qualify for Malibu City Council race Play

Four candidates have been certified to run in the Malibu City Council race this fall. It's pretty simple — fill out some forms and submit the signatures of at least 20 registered voters. But two would-be candidates are washouts.

Incumbents Marianne Riggins and Doug Stewart are seeking a second four-year term. They are being challenged by Danny Smith, a fire victim running on a platform of better help from Malibu city government for people like him who lost their houses.

Candidate number four is a bit of a mystery. Amir Sam Dibaei reportedly lives on Morning View Drive, across from Malibu Middle School. There are no internet records for any Amir Sam Dibaei in Malibu that we can find.

A man with a law office in West Los Angeles with the same unusual name is on the records of the California Bar Association. That person was disbarred as a lawyer four years ago. And Amir Dibaei the disbarred lawyer has the same educational background — UC Berkeley — as Amir Sam Dibaei, the apparent Malibu candidate.

And as we said, we cannot reach the candidate.

But we do know for certain that two candidates who had taken out petitions to run for city council are declared out.

Crystal Hoang Lee, who goes by the name CiCi, was found yesterday to not have qualified for the ballot. City Clerk Kelsey Pettijohn said signature verification was completed Wednesday, and the potential candidate did not have the required 20 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Anne Komarovsk announced Monday night at the city council meeting that she will not file her petitions. She did not give a reason. She did not say if she had gathered the 20 valid signatures to make the ballot. She did say that she is running for governor — again. Her web page also says she is running for U.S. president in 2028, and she said Monday she is running for governor in 2030.

The four Malibu candidates will be on the ballots mailed out in late October and early November, with the final day to vote Nov. 3.