# Mayor of Buellton

Compare records and positions simply between Dave King or David Silva for Mayor of Buellton at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. Buellton's Mayor is directly elected, citywide. The Mayor is one of five members on the City Council. Council members set the budget, land use, and city ordinances. A professional city manager runs day-to-day operations. The Mayor's term is two years.

- Jurisdiction: City of Buellton
- Election: November 3, 2026 California general election
- Publisher: Vote or Else (https://voteorelse.com) — a free, nonpartisan ballot guide for California voters. No endorsements.
- Canonical page: https://voteorelse.com/2026/buellton-mayor
- Full ballot: this page covers one race. Every contest on a voter's own ballot, by address, with the same breakdown for each: https://voteorelse.com/
- Sources last retrieved: September 1, 2026
- Source-objectivity score: 93 out of 100 (Very strong), across 9 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology

## On the ballot

- **Dave King**
- **David Silva** — Incumbent

A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot.

Two candidates are running for Mayor of Buellton: incumbent David Silva and Dave King, the man Silva unseated for the office in 2024. Vote for one -- no primary.

Buellton's Mayor is directly elected citywide to a two-year term, separate from the city's four district council seats and not chosen by the Council itself. The winner sits on a five-member City Council -- the Mayor plus four district councilmembers -- that sets the budget, land use, and city ordinances for this Santa Barbara County city of 5,161 residents (2020 Census), while a professional city manager runs day-to-day operations.

This is a rematch. Silva, then a first-term Councilmember, unseated sitting Mayor King in November 2024, 53.38% to 46.11%. A vote for Silva is largely a referendum on his first term as Mayor; a vote for King is a vote to return the office to the person who held it immediately before Silva.

## David Silva

David Silva is the incumbent Mayor, first elected in November 2024 after a term on the City Council. He works full-time in UC Santa Barbara's Office of Development. A June 2026 Santa Barbara Independent profile describes him as the county's youngest mayor and Buellton's first openly queer one, and credits his first term with installing Pride and heritage flags along Avenue of Flags, funding social services including Meals on Wheels and community benefits fairs, hosting rotating town halls and coffee hours across the city's four council districts, and pushing proactive housing and urban-growth planning.

**Strengths:** A completed first term as sitting Mayor. Independent reporting names specific initiatives, not just general themes. Those include flag installations, social service funding, and rotating town halls.

**Trade-offs:** That reporting describes his priorities and public engagement. No independent, year-by-year accounting of budget or land use outcomes was found.

**Keep in mind:** He is the only incumbent in this race. A vote for him is a referendum on his first term. He also has a fundraising and disclosure record that could be confirmed. No financial filing was found for King with the city clerk.

## Dave King

Dave King served as Buellton's Mayor before David Silva unseated them in the November 2024 election, 53.38% to 46.11%, and is now seeking to reclaim the office. This dataset found no campaign website, filed candidate statement, or independent news coverage describing their 2026 platform; the city's own election page lists no campaign-finance filing under their name, and a California Secretary of State Cal-Access filer search returned no results either.

**Strengths:** A full term's prior experience as Buellton's sitting Mayor through 2024. They are the only other candidate here with direct City Hall executive experience.

**Trade-offs:** No campaign website, filed statement, campaign finance filing, or news coverage was found for them. Nothing shows what, if anything, has changed in their platform since 2024.

**Keep in mind:** This is a rematch of the 2024 race. Silva won it 53.38% to 46.11%. That result is a real data point for voters comparing the two. It is not a guess about how this one will go.

## Sources

1. [City of Buellton -- "2026 General Election" page: names the three offices up (Mayor -- full two-year term, one seat; City Council District 1 and District 4 -- four-year terms, one seat each), the nomination filing period, and links the Notice of Nominees, Candidate Contact Data sheet, and each qualifying candidate's own filed campaign statements. States plainly that only three of the five candidates (Mead, Silva, Silvola) submitted a campaign statement to the city](https://www.cityofbuellton.com/government/special/2026generalelection.php)
2. [City of Buellton -- "Notice of Nominees for Public Office," the city clerk's own ballot-instruction document for the November 3, 2026 General Municipal Election: Mayor (vote for no more than one) -- Dave King, David Silva; Council Member District 1 (vote for no more than one) -- Mark Williams, Billy Silvola; Council Member District 4 (vote for no more than one) -- Carla Mead alone. A name appearing on this document confirms placement before voters on the ballot, not a Section 10229 appointment](https://www.cityofbuellton.com/government/special/Notice%20of%20Nominees%20-%2011-3-26.pdf)
3. [City of Buellton -- "Buellton Candidate Contact Data," November 3, 2026 General Election: independently lists the identical five names under the identical three offices as the Notice of Nominees, with each candidate's mailing address, phone, and email -- no ballot designations are printed on this document](https://cityofbuellton.com/government/special/Candidate%20Contact%20Data%20-%202026.pdf)
4. [City of Buellton -- "City Council" page: names the sitting five-member Council -- David Silva (Mayor, "Elected: November 5, 2024"), Carla Mead (Vice Mayor, District 4), Hudson Hornick (District 1), Elysia Lewis (District 2), John Sanchez (District 3) -- confirming Silva and Mead as the incumbents in their 2026 races and that District 1 incumbent Hornick is not among the two 2026 District 1 candidates (an open seat)](https://www.cityofbuellton.com/government/city-council/)
5. [Wikipedia -- "Buellton, California": used narrowly for the 2020 Census population (5,161), confirmation that the City Council moved from at-large to four single-member districts in 2022 (roughly 1,290 residents each), and that the Mayor is directly elected citywide to a two-year term rather than chosen by the Council -- does not cover the 2026 election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buellton,_California)
6. [Santa Barbara Independent -- "Purple Reign: Buellton Mayor Pushes Past Partisanship to Make City 'Simply Fabulous'" (June 25, 2026): profiles incumbent Mayor David Silva -- his day job in UC Santa Barbara's Office of Development, a rejected 2021 Planning Commission application that led him to run for Council in 2022, his defeat of then-Mayor David King in November 2024, and first-term initiatives including Pride/heritage flags on Avenue of Flags, Meals on Wheels and benefits-fair funding, and rotating district town halls](https://www.independent.com/2026/06/25/purple-reign-buellton-mayor-pushes-past-partisanship-to-make-city-simply-fabulous/)
7. [Santa Barbara Independent -- "Santa Barbara Votes: 2024 General Election Results" (Nov. 5, 2024): certified Buellton Mayor result -- David Silva 1,042 votes (53.38%) to David King 900 votes (46.11%) -- the same two candidates rematched in 2026. No independent profile of King specific to the 2026 race was found via this outlet's own site search this pass](https://www.independent.com/2024/11/05/santa-barbara-votes-2024-general-election-results/)
8. [City of Buellton City Clerk -- David Silva's "David Silva for Mayor 2026" committee, semi-annual FPPC Form 460 covering January 1 - June 30, 2026 (filed with the city clerk, hosted on the city's own site): reports $21,725 in contributions received for the cycle to date and a $19,909.35 cash balance at close of period; itemized contributors include Santa Barbara-area residents, an out-of-state accountant, and small ActBlue-routed individual donors](https://cityofbuellton.com/government/special/Silva%20-%20Campaign%20Statements-1.pdf)
9. [California Secretary of State CAL-ACCESS -- direct filer searches for "Dave King" and "Mark Williams" each returned a blank result page, no committee or candidate filer registered under either name. Cal-Access's own Power Search home page states its data covers state-level campaign finance and excludes local government filings in any case, so Buellton's own City Clerk filings (see buellton-silva460-2026, buellton-silvola410-2026, buellton-mead497-2026) are the only possible source for a local candidate's disclosure](https://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Misc/filerSearch.aspx?SEARCH=Dave%20King)

## The rest of the ballot

Mayor of Buellton is one contest among the many a California voter decides on November 3, 2026 — Congress, the Legislature, county, city, and school board races differ by address. Vote or Else builds the full list for any California address and breaks down each contest the way this page does, with no account and without storing the address: https://voteorelse.com/

## How to cite this page

Vote or Else, "Mayor of Buellton — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/buellton-mayor (sources last retrieved September 1, 2026).

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