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City of California City · Statewide General Election

Mayor of California City

Draft candidate list — early preview until the state’s official list publishes on August 27, 2026.

This is one contest. Enter your address to see every race on your November ballot, and keep track of your picks.

On the ballot

This person leads California City, a 203-square-mile Kern County city of about 15,000 residents in the Mojave Desert: presides over City Council meetings, represents the city publicly, and casts one vote alongside the Council on ordinances, the budget, and land use, with day-to-day operations run by an appointed city manager. A 2-year term.

Incumbent Mayor Marquette Hawkins faces Isaac Barcelona -- who narrowly lost a City Council special election to a different opponent by just seven votes this past June and is now running for the city's top job instead.

California City is a 203-square-mile Kern County city of about 15,000 residents in the Mojave Desert. The Mayor presides over Council meetings, represents the city publicly, and casts one vote alongside the Council on ordinances, the budget, and land use, with day-to-day operations run by an appointed city manager. A 2-year term -- shorter than the Council's own 4-year seats.

The Council has had a turbulent stretch: two seats were vacated by resignation in mid-2025, one of which needed a special election this June to fill (Barcelona lost that race). Whoever wins the Mayor's seat inherits a Council still absorbing that turnover, plus an ongoing, contested fight over a CoreCivic-run immigration detention facility in the city that the Council voted to uphold in August 2026.

Marquette Hawkins

The incumbent Mayor, seeking reelection. He is confirmed still active in the role as of late August 2026, having proposed the Council's public-interview process (over a costlier special election or outright appointment) for filling two vacant council seats in 2025, and voting with the Council majority in August 2026 to uphold the city's CoreCivic detention-facility approvals.

Strengths

Incumbency, and a demonstrated preference for public process over closed-door appointment when the Council faced its 2025 vacancies.

Trade-offs

His own stated platform for this campaign is unconfirmed here: Mojave Desert News interviewed him Aug. 19, 2026, but the article itself was unreachable behind rate-limiting this session.

Keep in mind

He was on the winning side of a contested, high-profile Council vote (upholding CoreCivic's detention-facility approvals) just before this election -- a matter of public record voters can weigh for themselves.

Isaac Barcelona

A challenger with a very recent electoral track record: he ran for a California City Council seat in a June 2, 2026 special election and lost by just seven votes (510-503) to Shawn Bradley. He is now running for Mayor instead.

Strengths

A near-miss showing in his most recent race suggests real, if narrow, local support.

Trade-offs

No prior officeholding experience. His own stated platform is unconfirmed here: Mojave Desert News interviewed him Aug. 19, 2026, but the article was unreachable behind rate-limiting this session.

Keep in mind

Running for a second different office in the same year is not unusual for an engaged local candidate, but it does mean voters have no council record from him to evaluate, only a single close loss.

Source review: Strong (82/100) · 7 cited sources

Official records anchor this contest, with several source types checked for context.

  • turnto23.com (opens in a new tab)23ABC/KERO (turnto23.com), byline Sam Hoyle -- "Kern residents to weigh City Council elections in November 2026 General Election": a city-by-city roundup of every Kern County municipal race this cycle, citing the Kern County Elections website as its own source; names California City's four contests and all ten candidates -- Mayor (Marquette Hawkins, Incumbent, 2-year term, vs. Isaac Barcelona), At-Large Council (Ron Smith, Incumbent, vs. Jeanie O'Laughlin and Karina Perez), At-Large Council Short-Term (Dawn Ferguson, Elexis Shaw, John Fischer), and Treasurer (Keith Middleton, Incumbent, vs. Inishia White)
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia's California City, California article: 2020 census population 14,973; 203.70 square miles (third-largest city by land area in California); founded 1958 as a planned Mojave Desert community, incorporated 1965; infobox names Marq Hawkins as the sitting Mayor and Jim Creighton as Mayor Pro Tem
  • cal-access.sos.ca.gov (opens in a new tab)A negative-result campaign-finance search: California's Cal-Access candidate/filer search returned only an empty, unrenderable page for every query attempted this session, for all ten California City candidates -- the same recurring bot-detection failure mode documented elsewhere in this dataset. Documents the absence of a reachable financial-disclosure source for these four contests, not any candidate's actual finances
  • southkernsol.org (opens in a new tab)South Kern Sol -- "California Primary Election Results 2026" (June 3, 2026): its own results tally for "City of California City Councilmember" records Shawn Bradley defeating Isaac D. Barcelona 510-503 (50.35%-49.65%) in the June 2, 2026 special election for a vacated council seat -- independent confirmation that Barcelona is an active, named Cal City political figure ahead of his Nov. 2026 mayoral run, and that Bradley's seat is already resolved (not on this ballot)
  • southkernsol.org (opens in a new tab)South Kern Sol -- "California City Council Upholds CoreCivic Approvals After Hours of Public Testimony" (Aug. 26, 2026): its own vote-tally reporting names the sitting Council casting this vote -- Councilmember Della Clark, Councilmember Ronald Smith, Mayor Pro Tem Creighton, and Councilmember Hawkins voting yes, Councilmember Sean Bradley dissenting -- independently confirming Marquette Hawkins and Ron Smith both still active in their respective offices as of this date
  • news.google.com (opens in a new tab)Mojave Desert News (desertnews.com) -- Google News' own RSS index entry for "Interview with Calif. City Mayoral Candidate Marquette Hawkins" (published Aug. 19, 2026, 22:30 GMT): confirms the headline, outlet, and publication timestamp of a mayoral-candidate interview piece. The underlying desertnews.com article itself returned HTTP 429 (rate-limited) on every direct-fetch attempt this session, so only this indexed title/date/outlet is cited, not the interview's full text
  • news.google.com (opens in a new tab)Mojave Desert News (desertnews.com) -- Google News' own RSS index entry for "Interview with Calif. City Mayoral Candidate Issac Barcelona" (published Aug. 19, 2026, 22:00 GMT), run immediately before the Hawkins interview above: confirms the headline, outlet, and publication timestamp. The underlying desertnews.com article itself returned HTTP 429 (rate-limited) on every direct-fetch attempt this session, so only this indexed title/date/outlet is cited, not the interview's full text

Last updated September 1, 2026.