# Carpinteria City Council, District 3 Julia Mayer is running uncontested for Carpinteria City Council, District 3. Full ballot at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person would hold your district's seat on Carpinteria's five-member City Council. They vote on city laws, the budget, and land use. Carpinteria is a Santa Barbara County city of 13,264 residents. A professional city manager runs day-to-day operations. The council picks the Mayor and Vice Mayor from among its own members. Voters do not elect the Mayor or Vice Mayor directly. The term is four years. - Jurisdiction: City of Carpinteria - 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/carpinteria-council-3 - 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: 88 out of 100 (Strong), across 9 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology ## On the ballot - **Julia Mayer** — Incumbent A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot. Only one candidate qualified for Carpinteria's District 3 City Council seat: incumbent Julia Mayer. She runs unopposed on the November 3, 2026 ballot. This is one of Carpinteria's five City Council districts. Council members set city laws, the budget, and land use policy. Carpinteria is a Santa Barbara County beach town of 13,264 residents in the 2020 Census. A professional city manager runs the town day to day. The Mayor and Vice Mayor are not elected by voters. The Council picks them from its own members, usually for two-year terms. This seat carries a four-year term. No one else filed nomination papers for District 3 by the August 7, 2026 deadline. So the seat goes to the ballot uncontested rather than by council appointment. Mayer is on the city's certified candidate list for a November election. The seat was not filled under the state's cancel and appoint rule for under filled races. Voters still cast a ballot for her to formally elect her to the seat. ## Julia Mayer Julia Mayer is the district's incumbent; her approved ballot designation is "Incumbent." Her filed candidate statement describes her as a third-generation Carpinteria resident, a local business owner, and a mother of two. She says her time as a volunteer, community advocate, and Councilmember has shown her that Carpinteria's strength comes from thoughtful planning, strategic community investment, and commitment to quality of life, and names housing needs, environmental protection, essential services, and the city's budget as the challenges ahead, pledging to meet them with fiscal responsibility and clarity of purpose. Her own campaign site frames her candidacy around preserving Carpinteria's character for "a new generation of local leadership." **Strengths:** A full term's record as sitting Councilmember to run on, plus generational roots in Carpinteria as a third-generation resident. **Trade-offs:** With no opponent, this pass found no comparative reporting weighing her record against an alternative; the fiscal and community-investment claims in her statement are her own account. **Keep in mind:** An uncontested race still appears on the ballot and still requires a vote to be recorded as a Councilmember for the next term; there is no mechanism on this ballot to vote against her. ## Sources 1. [City of Carpinteria -- "CERTIFIED LIST OF CANDIDATES FOR CITY OF CARPINTERIA GENERAL MUNICIPAL ELECTION - NOVEMBER 3, 2026" (dated August 12, 2026; the city's website links this document under a later "WEBSITE Updated 08-28-26" filename, but its content is the same August 12 certified roster): three contests -- District 1 (Monica Solorzano vs. Aja Forner), District 3 (Julia Mayer, unopposed), and District 5 (Alexandra "Xy" VanAntwerp vs. Randy Carrasco) -- with each candidate's approved ballot designation and whether they filed a candidate statement](https://carpinteriaca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/City-of-Carpinteria-Certified-List-of-Candidates-Nov.-3-2026-WEBSITE-Updated-08-28-26.pdf) 2. [City of Carpinteria -- "NOTICE OF OFFICES AND NOMINATIONS" (posted August 4, 2026, signed by City Clerk/Elections Official Brian C. Barrett): confirms three City Council seats -- District Nos. 1, 3, and 5, each a full four-year term -- and states the District No. 5 incumbent is not seeking re-election, extending that district's nomination window to August 12, 2026](https://carpinteriaca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Notice-of-Offices-and-Nominations-2026.pdf) 3. [City of Carpinteria -- City Clerk / Elections page: confirms the November 3, 2026 General Municipal Election covers three Council seats (Districts 1, 3, 5), the nomination-period dates, and links the certified candidate list, notices, and district candidate-statement documents; states the City Clerk is the local filing officer for candidate campaign-disclosure reports but links no self-service filing portal, directing inquiries to the state FPPC generally](https://carpinteriaca.gov/city-hall/city-clerk/) 4. [City of Carpinteria -- City Council page: describes a 5-member, district-elected Council whose Mayor and Vice Mayor are "selected by their fellow Council members" and "customarily serve two-year terms" (not directly elected), and lists the current roster -- Mayor Natalia Alarcon (District 2, term ends Dec. 2028), Vice Mayor Monica Solorzano (District 1, term ends Dec. 2026), Al Clark (District 5, term ends Dec. 2026), Julia Mayer (District 3, term ends Dec. 2026), and Wade T. Nomura (District 4, term ends Dec. 2028) -- confirming which three districts are up this cycle and that Al Clark, not a certified candidate, is the retiring District 5 incumbent](https://carpinteriaca.gov/city-hall/citycouncil/) 5. [Wikipedia -- "Carpinteria, California": 2020 Census population (13,264) and independently corroborates Natalia Alarcon as Mayor; used narrowly for demographic/structural facts and does not cover the 2026 election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpinteria,_California) 6. [Coastal View News -- "November ballot set: Council races, sales tax" (Aug. 19, 2026): Carpinteria's own local paper independently confirms all three Council contests (District 1 and 5 contested, District 3 uncontested), summarizes each candidate's campaign framing, and reports a proposed quarter-cent sales-tax ballot measure (parked as a ballot measure per this dataset's measures-descoped policy, not built here)](https://www.coastalview.com/news/november-ballot-set-council-races-sales-tax/article_e41f9463-d6f7-4f6a-a1b7-827356db26d8.html) 7. [California Secretary of State CAL-ACCESS -- filer searches for all five Carpinteria candidates (Solorzano, Forner, Mayer, VanAntwerp, Carrasco): every query returned no extractable content, consistent with this dataset's documented pattern of Cal-Access blocking automated queries elsewhere this session; the session's live-browser fallback was disconnected throughout, so no in-browser retry was possible either](https://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Misc/filerSearch.aspx?SEARCH=Carpinteria+City+Council) 8. [City of Carpinteria -- District 3 Candidate Statement (filed under Elections Code 13307): Julia Mayer's filed statement, in her own words](https://carpinteriaca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/District-3-Candidate-Statements-Website.pdf) 9. [Julia Mayer's own campaign site (mayerforcouncil.com): independently corroborates her filed statement's framing -- third-generation Carpinteria resident, business owner, and community volunteer](https://www.mayerforcouncil.com) ## The rest of the ballot Carpinteria City Council, District 3 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, "Carpinteria City Council, District 3 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/carpinteria-council-3 (sources last retrieved September 1, 2026). Link the canonical page above rather than this Markdown file. Coverage is updated as the race develops, so quote it with its retrieval date.