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City of Cypress · Statewide General Election

Cypress City Council, District 5

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 holds your district's seat on Cypress's 5-member City Council: city ordinances, the budget, and land use, alongside an appointed city manager who runs day-to-day operations. Cypress has no separately elected mayor -- the council chooses one of its own members as Mayor and another as Mayor Pro Tem. Only Districts 1, 2, and 5 have terms expiring this cycle; Districts 3 and 4 are not on the ballot. A 4-year term.

Incumbent Rachel Strong Carnahan faces Randy Harper for Cypress City Council District 5. Whichever candidate gets the most votes on November 3 wins outright; there's no runoff.

This person holds District 5's seat on Cypress's 5-member City Council: city ordinances, the budget, and land use, alongside an appointed city manager who runs day-to-day operations. Cypress has no separately elected mayor -- the council chooses one of its own members as Mayor and another as Mayor Pro Tem. Only Districts 1, 2, and 5 have terms expiring this cycle. A 4-year term.

Carnahan is a sitting Cypress councilmember who joined the council by appointment, per her own filed ballot designation ('Appointed Council Member') and independently confirmed by Wikipedia's current roster for the city -- though this dataset has no source giving the date of her appointment or which vacancy she filled. Beyond that, no independent profile, platform statement, or news coverage was found for either candidate in this pass despite a real, time-boxed search effort -- documented below as a gap, not filled in with speculation.

Rachel Strong Carnahan

A sitting Cypress City Councilmember who reached the council by appointment rather than election, per her own filed ballot designation and confirmed by the city's current council roster. No campaign site, official city biography, or news coverage describing her background, appointment date, or platform could be reached in this pass -- Cypress's own city site returned an access error on every attempt, and neither the Orange County Register nor Voice of OC turned up coverage of her.

Strengths

Sitting-councilmember experience, so a known quantity to the extent her prior council votes are on the public record.

Trade-offs

She has not yet won election to this seat herself -- her only route to office so far was appointment, not a vote of District 5 residents.

Keep in mind

CAL-ACCESS's filer-search tool returned no usable content on a direct fetch attempt -- see Financial info.

Randy Harper

Filed his candidacy under the ballot designation "Emergency Manager/Firefighter." No campaign site, news coverage, or other independent source describing his background or platform could be found in this pass despite a real search effort.

Strengths

An emergency-management and firefighting background suggests direct, practical familiarity with the city's public-safety needs.

Trade-offs

No campaign statement or platform was found in this pass, so voters have no confirmed sense of his priorities beyond his listed occupation, and no record of prior elected office was found either.

Keep in mind

CAL-ACCESS's filer-search tool returned no usable content on a direct fetch attempt -- see Financial info.

Source review: Strong (82/100) · 2 cited sources

Official records anchor this contest, with a narrow source base.

  • ocvote.gov (opens in a new tab)OC Registrar of Voters — Contest/Candidate Proof List, General Election 11/3/2026 (169 contests, 430 candidates filed)
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — Cypress, California article: cited only for the current City Council roster (Mayor Leo Medrano, Mayor Pro Tem Kyle Chang, Council Members David Burke, Bonnie Peat, and Rachel Strong Carnahan) confirming which three of the county's Nov. 2026 candidates are sitting incumbents; not relied on for the article's own prose description of the city's election method, which appears to predate the county's Nov. 2026 candidate document's by-district contests

Last updated August 31, 2026.