# Cypress City Council, District 5 Compare records and positions simply between Randy Harper or Rachel Strong Carnahan for Cypress City Council, District 5 at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person holds your district's seat on Cypress's five-member City Council. They vote on city laws, the budget, and land use. An appointed city manager runs daily operations. Cypress has no separately elected mayor. The council picks one member as Mayor. It picks 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. The term is four years. - Jurisdiction: City of Cypress - 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/cypress-council-5 - 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: August 31, 2026 - Source-objectivity score: 82 out of 100 (Strong), across 2 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology ## On the ballot - **Randy Harper** — Emergency Manager/Firefighter - **Rachel Strong Carnahan** — Appointed Council Member · Incumbent A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot. 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. They vote on 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. The term is four years. Carnahan is a sitting Cypress councilmember who joined the council by appointment, per their 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 their appointment or which vacancy they 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 their own filed ballot designation and confirmed by the city's current council roster. No campaign site, official city biography, or news coverage describing their 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 Carnahan. **Strengths:** Sitting-councilmember experience, so a known quantity to the extent Carnahan's prior council votes are on the public record. **Trade-offs:** Carnahan has not yet won election to this seat themselves -- their 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 their candidacy under the ballot designation "Emergency Manager/Firefighter." No campaign site, news coverage, or other independent source describing their 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 Harper's priorities beyond their listed occupation. 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. ## Sources 1. [OC Registrar of Voters — Contest/Candidate Proof List, General Election 11/3/2026 (169 contests, 430 candidates filed)](https://ocvote.gov/fileadmin/user_upload/data/candlog/GEN2026/candlog.pdf) 2. [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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress,_California) ## The rest of the ballot Cypress City Council, District 5 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, "Cypress City Council, District 5 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/cypress-council-5 (sources last retrieved August 31, 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.