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City of Eureka · Statewide General Election

Mayor of Eureka

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 would serve a 4-year term as Eureka's directly elected Mayor. Eureka (2020 population 26,512) is the county seat of Humboldt County and runs under a council-manager government: the Mayor presides over City Council meetings, represents the city, makes board/committee appointments with Council approval, and casts a tie-breaking vote, but does not set policy or run city departments -- that's the five-member Council's and the City Manager's job, respectively. The Mayor is elected separately from the Council's five ward seats.

Incumbent Mayor Kim Bergel seeks reelection against two challengers: electrician Casey Dresser and business owner/landlord Anil Dwivedi.

Eureka (2020 Census population 26,512) is the county seat of Humboldt County, incorporated in 1874. It runs under a council-manager government: a five-member City Council, elected one per ward, sets policy and adopts the budget, while a City Manager runs day-to-day operations. The Mayor is elected separately, citywide, to a 4-year term. Both Bergel and Dwivedi, in their own words, describe the office the same way: the Mayor presides over Council meetings, represents the city, makes appointments with Council approval, and casts a tie-breaking vote when the Council splits, but doesn't set policy or run departments -- a rare point of agreement between rivals.

All three candidates answered a wide range of voter-submitted questions through Lost Coast Outpost's LoCOElections tool, giving this race an unusually deep public record for a small city: street/pothole maintenance, the shopping-cart-fee ordinance, who should pay for aging sewer-lateral repairs, ALPR/Flock surveillance cameras, and how a Eureka mayor should handle federal immigration enforcement all came up repeatedly, and each candidate answered largely in their own words rather than through a press release.

Kim Bergel

Kim Bergel is the incumbent Mayor. She points to Measure H, a street-repair funding measure voters passed in November 2020 that she campaigned for, as her signature accomplishment: she says it's let the city spend roughly $3 million a year on street repaving, versus roughly $500,000 a year in patching before it, with Second Street's corridor slated for a full overhaul. She also describes an extensive, decade-plus volunteer record predating her time in office -- outreach during the Palco Marsh homeless-encampment closure, regular shifts at St. Vincent de Paul, trail cleanups with the PacOut Green Team, and roughly a decade volunteering with holiday programs for unhoused residents -- alongside her current co-chair roles on the Humboldt County Association of Governments and the Community Access Project Eureka, and a Mayor's Mental Health Initiative she created that has run seven town halls with DHHS, NAMI, and Crisis Intervention Team partners.

Strengths

A concrete funding win -- Measure H funds roughly $3 million/year in street repaving -- and a decade-plus volunteer record in homelessness and mental-health services, both opponents' priorities too.

Trade-offs

As incumbent, she owns the city's current infrastructure backlog and the practices opponents criticize, including sewer-lateral costs and a narrow 3-2 street-realignment vote.

Keep in mind

She describes the Mayor's office as holding limited formal power -- presiding, tie-breaking, a veto -- rather than setting policy, an account Dwivedi's own answer independently matches almost point for point.

Casey Dresser

Casey Dresser is an electrician making her first run for office. Her platform centers on reordering the city's priorities: she argues homelessness, crime, and blight should come before what she calls "vanity projects," citing the C/G Street bike-boulevard plan, which she notes passed the City Council on a narrow 3-2 vote. She calls the shopping-cart-fee ordinance unfair to the businesses whose carts are stolen, and calls the city's practice of billing individual homeowners for aging sewer-lateral repairs "embarrassing" mismanagement she says she'd end. She describes using multiple ways of getting around Eureka herself -- driving, walking, biking, and the bus -- and relayed a friend's account of poor sidewalk infrastructure for mobility-scooter users.

Strengths

Specific, pointed critiques of named city practices -- sewer-lateral billing, the shopping-cart fee -- rather than general complaints, plus firsthand attention to how residents get around the city.

Trade-offs

No prior elected or appointed civic experience was found this pass; her platform leans more toward critiquing the current council's choices than laying out a detailed alternative.

Keep in mind

The bike-boulevard vote she criticizes already has two City Council votes against it on record -- she's siding with the minority position from that same council, not proposing something untested in Eureka's own politics.

Anil Dwivedi

Anil Dwivedi, 36, is a business owner running "Solutions, Not Politics. Leadership Through Action." He became a U.S. citizen only within roughly the last decade and says he was once homeless, sleeping under a parked car; he now owns an apartment building he says houses more than 40 extremely low-income tenants at an average out-of-pocket cost near $300 a month, including most utilities. His platform includes a mayoral-salary pledge, a 12-month homelessness action plan, and a call for public debate with his opponents; he strongly opposes Flock/Axon ALPR cameras on Fourth Amendment and mass-surveillance grounds, and says Eureka police shouldn't act as federal immigration agents while also not obstructing lawful federal operations. He also calls for revising the shopping-cart-fee ordinance and the sewer-lateral cost policy, and, on his own campaign site, for downtown/Old Town revitalization and activating the Bayshore Mall.

Strengths

The most extensively documented candidate in this race -- he answered nearly every voter question, including pointed ones -- and a concrete record housing 40+ low-income tenants before his candidacy.

Trade-offs

As a landlord, he's publicly answered a "slumlord" label and a lawsuit tied to a disputed rent-increase notice; this dataset couldn't verify the case, so it repeats only his own disputed account.

Keep in mind

His answers on the landlord dispute and on immigration enforcement are the most legally and politically charged in the field -- voters weighing him on those points should read his full, direct responses rather than a summary.

Source review: Strong (81/100) · 9 cited sources

Official records anchor this contest, with several source types checked for context; advocacy or endorsement sources are treated as attributed perspective.

Review note: Anil Dwivedi's own 2026 campaign website ("Solutions, Not Politics. Leadership Through Action."): platform planks on economic development (retaining and attracting businesses, retailers, and restaurants), downtown/Old Town revitalization and activating the Bayshore Mall, and fiscal transparency; self-described as self-published, self-description attributed in text, not an independent evaluation of it. may have more bias because it is an advocacy voter guide compared to other formal government and nonprofit journalism sources.

  • humboldtgov.org (opens in a new tab)Humboldt County Office of Elections -- "Qualified Candidate List - City Contests": the certified, signature-qualified roster for Eureka's Mayor and Council Wards 1, 3, and 5, each candidate's filed occupation/designation, and incumbency.
  • humboldtgov.org (opens in a new tab)Humboldt County Office of Elections -- "2026 [General Election] Candidate Openings" (7-page pre-filing PDF): confirms Ferndale Mayor is a 1-seat, 2-year term (2027-2029) and Ferndale City Council is a 2-seat, 4-year term (2027-2031); separately confirms Eureka's four seat openings (Mayor plus Council Wards 1, 3, and 5, each a 4-year term), with Wards 2 and 4 not up this cycle.
  • eurekaca.gov (opens in a new tab)City of Eureka -- its own "Meet the Mayor and Council" page: Kim Bergel as Mayor, G Mario Fernandez as Ward 3 Councilmember, and Renee Contreras-DeLoach (not a 2026 candidate) as sitting Ward 5 Councilmember, confirming that race is an open seat.
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia, "Eureka, California": used narrowly for the 2020 Census population (26,512), the Feb. 19, 1874 incorporation date, county-seat status, and the council-manager/five-ward structure.
  • lostcoastoutpost.com (opens in a new tab)Lost Coast Outpost, LoCOElections -- Kim Bergel's candidate page and her direct answers on street funding (Measure H), the shopping-cart ordinance, the council-manager structure, and her volunteer/civic record.
  • lostcoastoutpost.com (opens in a new tab)Lost Coast Outpost, LoCOElections -- Casey Dresser's candidate page and her direct answers on street realignment, the shopping-cart ordinance, sewer-lateral costs, and transportation.
  • lostcoastoutpost.com (opens in a new tab)Lost Coast Outpost, LoCOElections -- Anil Dwivedi's candidate page and his direct answers across more than a dozen voter-submitted questions, including his personal history, his rental housing, ALPR cameras, immigration enforcement, and his own disputed account of a landlord-tenant lawsuit.
  • anilforeureka.com (opens in a new tab)Anil Dwivedi's own 2026 campaign website: platform planks on economic development, downtown/Old Town revitalization, and fiscal transparency. Self-published, attributed in text.
  • cal-access.sos.ca.gov (opens in a new tab)A negative-result access check: California's statewide Cal-Access campaign-finance filer/candidate search returned no usable content on direct fetch for any of the seven built Eureka candidates; no City of Eureka campaign-finance/FPPC-filings page could be located this pass either.

Last updated September 2, 2026.