# Fremont City Council, District 3

Compare records and positions simply between Kathy Kimberlin or Vipin Sharma for Fremont City Council, District 3 at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person would hold one of six district seats on the Fremont City Council. Fremont is Alameda County's largest city, with about 230,000 residents. Fremont also has a separately elected, citywide Mayor. An appointed City Manager runs the council-manager government. The term is four years. Whichever candidate gets the most votes wins. Fremont does not use ranked-choice voting.

- Jurisdiction: City of Fremont
- 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/fremont-council-district-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: October 7, 2026
- Source-objectivity score: 84 out of 100 (Strong), across 6 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology

## On the ballot

- **Kathy Kimberlin** — County Field Director · Incumbent
- **Vipin Sharma** — Senior Engineering Manager

A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot.

Incumbent Kathy Kimberlin faces one challenger for Fremont's District 3 seat, the Centerville council seat. The challenger is senior engineering manager Vipin Sharma.

This person would hold one of six district seats on the Fremont City Council -- Alameda County's largest city, with about 230,000 residents -- alongside a separately, citywide-elected Mayor, under a council-manager government with an appointed City Manager. The term is four years. Whichever candidate gets the most votes wins; no ranked-choice voting is documented for Fremont.

The county's own candidate-filing system marks Kimberlin's "Incumbent" field "N," the same self-report quirk this dataset has found unreliable elsewhere in Alameda County -- Fremont's own city government page independently confirms she is the sitting District 3 councilmember. NetFile's committee records show Kimberlin has run for this seat before, with committees on file dating back to 2016.

## Kathy Kimberlin

Kathy Kimberlin has lived in Fremont's Centerville neighborhood for more than 40 years. She began volunteering as a Fremont Unified parent for eight years. She later co-founded the Tri-City Non-Profit Coalition. She served as president of the Fremont Education Foundation. She is a past president of the Centerville Business & Community Association. She also spent 12 years on the Fremont Chamber of Commerce's Government Affairs Committee, reviewing legislative proposals. As District 3's councilmember she cites working with city staff on neighborhood design guidelines for the Glenmoor area. She also cites the Centerville Unified Site collaboration between residents and a developer. Professionally, she is the Fremont Field Director for Alameda County Supervisor David Haubert of District 1. She coordinates resources for Fremont's small businesses, seniors, the unhoused, and uninsured residents. In her Vote411 questionnaire she describes bringing resources to small businesses, nonprofits, youth and senior services and support for the unhoused through her county role. She says she has made progress on traffic, homelessness, business support and public safety since her appointment to the council in 2024.

Her three stated priorities are small businesses and nonprofits, connecting them to resources and city staff; growth, traffic and public safety, including meeting with developers on projects and working with police on public education; and the unhoused and underserved, through regional collaboration and support for the Fremont Family Resource Center. She says she is working to bring back study sessions where the council and residents talk back and forth. On budget cuts she says first responders and road maintenance would come last, capital projects could be paused, and reserves would be a last resort. Her zoning change would allow RV camps, low-income shelters and transitional housing to be sited in industrial zones.

**Strengths:** Decades of Centerville civic and nonprofit leadership. By her account, she has worked on traffic, business support and homelessness collaboration since joining the council in 2024.

**Trade-offs:** Her day job as a county supervisor's field director is a different level of government than her council seat. Her one zoning change would allow RV camps and shelters in industrial areas.

**Keep in mind:** Her H1 2026 fundraising was funded in part by a $5,000 loan from her husband, a filed disclosure that says little about her donor base. Her account of progress on traffic and safety is self-reported.

## Vipin Sharma

Vipin Sharma's ballot designation is Senior Engineering Manager. Their campaign committee, filed under the name "vipin4fremont," has so far filed only a Form 501 candidate-intention statement (Aug. 3, 2026); no Form 460 disclosing contributions or spending was on file for them as of the latest filings available, and no independent biography or news coverage was found beyond their ballot designation. In their Vote411 questionnaire they describe more than twenty years in Fremont and over three decades in engineering and technology, now in site reliability engineering and cybersecurity. They list degrees in electronics and communications engineering as well as applied physics and physics, and says they attend council meetings and speaks with residents.

Their three stated priorities are safe neighborhoods, covering crime, traffic safety, emergency response and homelessness programs judged by whether people reach stable housing; financial stewardship, meaning asking what problem each expense solves and how results will be measured; and smart growth, which weighs new housing against traffic, parking, schools and other services. Sharma says they would involve residents earlier and explain proposals in plain language. If cuts were needed, they would protect police, fire and street maintenance and examine administrative overhead and consulting costs first. Their zoning change would study how completed developments actually use parking and set discretionary standards from that.

**Strengths:** A private-sector engineering-management career, distinct from the incumbent's nonprofit one. By their account, over three decades in technology and a results-measuring approach.

**Trade-offs:** They have no fundraising record yet and no council experience. Their answers stress measuring and studying results more than naming specific projects.

**Keep in mind:** A Form 501 without a Form 460 is an early filing that discloses no contributions or spending. Their work history, degrees and meeting attendance are their own account.

## Sources

1. [Alameda County Registrar of Voters -- official Candidate List system (electionId 260, "General Election - 11/03/2026 (Official)"), queried directly via its own JSON API (GET /rov_app/racelist/260/600) for the City category: names all three Fremont races (raceIds 115-117) -- For Member Of City Council #2/#3/#4, Fremont -- alongside the other 43 Alameda County city races countywide, and confirms Fremont has no mayoral race this cycle.](https://www.alamedacountyca.gov/rov_app/candidatelist)
2. [Alameda County Registrar of Voters -- official Candidate List system, queried directly via its own POST-based HTML API (POST /rov_app/candidatelist/) for all three Fremont races, each flagged "Vote For: 1" and "On Ballot": For Member Of City Council #2 -- Desrie Campbell ("Councilmember/Healthcare Director") and Keith Parker ("Marketing Director"); #3 -- Kathy Kimberlin ("County Field Director") and Vipin Sharma ("Senior Engineering Manager"); #4 -- Aziz Akbari ("Director, Alameda County Water District"), Ying Min Li ("Small Business Owner"), Anurag Mishra ("Technical Leader"), and Manisha Pathak ("Educator/Nonprofit Executive"). The system's own "Incumbent" detail field reads "N" for every candidate including Campbell and Kimberlin, who Fremont's own city government page confirms are sitting councilmembers -- this dataset does not treat that field as reliable.](https://www.alamedacountyca.gov/rov_app/candidatelist/)
3. [City of Fremont -- "Mayor & City Council" page, read via the Internet Archive's July 23, 2026 snapshot after fremont.gov itself returned HTTP 403 to every direct fetch attempted in this pass: names every sitting councilmember by district -- Teresa Keng (District 1), Desrie Campbell (District 2), Kathy Kimberlin (District 3), Yang Shao (District 4), Vice Mayor Yajing Zhang (District 5), and Raymond Liu (District 6) -- plus Mayor Raj Salwan, sworn in December 2024. Independently confirms Campbell and Kimberlin as genuine incumbents in their Nov. 2026 races and that Yang Shao, not a candidate for reelection, is the outgoing District 4 officeholder.](https://web.archive.org/web/20260723041152/https://www.fremont.gov/government/mayor-city-council)
4. [City of Fremont's own NetFile-hosted public campaign-finance portal (agency code FRE), queried directly via its own QuickNameSearch and filings/byFiler|byCandidate JSON API for every 2026 city council candidate, with each located candidate's actual H1 2026 FPPC Form 460 (or, where none existed, the most recent filing on record) downloaded directly via the portal's own CampaignDocuments/download endpoint and read for its real reported totals. Desrie Campbell (D2) $800 raised / $40 spent; Keith Parker (D2) no 2026 committee, only a 2022 one; Kathy Kimberlin (D3) $200 raised / $1,966.08 spent, including a $5,000 loan from her husband; Vipin Sharma (D3) only a Form 501 on file, no Form 460; Aziz Akbari (D4) $288 raised / $10.09 spent plus $1,107 in accrued unpaid bills; Ying-Min Li (D4) $50,060.88 in monetary contributions plus $80,000 in loans from Li herself / $13,932.33 spent, including an $850 contribution from sitting District 4 Councilmember Yang Shao; Manisha Pathak (D4) $4,091 raised / $1,395.06 spent; Anurag Mishra (D4) no campaign committee located.](https://netfile.com/public/fremont/campaign)
5. [Wikipedia's Fremont, California article -- 2020 census population (230,504), the fourth most populous city in the Bay Area and the largest in Alameda County; also lists the current City Council roster by name, used only as a secondary cross-check against the city's own page.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont,_California)
6. [League of Women Voters -- Vote411 voter guide, 'City of Fremont City Council Member, District 3' race (statewide All Races list): each candidate's self-submitted ballot designation and campaign contacts, plus answers to the League's questions -- If elected, what are your top 3 priorities?; What background, experience and/or education qualify you for this elected office?; How would you change things to increase residents' input into the city's decision making process?; Governing is about managing limited resources. If you have to cut the city budget, what programs or services would you prioritize saving, and which would you cut?; If you could alter or update one element of our city's zoning code to improve the community, what would it be? Answers on file from Kathy Kimberlin, Vipin Sharma. Capture in data/nov-2026/sources/vote411/fremont-council-district-3.json.](https://www.vote411.org/plan-your-vote)

## The rest of the ballot

Fremont 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, "Fremont City Council, District 3 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/fremont-council-district-3 (sources last retrieved October 7, 2026).

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