# Fullerton City Council, District 5 Compare records and positions simply between Oscar Valadez, David Fischbein, or Jozef Maldonado for Fullerton City Council, District 5 at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person holds your district's seat on Fullerton's City Council. The council has five members. They vote on city ordinances, the budget, and land use. An appointed city manager runs day to day operations. Fullerton has no separately elected Mayor. The council elects a Mayor from its own members each year. It also elects a Mayor Pro Tem the same way. Not all five council districts are elected in the same year. Only Districts 3 and 5 are up in 2026. The term is four years. - Jurisdiction: City of Fullerton - 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/fullerton-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: 84 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 - **Oscar Valadez** — Fullerton Commissioner/Businessowner - **David Fischbein** — Quality Assurance Inspector - **Jozef Maldonado** — Chemist A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot. Three candidates -- Oscar Valadez, David Fischbein, and Jozef Maldonado -- are running for Fullerton City Council District 5's open seat. Incumbent Ahmad Zahra did not file for re-election. Whichever candidate gets the most votes on November 3 wins outright; there's no runoff. This person holds District 5's seat on Fullerton'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. Fullerton is a general-law city with no separately, citywide-elected Mayor -- the council elects a Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem from among its own members each year. Not all five council districts are elected the same year; only Districts 3 and 5 are up in 2026. The term is four years. This is Fullerton's only open council seat in 2026 -- the other race, District 3, has an incumbent on the ballot. Beyond each candidate's own filed occupation, no campaign site, news coverage, or other independent source could be found for any of the three despite a real, per-candidate search effort -- the city's own site is bot-gated against direct fetch, Ballotpedia and Voice of OC returned no usable content for this race, OC Register was unreachable, and this session's WebSearch budget was already exhausted before any query-based search for this city could run. A guessed Wikipedia page for outgoing incumbent Ahmad Zahra also 404'd, so no independent account of why he didn't file for re-election could be confirmed. Documented below as a gap, not filled in with speculation. ## Oscar Valadez Filed their candidacy under the ballot designation "Fullerton Commissioner/Businessowner," indicating current service on one of the city's boards or commissions. No campaign site, news coverage, or other independent source confirming which commission or describing their business background or platform could be found in this pass despite a real search effort. **Strengths:** Their filed designation indicates current city-commission service, suggesting some existing familiarity with Fullerton's governance and processes. **Trade-offs:** No campaign statement or platform was found in this pass, so voters have no confirmed sense of their priorities beyond their listed designation. **Keep in mind:** No CAL-ACCESS record was checked for their campaign in this pass -- see Financial info. ## David Fischbein Filed their candidacy under the ballot designation "Quality Assurance Inspector." 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:** A quality-assurance background suggests attention to process and standards that could carry over to municipal oversight work. **Trade-offs:** No campaign statement or platform was found in this pass, so voters have no confirmed sense of their priorities beyond their listed occupation. **Keep in mind:** No CAL-ACCESS record was checked for their campaign in this pass -- see Financial info. ## Jozef Maldonado Filed their candidacy under the ballot designation "Chemist." 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:** A scientific/technical background is a different professional lens than the other two candidates in this race. **Trade-offs:** No campaign statement or platform was found in this pass, so voters have no confirmed sense of their priorities beyond their listed occupation. **Keep in mind:** No CAL-ACCESS record was checked for their campaign in this pass -- see Financial info. ## Sources 1. [OC Registrar of Voters -- Contest/Candidate Proof List, General Election 11/3/2026 -- City of Fullerton section (pages 92-94 of 188): confirms City Council District 3 (2 qualified candidates) and District 5 (3) as the city's two November 2026 races, each Vote for 1, with incumbent flags and every candidate's filed ballot designation](https://ocvote.gov/fileadmin/user_upload/data/candlog/GEN2026/candlog.pdf) 2. [Wikipedia's Fullerton, California article, government section: confirms Fullerton is a general-law, council-manager city with a 5-member, non-partisan City Council on staggered 4-year terms and no directly elected Mayor -- the council elects a chair who serves as Mayor (currently Fred Jung, with Nick Dunlap as Mayor Pro Tem) -- and that the city moved from at-large to five-district council elections after voters approved Measure II in 2016; also confirms Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles as sitting councilmembers, corroborating the county document's incumbency flags for Districts 5 and 3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullerton,_California) ## The rest of the ballot Fullerton 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, "Fullerton City Council, District 5 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/fullerton-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.