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City of Gilroy · Statewide General Election

Gilroy City Council, District 4

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 would hold your district's seat on Gilroy's City Council: city ordinances, the budget, and land use in this Santa Clara County city of about 59,500, alongside the separately elected Mayor (Greg Bozzo, not on this ballot) and five other district-elected council members. A 4-year term. This is Gilroy's first district-based council election -- Districts 1, 2, 3 and the Mayor's seat are up in 2028.

Two candidates are running for Gilroy's District 4 City Council seat: Diana Sanchez Bentz and Fred Tovar. Neither is the district's sitting officeholder -- this is a new, single-member district on the ballot for the first time.

The winner serves a four-year term on Gilroy's seven-member City Council (six district members plus a separately, at-large elected Mayor): city ordinances, the budget, and land use in this Santa Clara County city of about 59,500. This is Gilroy's first-ever district council election -- the city adopted its six-district map (Map F) in May 2025 after a California Voting Rights Act legal notice, moving off a fully at-large council. Districts 1, 2, 3, and the Mayor's seat aren't up until 2028.

District 4 has no incumbent on the ballot: neither candidate currently holds the seat, since it's being filled by direct election for the first time. Fred Tovar is a comeback candidate with a documented record from three separate past local offices; Diana Sanchez Bentz has never held elected office but has a long civic-commission record. The choice is between Tovar's return to elected office and Sanchez Bentz's first bid for one.

Fred Tovar

Fred Tovar has more than 20 years of Gilroy public service, per his own account: prior terms on the Gilroy City Council, the Gilroy Unified School District Board, and the San Jose/Evergreen Community College Board -- none of which he currently holds. On the council, he says he prioritized public safety, downtown revitalization, small-business support, and fiscal stewardship, and credits himself with championing Gilroy's downtown pop-up park and lighting upgrades, establishing Farm Workers Day, helping open a school health clinic, and pushing for School Resource Officers in local schools. In 2025 he received the Gilroy Police Officers' Association's Stanley P. Delvin Award and says he earned that group's and the IAFF Local 2805 Gilroy Firefighters Association's endorsement during his earlier council service; his 2026 campaign site adds a fresh, unanimous 2026 endorsement from the Gilroy Police Officers' Association. His stated 2026 priorities are public and traffic safety near schools, small-business support and downtown revitalization, infrastructure repair, responsible growth, and youth investment through city-schools-college partnerships.

Strengths

A documented three-office record of prior local public service, a 2025 police-association award, and endorsements from both the police officers' and firefighters' associations.

Trade-offs

All of his cited accomplishments are from past terms he no longer holds; no independent news coverage in this pass evaluates his prior council tenure itself, only his current candidacy.

Keep in mind

A comeback candidate with a long record gives you more to evaluate than a first-time candidate, but it's still worth asking directly why he left each of his three prior seats and what changed since.

Diana Sanchez Bentz

Diana Sanchez Bentz is a 32-year resident of District 4 and a first-time candidate for elected office. She has worked as a paralegal for nearly 40 years, currently in the Office of General Counsel at a global law firm, and lists a substantial civic record short of elected office: seven years on Gilroy's Open Government Commission (serving as chair and vice chair), a 2021 term on the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury, a seat on the Mt. Madonna YMCA board, and executive-board involvement with the After-Hours Rotary Club. Her stated priorities are open government and transparency, public safety, conditions at Alexander Station, practical solutions for the unhoused population, infrastructure upgrades (flooding, crosswalks, erosion), small-business support, fiscal responsibility, and parks maintenance. No endorsement was found for her in this pass.

Strengths

Seven years chairing a city oversight commission and a Civil Grand Jury term are a genuine, if non-elected, public-service record, distinct from Tovar's prior officeholding.

Trade-offs

No endorsement from any organization was found in this pass, and she has never held elected office, so there's no voting record to evaluate.

Keep in mind

Her Open Government Commission service gives her direct, if appointed rather than elected, experience with how the city works -- worth weighing against Tovar's direct elected-office experience on its own terms.

Source review: Strong (84/100) · 12 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: Diana Sanchez Bentz's own campaign site (dianafromgilroyforgilroy.com), self-description attributed in text: 32-year District 4 resident, nearly 40 years as a paralegal, and civic-service record (Open Government Commission, Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury 2021, Mt. Madonna YMCA board). and Fred Tovar's own campaign site (votefredtovar.com), self-description attributed in text: cites a 2026 unanimous Gilroy Police Officers' Association endorsement and restates his prior council/school-board/community-college-board service. may have more bias because they are advocacy voter guides compared to other formal government and nonprofit journalism sources.

  • cityofgilroy.org (opens in a new tab)City of Gilroy -- "Elections & Voter Information" page (cityofgilroy.org/362): November 3, 2026 General Municipal Election overview, nomination-period and candidate-statement review-period dates, and the full qualified roster for Districts 4, 5, and 6, each name linked to that candidate's own filed Candidate Statement PDF.
  • cityofgilroy.org (opens in a new tab)City of Gilroy -- official "Notice of Election," signed by City Clerk/Elections Official Kim Mancera (dated Jun. 19, 2026): confirms exactly three offices this cycle -- one Member of the City Council from each of Districts 4, 5, and 6, each a full four-year term -- states the Jul. 13-Aug. 7, 2026 nomination period (extendable to Aug. 12 for a non-incumbent's office if an incumbent doesn't file), and cites Elections Code Section 10229 as the mechanism for filling a seat by appointment if it draws one or zero candidates.
  • cityofgilroy.org (opens in a new tab)City of Gilroy -- "District-Based Elections" page: confirms the city adopted "Map F" as its official six-district council map on May 19, 2025, transitioning from an at-large council (plus a directly elected, at-large Mayor) in response to a California Voting Rights Act legal notice received in December 2024; Districts 4, 5, and 6 elect in 2026, Districts 1, 2, 3, and the Mayor's seat in 2028.
  • cityofgilroy.org (opens in a new tab)City of Gilroy -- "City Council" page: names the sitting seven-member body -- Mayor Greg Bozzo (term exp. Dec. 2028), Mayor Pro Tempore Zach Hilton (2028), and Council Members Dion Bracco, Tom Cline, and Carol Marques (each term exp. Dec. 2026) and Terence Fugazzi and Kelly Ramirez (each 2028) -- confirming Cline as the only one of the three members whose terms expire this cycle who appears on the qualified candidate roster.
  • gilroydispatch.com (opens in a new tab)Gilroy Dispatch -- "Candidates throw hats into the ring for Gilroy council, school board election," read in full: confirms the full qualified Districts 4/5/6 roster (Fred Tovar and Diana Sanchez Bentz in District 4; Tom Cline, Joseph Garcia, and Christina Tovar in District 5; Elizabeth Bracco, Rebeca Armendariz, and Brad Starks in District 6), independently flags Cline as incumbent and Tovar and Armendariz as former councilmembers, and reports this is Gilroy's first by-district council election, adopted in 2025 to address a potential CVRA violation.
  • gilroydispatch.com (opens in a new tab)Gilroy Dispatch -- "Crowded field runs for three Gilroy City Council seats," read in full: reconfirms the same Districts 4/5/6 roster after the nomination period closed, independently identifies Elizabeth Bracco as the daughter of retiring Councilmember Dion Bracco, and quotes Bracco on the record -- "I think it's my turn to step aside. I think it's time for a younger generation to step up and take over" -- on his decision not to seek reelection after 21 years; also reports that fellow term-expiring Councilmember Carol Marques is not seeking reelection and declined to comment.
  • cal-access.sos.ca.gov (opens in a new tab)This dataset's own documented record of a dedicated, unsuccessful attempt to retrieve Gilroy City Council campaign-finance filings: California's Cal-Access filer search (cal-access.sos.ca.gov) returned only an Incapsula bot-detection interstitial for every query attempted in this pass (via both WebFetch and direct curl), with no live browser session available in this worktree to work around it; the city's own website sitemap carries no campaign-finance-disclosure or NetFile/eFile page. Documents the absence of a reachable financial-disclosure source for this contest, not any candidate's actual finances.
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia -- "Gilroy, California": 2020 census population 59,520; council-manager form of government (Mayor Greg Bozzo, City Administrator Brad Kilger, per the article as retrieved).
  • cityofgilroy.org (opens in a new tab)Diana Sanchez Bentz's own filed Candidate Statement (District 4), self-authored and filed with the City Clerk; quoted and attributed in text.
  • cityofgilroy.org (opens in a new tab)Fred Tovar's own filed Candidate Statement (District 4), self-authored and filed with the City Clerk; quoted and attributed in text.
  • dianafromgilroyforgilroy.com (opens in a new tab)Diana Sanchez Bentz's own campaign site (dianafromgilroyforgilroy.com), self-description attributed in text: 32-year District 4 resident, nearly 40 years as a paralegal, and civic-service record (Open Government Commission, Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury 2021, Mt. Madonna YMCA board).
  • votefredtovar.com (opens in a new tab)Fred Tovar's own campaign site (votefredtovar.com), self-description attributed in text: cites a 2026 unanimous Gilroy Police Officers' Association endorsement and restates his prior council/school-board/community-college-board service.

Last updated August 31, 2026.