# Gilroy City Council, District 4

Compare records and positions simply between Diana Sanchez Bentz or Fred Tovar for Gilroy City Council, District 4 at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person would hold your district's seat on Gilroy's City Council. They vote on city ordinances, the budget, and land use. Gilroy is a Santa Clara County city of about 59,500 people. The Mayor, Greg Bozzo, is elected separately and is not on this ballot. Five other members are elected by district. The term is four years. This is Gilroy's first district-based council election. Districts 1, 2, 3 and the Mayor's seat are up in 2028.

- Jurisdiction: City of Gilroy
- 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/gilroy-council-4
- 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 12 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology

## On the ballot

- **Diana Sanchez Bentz**
- **Fred Tovar**

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

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). They vote on 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 their 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 they currently hold. On the council, Tovar says they prioritized public safety, downtown revitalization, small-business support, and fiscal stewardship, and credit themselves 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 Tovar received the Gilroy Police Officers' Association's Stanley P. Delvin Award and says they earned that group's and the IAFF Local 2805 Gilroy Firefighters Association's endorsement during their earlier council service; their 2026 campaign site adds a fresh, unanimous 2026 endorsement from the Gilroy Police Officers' Association. Their 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 Tovar's cited accomplishments are from past terms they no longer hold; no independent news coverage in this pass evaluates their prior council tenure itself, only their 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 they left each of their 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. They have worked as a paralegal for nearly 40 years, currently in the Office of General Counsel at a global law firm, and list 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. Their 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 them 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 they have never held elected office, so there's no voting record to evaluate.

**Keep in mind:** Their Open Government Commission service gives them 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.

## Review notes

- 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.

## Sources

1. [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.](https://www.cityofgilroy.org/362/Elections-Voter-Information)
2. [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.](https://www.cityofgilroy.org/DocumentCenter/View/20661/NOTICE-OF-ELECTION)
3. [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.](https://www.cityofgilroy.org/1069/District-Based-Elections)
4. [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.](https://www.cityofgilroy.org/341/City-Council)
5. [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.](https://gilroydispatch.com/candidates-throw-hats-into-the-ring-for-gilroy-council-school-board-election/)
6. [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.](https://gilroydispatch.com/crowded-field-runs-for-three-gilroy-city-council-seats/)
7. [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.](https://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Misc/filerSearch.aspx)
8. [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).](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilroy,_California)
9. [Diana Sanchez Bentz's own filed Candidate Statement (District 4), self-authored and filed with the City Clerk; quoted and attributed in text.](https://www.cityofgilroy.org/DocumentCenter/View/20723/DSB-District-4)
10. [Fred Tovar's own filed Candidate Statement (District 4), self-authored and filed with the City Clerk; quoted and attributed in text.](https://www.cityofgilroy.org/DocumentCenter/View/20722/FT-District-4)
11. [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).](https://www.dianafromgilroyforgilroy.com)
12. [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.](https://www.votefredtovar.com)

## The rest of the ballot

Gilroy City Council, District 4 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, "Gilroy City Council, District 4 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/gilroy-council-4 (sources last retrieved August 31, 2026).

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