# La Palma City Council, District 2 Compare records and positions simply between Andrew Kim or Nitesh P. Patel for La Palma City Council, District 2 at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person holds your district's seat on La Palma's five-member City Council. They vote on city laws, the budget, and land use. An appointed city manager runs daily operations. The council picks its own Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem each year. They are not directly elected. So there is no separate Mayor's race on this ballot. Only Districts 2 and 4 have terms expiring this cycle. The term is four years. - Jurisdiction: City of La Palma - 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/la-palma-council-2 - 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: 82 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 - **Andrew Kim** — Public Safety Manager - **Nitesh P. Patel** — Council Member, City of La Palma A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot. Sitting Mayor Pro Tem Nitesh P. Patel is running against Andrew Kim for La Palma City Council District 2. Whichever candidate gets the most votes on November 3 wins outright; there's no runoff. This person holds District 2's seat on La Palma'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. La Palma's Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem are chosen annually by the council from among its own members rather than directly elected, so there's no separate Mayor's race on this ballot. Only Districts 2 and 4 have terms expiring this cycle. The term is four years. Patel is a sitting councilmember and the current Mayor Pro Tem, per their own ballot designation and Wikipedia's current La Palma officeholder roster. But the county's own record leaves this contest's Incumbent(s) field 'No Incumbent Elected' rather than naming them -- this dataset does not assert they are District 2's incumbent, even though they currently sit on the council, consistent with the same pattern already documented for San Clemente's District 2 race and Westminster's Mayor's race. Beyond each candidate's filed occupation, no independent profile, platform statement, or news coverage was found for either candidate in this pass despite a real, time-boxed search effort -- documented below as a gap, not filled in with speculation. ## Andrew Kim Filed their candidacy under the ballot designation "Public Safety Manager." No campaign site, official city biography, or news coverage describing their background or platform could be found in this pass despite a real search effort. **Strengths:** A public-safety management background, which could be directly relevant to a council seat's oversight of police, fire, and emergency-services budgets. **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, and no record of prior elected office was found. **Keep in mind:** CAL-ACCESS's filer-search tool was not checked in this pass -- see Financial info. ## Nitesh P. Patel A sitting La Palma councilmember and the current Mayor Pro Tem, per their own filed ballot designation ("Council Member, City of La Palma") and independently confirmed by Wikipedia's current officeholder roster. Beyond that confirmed current role, no independent profile, platform statement, campaign site, or news coverage describing their council record or platform for this race could be found in this pass. **Strengths:** Sitting-councilmember experience plus the Mayor Pro Tem post, so a known quantity to the extent their prior council service is on the public record, even without a detailed record on hand here. **Trade-offs:** No independently sourced platform for this campaign was found in this pass -- only that they hold a council seat, not what they intend for District 2 specifically. **Keep in mind:** CAL-ACCESS's filer-search tool was not checked in this pass -- see Financial info. ## Sources 1. [OC Registrar of Voters -- Contest/Candidate Proof List, General Election 11/3/2026 -- City of La Palma section (pages 126-128 of 188, downloaded directly and parsed locally with pypdf since a plain fetch returns undecodable PDF stream data): confirms Member City Council District 2 (2 qualified candidates) and Member City Council District 4 (2) as the city's two November 2026 races, each Vote for 1, both marked "No Incumbent Elected," with every candidate's filed ballot designation -- and that no Mayor or other La Palma contest appears anywhere in the document](https://ocvote.gov/fileadmin/user_upload/data/candlog/GEN2026/candlog.pdf) 2. [Wikipedia's La Palma, California article: names the current officeholders -- Mayor Mark I. Waldman, Mayor Pro Tem Nitesh P. Patel, and Council Members Debbie S. Baker, Janet Keo Conklin, and Vikesh P. Patel -- confirming Nitesh P. Patel's current council service (he is a District 2 candidate this cycle) and, by describing a rotating Mayor/Mayor Pro Tem title rather than a separately elected Mayor's office, corroborating the county's Proof List showing no La Palma Mayor contest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Palma,_California) ## The rest of the ballot La Palma City Council, District 2 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, "La Palma City Council, District 2 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/la-palma-council-2 (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.