# La Palma City Council, District 4 Compare records and positions simply between Mary Paningsoro or Jonathan Dinwiddie for La Palma City Council, District 4 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-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: 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 - **Mary Paningsoro** — Community Volunteer - **Jonathan Dinwiddie** — Small Business Owner A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot. Mary Paningsoro and Jonathan Dinwiddie are running for La Palma City Council District 4, an open seat -- the county's own record flags no incumbent here. Whichever candidate gets the most votes on November 3 wins outright; there's no runoff. This person holds District 4'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. The county's own record marks this seat "No Incumbent Elected" -- an open seat. Neither candidate's filed ballot designation claims current city office, and neither appears on Wikipedia's current La Palma officeholder roster. 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. ## Mary Paningsoro Filed their candidacy under the ballot designation "Community Volunteer." 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 self-described community-volunteer background, which could reflect direct familiarity with local civic and neighborhood concerns. **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. ## Jonathan Dinwiddie Filed their candidacy under the ballot designation "Small Business Owner." 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 small-business ownership background, which could be relevant to a council seat's budget and local-economy decisions. **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. ## 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 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, "La Palma City Council, District 4 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/la-palma-council-4 (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.