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City of Lake Elsinore · Statewide General Election

Lake Elsinore City Council, District 4 (short term)

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 holds Lake Elsinore City Council District 4: the city budget, zoning and land-use rules, and municipal ordinances. This particular seat is a short term -- the district returns to the regular 4-year cycle at the city's November 2028 election -- and the council elects a Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem from among its own district-elected members rather than by separate citywide vote; day-to-day operations run through an appointed city manager.

Michael Carroll is the only candidate who qualified for Lake Elsinore's District 4 City Council seat, so he runs unopposed on the November 3, 2026 ballot. This is a short (partial) term.

This seat is one of five single-member districts on Lake Elsinore's City Council — the city switched from at-large to by-district council elections on February 1, 2018. The council sets the city budget, zoning and land-use rules, and municipal ordinances; day-to-day operations run through an appointed city manager. Most council seats carry 4-year terms, but this one is a short term: Carroll's current term runs only from November 2025 to December 2026, and the winner of this election serves a partial term before District 4 returns to the regular 4-year cycle in the city's November 2028 election.

A second candidate, Adelina Vega-Velasquez, pulled nomination papers for this seat but did not qualify for the ballot by the August 7, 2026 filing deadline, per the city clerk's own nomination table — so this is a genuinely uncontested race, not simply a thin field. Registered D4 voters may still file as write-in candidates through October 20, 2026; a qualified write-in's votes would be counted even though they won't appear on the printed ballot. Note on sourcing: the clerk's own nomination table links a "Candidate Statement" for Carroll's row, but the link is the identical document (and filename) as Brian Tisdale's District 1 statement — a copy-paste error on the city's own page, not a real second filing. This page does not treat that broken link as Carroll's own words.

Michael Carroll

The incumbent, seated in this District 4 seat as of November 2025 and now running for a full public vote on the balance of the term. No working Candidate's Statement, campaign site, or independent local reporting on his record was found in the sources checked for this page — the city clerk's own table links the wrong document (Tisdale's D1 statement) against his name rather than a statement of his own.

Strengths

Already seated and serving in the district he's running to keep.

Trade-offs

How he came to hold the seat since Nov. 2025 isn't established here, and no first-person statement of his priorities exists — the clerk's own link to one instead points to Tisdale's document.

Keep in mind

This is a short term — whoever wins serves only through December 2026 before District 4's next, full-term election in November 2028, so the practical stakes of this particular race are lower than District 1's or District 3's.

Source review: Very strong (91/100) · 4 cited sources

Official records anchor this contest, with multiple sources checked.

  • lake-elsinore.org (opens in a new tab)City of Lake Elsinore City Clerk — "Upcoming Elections" page: states Districts 1 and 3 (full terms) and District 4 (partial term) are up Nov. 3, 2026, with Districts 2, 5 and City Treasurer deferred to Nov. 7, 2028; carries the clerk's own nomination table showing exactly one qualified candidate per district -- Brian Tisdale (D1), Timothy J. Sheridan (D3), Michael Carroll (D4) -- and two non-qualifying filers (Adela Gonzales, D1; Adelina Vega-Velasquez, D4); nomination period July 13-Aug. 7, 2026, write-in period Sept. 7-Oct. 20, 2026
  • lake-elsinore.org (opens in a new tab)City of Lake Elsinore City Clerk — "Election Districts" page: five single-member council districts, adopted Feb. 1, 2018 (switching from at-large elections), updated for the 2021-2022 redistricting cycle
  • lake-elsinore.org (opens in a new tab)City of Lake Elsinore — "City Government" page: "Lake Elsinore is a General Law city governed by a five-member City Council"; council members "elected by district" and "the City Treasurer is elected at-large for a four-year term" (no City Clerk election -- the Clerk is appointed by the City Manager, per the Clerk's own department page)
  • lake-elsinore.org (opens in a new tab)City of Lake Elsinore — City Council page: sitting roster as of Aug. 2026 -- Mayor Robert 'Bob' Magee (D5), Mayor Pro Tem Timothy J. Sheridan (D3), Councilmembers Steve Manos (D2), Michael Carroll (D4) and Brian Tisdale (D1) -- with each member's term-expiration date; Carroll's listed term ("November 2025 to December 2026") is the source for treating D4 as a short/partial term this cycle

Last updated August 31, 2026.