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City of Moraga · Statewide General Election

Moraga Town Council

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 one of two at-large seats up this cycle on Moraga's 5-member Town Council: town ordinances, the budget, and land use for the Town of Moraga. A 4-year term -- the Mayor and Vice Mayor rotate annually among council members rather than being separately elected, and Moraga has no separately elected Town Clerk or Town Treasurer.

Four candidates qualified for two of Moraga's five at-large Town Council seats on the November 3 ballot: both sitting incumbents — Mayor Kerry Hillis and Councilmember Steven Woehleke — are seeking reelection, against two challengers, Bill Carman and Alexis Mapel.

The two winners each serve a four-year term on Moraga's five-member, at-large Town Council: town ordinances, the budget, and land-use decisions townwide. Moraga doesn't directly elect a Mayor — the five councilmembers rotate the Mayor and Vice Mayor titles among themselves annually, and the town has no separately elected Town Clerk or Town Treasurer.

Both seats up this cycle already belong to sitting councilmembers who filed for another term, so this reads less as an open contest than a referendum on the current council — Hillis's and Woehleke's combined 8 years in office — with each challenger needing to beat an incumbent outright to win a seat.

Kerry Hillis

The sitting Mayor, chosen by his council colleagues for the current term. He was elected to the Town Council in 2022 after serving on the Planning Commission from 2019 to 2022 and as Vice President of the Moraga Community Foundation from 2020 to 2022. His career is in transportation and government relations: he's Public Affairs Manager for the Western and Central U.S. at Alstom, a rail-transportation company, and Chief Strategy Officer of Stella Pearl Consulting, with earlier roles at BART, utility companies, the San Jose Police Officers' Association, and the California State Senate. He holds a bachelor's in political science from Santa Clara University and a master's in public policy from Johns Hopkins, and moved to Moraga in 2017 with his wife and three children.

Strengths

Chosen by colleagues as sitting Mayor; a 25-plus-year transportation and government-relations career plus 3 years on the Planning Commission before his council election.

Trade-offs

Holding the Mayor's chair means he owns the most of the status quo — how Moraga has been run under this council is substantially his record too.

Keep in mind

Runs under the ballot designation "Incumbent." Filed July 31, the second of four candidates.

Steven Woehleke

A Councilmember first elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2022, publicly known as Steve Woehleke; he's lived in Moraga since 1987 with his wife, Peggy, and their two daughters. He retired after a 33-year career at Chevron spanning technical, project-management, and organizational-development roles, including a five-year worldwide leadership position; he holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Rhode Island and an MBA in finance from Seton Hall, and is a licensed (retired) mechanical engineer and certified project management professional. He's logged more than 20 years of town volunteer service, including five years on the Design Review Board, ten years on the Planning Commission before his council election, the Hacienda Foundation Board, and a past presidency of the Kiwanis Club of Moraga Valley; he served a prior term as Mayor that ended in December 2025.

Strengths

On the council since 2018 with a prior term as Mayor; over 20 years of town volunteer service including a decade on the Planning Commission before his election.

Trade-offs

The second-longest tenure in the field after Hillis means his record, too, is largely the status quo he's asking voters to extend.

Keep in mind

Runs under the ballot designation "Incumbent." Filed Aug. 6, the last of four candidates, hours after Carman.

Bill Carman

Carman qualified for the ballot on August 6, 2026, running under the filed ballot designation "Feeder Driver." No campaign site, news coverage, or record of prior Moraga civic or elected service was found in this pass — the county's own candidate exports and the town's own Elections page are the only sources reached for him.

Strengths

Runs under the ballot designation "Feeder Driver" — a logistics-driving career outside town government, a different vantage point than the field's two long-tenured incumbents.

Trade-offs

No campaign statement, platform, or prior Moraga civic or elected service was found in this pass, so voters have no confirmed sense of his priorities beyond his filed occupation.

Keep in mind

Filed Aug. 6, the third of four candidates, hours before incumbent Woehleke.

Alexis I. Mapel

Mapel qualified for the ballot on July 24, 2026 — the first of the four candidates to file — running under the filed ballot designation "Businesswoman." No campaign site, news coverage, or record of prior Moraga civic or elected service was found in this pass — the county's own candidate exports and the town's own Elections page are the only sources reached for her.

Strengths

Runs under the ballot designation "Businesswoman" — a business career outside town government, a different vantage point than the field's two long-tenured incumbents.

Trade-offs

No campaign statement, platform, or prior Moraga civic or elected service was found in this pass, so voters have no confirmed sense of her priorities beyond her filed occupation.

Keep in mind

Filed July 24, the first of four candidates, before either incumbent.

Source review: Strong (88/100) · 10 cited sources

Official records anchor this contest, with several source types checked for context.

  • contracostavote.gov (opens in a new tab)Contra Costa County Elections Division -- "Positions Up for Election, November 3, 2026, General Election": lists Moraga's only office this cycle as "2 Councilmembers" under Cities Offices -- no Town Clerk, Town Treasurer, or other town-section line item for Moraga appears anywhere in the document
  • contracostavote.gov (opens in a new tab)Contra Costa County Elections Division -- "Contest/Candidate Proof List" (8-27-26_candidatelist_detail_final.pdf), the county's post-certification ON-BALLOT export: shows contest 5801 "MoragaCouncil," Town of Moraga Member, Town Council, Vote For 2, with 4 filed and 4 qualified candidates, ON BALLOT status, and both current incumbents (Steven Paul Woehleke, Kerry Michael Hillis) named as this seat's incumbents; each of the four qualified candidates' filed ballot designation and qualification date is listed individually
  • contracostavote.gov (opens in a new tab)Contra Costa County Elections Division -- "Candidate List" (8-14-26_candidatelist_summary_final.pdf), the county's complete qualified-candidate roster: independently confirms the same four-candidate field for Moraga's 2-seat Council contest (Alexis I. Mapel, Kerry Hillis, Bill Carman, Steven Woehleke) with matching qualification timestamps
  • moraga.ca.us (opens in a new tab)Town of Moraga -- Town Clerk's own "Town Council Elections" page: states two Town Council seats are up Nov. 3, 2026, names the same four qualified candidates and their qualification dates, gives the filing-period window (July 13-Aug. 7, 2026, extendable to Aug. 12 if no incumbent files), and names Town Clerk Amy Heavener as the elections contact
  • moraga.ca.us (opens in a new tab)Town of Moraga -- "Town Council" page: confirms the 5-member, at-large council ("made up of five members of the community elected at-large") on 4-year terms, a Mayor/Vice Mayor rotation chosen annually by the council from among its own members rather than by direct election, and the sitting roster -- Mayor Kerry Hillis, Vice Mayor Brian Dolan, and Councilmembers Steve Woehleke, Lisa Maglio, and Graham Thiel
  • moraga.ca.us (opens in a new tab)Town of Moraga -- Kerry Hillis's own Town Council bio page: names him the sitting Mayor (term ending Dec. 2026), elected to the council in 2022 after serving on the Planning Commission 2019-2022 and as Vice President of the Moraga Community Foundation 2020-2022; his own account of his career as Public Affairs Manager (Western/Central U.S.) at Alstom and Chief Strategy Officer of Stella Pearl Consulting, with earlier roles at BART, utility companies, the San Jose Police Officers' Association, and the California State Senate; a B.A. in political science from Santa Clara University and an M.P.P. from Johns Hopkins; and that he moved to Moraga in 2017 with his wife and three children
  • moraga.ca.us (opens in a new tab)Town of Moraga -- Steven Woehleke's own Town Council bio page (published under "Steve Woehleke"): names him a Councilmember first elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2022 (term ending Dec. 2026), a Moraga resident since 1987; his own account of a 33-year career at Chevron in technical, project-management, and worldwide-leadership roles, a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Rhode Island and an MBA from Seton Hall, and over 20 years of town volunteer service including the Design Review Board (5 years), Planning Commission (10 years), the Hacienda Foundation Board, and past presidency of the Kiwanis Club of Moraga Valley
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia's Moraga, California article -- independently names Kerry Hillis as the town's sitting Mayor, confirms the 1974 incorporation (uniting Moraga Town, Rheem, and Rheem Valley), and reports February 2019 voter-registration figures (43% Democratic, 25.1% Republican, 28.2% independent) for the town
  • contracosta.news (opens in a new tab)Contra Costa News -- "November Ballot Taking Shape in Contra Costa County" (Aug. 7, 2026): independent local-news roundup of the county's own candidate filings, naming the identical four-candidate Moraga Town Council field (Kerry Hillis, Alexis Mapel, Bill Carman, Steve Woehleke) from outside government and any campaign
  • cal-access.sos.ca.gov (opens in a new tab)This dataset's own documented record of a dedicated, unsuccessful attempt to retrieve Moraga Town 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 for Kerry Hillis, Steven Woehleke, Bill Carman, and Alexis Mapel in this pass (via both WebFetch and direct curl), with no live browser session available in this worktree to work around it. Documents the absence of a reachable financial-disclosure source for this contest, not any candidate's actual finances

Last updated September 1, 2026.