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City of Newark · Statewide General Election

Mayor of Newark

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

Newark's Mayor presides over City Council meetings and represents the city publicly, but votes as one of five members on the budget and city ordinances, the same as any other councilmember. Day-to-day city government runs through an appointed city manager. A 2-year term -- half the length of a Council seat's four years.

Only one candidate qualified for this seat. Incumbent Mayor Michael K. Hannon, in office since December 2022, appears unopposed for a second term -- so this contest is settled and your vote here does not change the outcome.

Newark's Mayor presides over City Council meetings and represents the city publicly, but votes as one of five members on the budget and city ordinances, the same as any other councilmember. Day-to-day city government runs through an appointed city manager, not the mayor's office. A 2-year term -- half the length of a Council seat's four years.

With no opponent, the useful question is not who to choose but what the officeholder has done and what to watch next. An unopposed return means accountability for this seat over the next two years runs through the council and the public rather than through the ballot.

Michael K. Hannon

The incumbent Mayor, unopposed for a second term. Before politics, Hannon spent almost 27 years with the City of San Jose, the last decade (2001-2011) as a Deputy Director in Planning, Building and Code Enforcement -- San Jose's Code Enforcement Official, managing a staff of roughly 100 and a $10 million budget -- before retiring in Dec. 2011. He was appointed to Newark's Planning Commission in 2013 (its Vice-Chairman in 2014), elected to City Council in Nov. 2014, and elected Mayor in Nov. 2022, taking office Dec. 8, 2022. His filed ballot designation is simply "Mayor."

Strengths

A full term already in the Mayor's seat, 8 prior years on the Council, and a long municipal-government career -- nearly three decades in code enforcement and planning -- before that.

Trade-offs

This dataset found no independent (non-official, non-campaign-finance) reporting evaluating his first mayoral term's record.

Keep in mind

Running unopposed, he has filed no 2026 campaign-finance disclosure (Form 460) at all -- only the organizational Form 501 -- so there is no fundraising picture to weigh for this race.

Source review: Strong (87/100) · 8 cited sources

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

  • alamedacountyca.gov (opens in a new tab)Alameda County Registrar of Voters -- official Candidate List system (electionId 260, "General Election - 11/03/2026 (Official)"), queried directly via its own JSON/HTML API (POST /rov_app/candidatelist/, with raceStatus and candidateStatus left blank -- the site's default filter values 500-error the endpoint) for both Newark City-category races (categoryId 600, raceIds 99-100): For Mayor, Newark (Michael K. Hannon, the only qualified filer); For Members Of City Council, Newark (Tonya Connolly, Noah Patrick Grushkin, Matthew Jorgens, Eve Marie Little). Names ballot designations verbatim as filed: "Mayor" (Hannon), "Retired Maintenance Superintendent" (Connolly), no ballot designation (Grushkin), "Incumbent" (Jorgens), "Councilmember/College Professor" (Little). The system's own "Incumbent" field reads "N" for all five Newark candidates -- this dataset does not treat that field as reliable and instead confirms incumbency independently against the City of Newark's own roster and bio pages (see newark-clerk-directory-2026 and the three individual bio sources below).
  • newarkca.gov (opens in a new tab)City of Newark -- "City Council Members" roster page (read via a dated Internet Archive snapshot after newarkca.gov itself returned HTTP 403 to direct fetches in this pass; content is the city's own official page, not an archive-only source): names Mayor Michael Hannon and Vice Mayor Eve Marie Little (both term exp. 11/2026), Council Member Matthew Jorgens (term exp. 11/2026), and Council Members Terrence Grindall and Julie Del Catancio (both term exp. 11/2028) -- confirming the Mayor's seat and two of Newark's four Council seats are up this cycle, and that Grindall's and Del Catancio's seats are not.
  • newark.org (opens in a new tab)City of Newark -- official biography page for Mayor Michael K. Hannon (read via a dated Internet Archive snapshot after newark.org/newarkca.gov returned HTTP 403 to direct fetches in this pass): born in Castro Valley, University of Portland graduate; worked for the City of San Jose for almost 27 years (2001-2011 as a Deputy Director/Code Enforcement Official), retired Dec. 2011; appointed to Newark's Planning Commission in 2013 (Vice-Chairman 2014); elected to Newark City Council Nov. 4, 2014, serving 8 years; elected Mayor Nov. 8, 2022, sworn in Dec. 8, 2022.
  • newarkca.gov (opens in a new tab)City of Newark -- official biography page for Council Member Matthew Jorgens (read via a dated Internet Archive snapshot after newarkca.gov returned HTTP 403 to direct fetches in this pass): a lifelong Newark resident, graduate of Newark's own Bunker Elementary, Newark Junior High, and Newark Memorial High School; graduated from UC Davis with a B.A. in Economics and Political Science; elected to Newark City Council Nov. 8, 2022; active volunteer as President of the Newark Optimist Club and a board member/musician for the Newark Symphonic Winds.
  • newark.org (opens in a new tab)City of Newark -- official biography page for Vice Mayor Eve Marie Little (read via a dated Internet Archive snapshot after newark.org/newarkca.gov returned HTTP 403 to direct fetches in this pass): took office as a Newark City Council Member Dec. 12, 2024 (filling a vacancy, per the city's own now-redirected "CityCouncilVacancy" page found in the same crawl); born in West Texas, Texas A&M graduate, prior international hospitality/tourism career (South Korea, Thailand, Peru, Ecuador), a master's from the University of Houston's Hilton College and postgraduate work at Ecole Hoteliere in Lausanne, Switzerland; currently a college professor at California State University-East Bay and Mission College, and teaches vocational courses to inmates at the Elmwood Correctional Facility.
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia's Newark, California article -- names Michael K. Hannon as the sitting Mayor (infobox, sourced to the city's own site); 2020 census population (47,529); incorporated Sept. 22, 1955.
  • eastbayinsiders.substack.com (opens in a new tab)Steven Tavares's East Bay Insiders Newsletter (an independent East Bay accountability-journalism Substack) -- "2026 East Bay November Candidate List," read in full: independently names the same five Newark candidates across the same two races (Mayor: Hannon only; Council, choose 2: Connolly, Grushkin, Little, Jorgens) with each filed ballot designation verbatim, matching the county's own certified list exactly -- the only non-official, non-campaign-finance source located for this race in a real, multi-method search.
  • netfile.com (opens in a new tab)City of Newark's own NetFile-hosted public campaign-finance portal (agency code NRK, confirmed via NetFile's own public agency directory -- not the more obvious guess "NWK", a different, unrelated agency), queried directly via its own QuickNameSearch and filings/byCandidate JSON API for all five 2026 candidates, with each available FPPC Form 460 downloaded directly via the portal's own CampaignDocuments/download endpoint and read for its actual reported totals. Real H1 2026 totals (monetary contributions raised / total expenditures, this period): Matthew Jorgens $0 / $0 (his Form 460 reports all zeroes); Eve Marie Little $2,500 / $170 -- her Schedule A shows $2,000 of that from Little herself and $500 from the Laborers' Local 304 PAC, ending the period with $2,950.83 cash on hand. Michael Hannon (running unopposed), Tonya Connolly, and Noah Patrick Grushkin have each filed only an FPPC Form 501 (candidate intention statement) -- no Form 460 is on file for any of the three as of this retrieval, so no fundraising total exists to report for them. Connolly's own signed Form 501 (filed Aug. 7, 2026, read directly) confirms her identity against a NetFile internal filer-name typo ("Collonny, Tonya") that otherwise surfaced in the QuickNameSearch API -- the signed form itself spells her name correctly and matches the county's candidate list exactly.

Last updated September 1, 2026.