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City of Newport Beach · Statewide General Election

Newport Beach City Council, District 1

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 your district's seat on Newport Beach's 7-member City Council: city ordinances, the budget, and land use, alongside an appointed city manager who runs day-to-day operations. Newport Beach has no directly-elected Mayor -- the council selects a Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem annually from among its own members. Not all seven districts are elected the same year -- only Districts 1, 3, 4, and 6 have terms expiring in 2026. A 4-year term.

Incumbent Joe Stapleton is running for re-election against challenger Tina Babajanians. Whichever candidate gets the most votes on November 3 wins outright; there's no runoff.

This person holds District 1's seat on Newport Beach's 7-member City Council: city ordinances, the budget, and land use, alongside an appointed city manager who runs day-to-day operations. Newport Beach has no directly-elected Mayor -- the council selects a Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem annually from among its own members. Not all seven districts are elected the same year -- only Districts 1, 3, 4, and 6 have terms expiring in 2026. A 4-year term.

Stapleton is the incumbent, confirmed both by the county's own Proof List (which lists him as the sitting officeholder) and independently by Wikipedia's current Newport Beach council roster. Beyond his filed ballot designation and that incumbency, no independent biography, news coverage, or campaign platform could be confirmed for either candidate in this pass despite a real search effort -- a documented gap, not a claim that no such material exists.

Joe Stapleton

Filed his candidacy under the ballot designation "Newport Beach Councilmember/Businessman" -- confirming both his current council seat and a business background, though no further detail on either was independently found. No campaign site, official city biography (newportbeachca.gov returned an access error on direct fetch), or news coverage describing his record or platform could be confirmed in this pass.

Strengths

A sitting councilmember, so voters have a known incumbent rather than an unknown quantity, even without a detailed record on hand here.

Trade-offs

No independently confirmed platform or voting record for his current term was found in this pass, so this dataset cannot describe what he has actually done in office.

Keep in mind

No CAL-ACCESS record was checked for his 2026 campaign in this pass -- see Financial info.

Tina Babajanians

Filed her candidacy under the ballot designation "Business Owner." No campaign site, news coverage, or other independent source describing her background or platform could be found in this pass despite a real search effort (search engines, Ballotpedia, Voice of OC's own site search, and a direct guess at a campaign-site domain, which did not resolve).

Strengths

A business-ownership background suggests some experience with budgets, payroll, or regulation relevant to city governance.

Trade-offs

No campaign statement or platform was found in this pass, so voters have no confirmed sense of her priorities beyond her listed occupation, and no prior elected office was found either.

Keep in mind

No CAL-ACCESS record was checked for her campaign in this pass -- see Financial info.

Source review: Strong (84/100) · 2 cited sources

Official records anchor this contest, with a narrow source base.

  • ocvote.gov (opens in a new tab)OC Registrar of Voters -- Contest/Candidate Proof List, General Election 11/3/2026 -- City of Newport Beach section (pages 134-138 of 188): confirms City Council District 1 (2 qualified candidates), District 3 (3), District 4 (1, unopposed), and District 6 (2) as the city's four November 2026 races, each Vote for 1, with incumbent flags and every candidate's filed ballot designation -- and that no Mayor or other at-large Newport Beach contest appears anywhere in the document
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia's Newport Beach, California article, government section: confirms Newport Beach is a council-manager charter city with a 7-member, district-elected City Council (4-year terms) and no directly-elected Mayor -- the council chooses a Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem annually from among its own members -- and independently names the sitting Mayor as Lauren Kleiman and Mayor Pro Tem as Noah Blom, plus the full current 7-member roster (Stapleton, Barto, Weigand, Grant, Blom, Kleiman, Weber), cross-checking all four of this cycle's incumbents against the county's Proof List

Last updated August 31, 2026.