# Newport Beach City Council, District 1 Compare records and positions simply between Joe Stapleton or Tina Babajanians for Newport Beach City Council, District 1 at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person holds your district's seat on Newport Beach's 7-member City Council. They vote on 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. The term is four years. - Jurisdiction: City of Newport Beach - 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/newport-beach-council-1 - 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: 84 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 - **Joe Stapleton** — Newport Beach Councilmember/Businessman · Incumbent - **Tina Babajanians** — Business Owner A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot. 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. They vote on 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. The term is four years. Stapleton is the incumbent, confirmed both by the county's own Proof List (which lists them as the sitting officeholder) and independently by Wikipedia's current Newport Beach council roster. Beyond their 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 their candidacy under the ballot designation "Newport Beach Councilmember/Businessman" -- confirming both their 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 their 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 their current term was found in this pass, so this dataset cannot describe what they have actually done in office. **Keep in mind:** No CAL-ACCESS record was checked for their 2026 campaign in this pass -- see Financial info. ## Tina Babajanians Filed their candidacy under the ballot designation "Business Owner." No campaign site, news coverage, or other independent source describing their 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 their priorities beyond their listed occupation, and no prior elected office was found either. **Keep in mind:** No CAL-ACCESS record was checked for their campaign in this pass -- see Financial info. ## Sources 1. [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](https://ocvote.gov/fileadmin/user_upload/data/candlog/GEN2026/candlog.pdf) 2. [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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newport_Beach,_California) ## The rest of the ballot Newport Beach City Council, District 1 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, "Newport Beach City Council, District 1 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/newport-beach-council-1 (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.