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City of Newport Beach · Statewide General Election

Newport Beach City Council, District 3

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 Erik Weigand is running for re-election against two challengers, Tim Stoaks and Walter Stahr. Whichever candidate gets the most votes on November 3 wins outright; there's no runoff.

This person holds District 3'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.

Weigand is the incumbent, confirmed both by the county's own Proof List and independently by Wikipedia's current Newport Beach council roster. A campaign-site domain matching his name resolves instead to a 2024 Orange County Water District campaign for a same-named Newport-Mesa resident -- plausibly the same person given the shared community and name, but not independently confirmed, so it is not relied on here. Walter Stahr's filed "Author" designation matches the real, publicly known historian and biographer of that name (a former lawyer turned biographer of Edwin Stanton, William Seward, and Salmon Chase, among others), but that author's own site makes no mention of a 2026 council campaign, so this dataset treats the match as plausible, not confirmed. No platform information was independently confirmed for any of the three candidates despite a real search effort -- a documented gap, not a claim that no such material exists.

Erik Weigand

Filed his candidacy under the ballot designation "Newport Beach City Councilmember, District 3" -- confirming his current council seat. No independently confirmed campaign site, official city biography (newportbeachca.gov returned an access error on direct fetch), or news coverage describing his record or platform was found 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.

Tim Stoaks

Filed his candidacy under the ballot designation "Retired Construction Executive." No campaign site, news coverage, or other independent source describing his background or platform could be found in this pass despite a real search effort.

Strengths

A construction-executive career suggests direct, practical familiarity with development, permitting, and infrastructure issues a coastal city council regularly faces.

Trade-offs

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

Keep in mind

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

Walter Stahr

Filed his candidacy under the ballot designation "Author." A real historian and biographer of that name -- a former lawyer of more than two decades who turned to writing biographies of 19th-century American statesmen (John Jay, William Seward, Edwin Stanton, Salmon Chase) -- has an occupation matching this designation exactly, but that author's own site makes no mention of a Newport Beach council campaign, so this dataset does not assert they are the same person. No campaign site, news coverage, or other source confirming his platform was found in this pass.

Strengths

If the plausible match to the published historian is accurate, a background researching and writing about public officials and institutions.

Trade-offs

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

Keep in mind

No CAL-ACCESS record was checked for his 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.