# Orange County Board of Supervisors, District 4 Compare records and positions simply between Tim Shaw or Connor Traut for Orange County Board of Supervisors, District 4 at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person is one of five supervisors who govern Orange County. They vote on the county budget. They also oversee health and social services. They set land use rules for unincorporated areas. - Jurisdiction: County - 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/orange-supervisor-4 - 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: September 21, 2026 - Source-objectivity score: 89 out of 100 (Strong), across 10 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology ## On the ballot - **Tim Shaw** - **Connor Traut** A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot. District 4's supervisor seat is open. Doug Chaffee did not seek a third term. June's four-way primary left the race uncalled. Buena Park Mayor Connor Traut led with 33.27% of the vote. Orange County Board of Education trustee Tim Shaw took 31.26%. They meet in a November runoff. The district runs through north Orange County. It includes Anaheim and Fullerton. Whoever wins takes a four-year term on the five-member Board of Supervisors, which sets a roughly $11 billion county budget covering law enforcement, public health, and social services, and acts as the city council for Orange County's unincorporated pockets. The next supervisor inherits a legal fight over the future of the Be Well Irvine mental-health campus and a county budget squeezed by Airport Fire payouts, discrimination settlements, and federal funding cuts. The seat is formally nonpartisan, but this runoff sorts almost entirely along party lines: Traut carries the Orange County Democratic Party and its labor unions, Shaw carries the Republican Party of Orange County and its law-enforcement and business allies. It's also a rematch of sorts — Shaw ran for this same seat in 2018 and lost to Chaffee by less than a point, while Traut has never run countywide before. ## Connor Traut Connor Traut is the mayor of Buena Park. He is a Chapman-trained consumer-protection attorney. He has served on the city council since 2018. He frames the race as continuity. That means public safety funding and housing near transit and jobs. It also means the renewable-energy push he ran in Buena Park, carried up to the county level. He led the June primary with 33.27% of the vote. He carries endorsements from outgoing supervisor Doug Chaffee. Sitting supervisors Katrina Foley and Vicente Sarmiento also endorse him. **Strengths:** A deep bench of institutional Democratic and labor support. Six years on a city council. He also runs a small business, MACK Athletics, which owns a minor-league baseball team. **Trade-offs:** He has never held countywide office. The same union and Democratic-official backing that broadens his coalition also ties him to the outgoing supervisor's record. **Keep in mind:** Traut is a practicing attorney at his family's personal-injury law firm. He moved to Buena Park in 2017. That was a year before he won his council seat. Opponents have raised that residency timeline. ## Tim Shaw Tim Shaw is an Orange County Board of Education trustee. He is a former La Habra city councilmember. He narrowly lost this same District 4 seat to Doug Chaffee in 2018. He is running as a fiscal conservative. He wants more public-safety funding and school choice. His road and transit fixes draw on his time chairing the Orange County Transportation Authority. He took 31.26% of the June vote. This time he has the Republican Party of Orange County behind him. Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes also backs him. **Strengths:** Chaired the county transportation authority. Spent over a decade on the La Habra council and county Board of Education. Carries this cycle's Sheriff and GOP endorsements. **Trade-offs:** He already lost this same seat once, in 2018. He also drew legal scrutiny over holding two elected posts at once. Those posts are the county Board of Education and now supervisor. **Keep in mind:** Shaw points to $185 million in reserves built during his Board of Education tenure. He calls that proof of fiscal discipline. His platform also pairs mental-health investment with arresting homeless people who "create criminal issues." ## How the June count flipped Shaw led by more than 3 points on election night. Late mail ballots, which typically break more Democratic, pulled Traut ahead over the following days, and the certified count gave him the edge, 33.27% to 31.26%. Term-limited Fullerton Mayor Fred Jung and La Habra councilmember Rose Espinoza split the remaining third of the vote almost evenly and did not advance. ## Financial info - **Tim Shaw** — $110,816 raised (Small donors: $3,886; Individuals: $57,973; PACs & committees: $19,100; Businesses & other orgs: $23,700; Self-funding: $10) - **Connor Traut** — $251,636 raised (Individuals: $160,642; PACs & committees: $64,169; Businesses & other orgs: $26,825) Figures are CA Form 460 filings through 2026-06-30, per the OC Registrar of Voters' e-filed transaction exports, retrieved 2026-09-21. ## Review notes - OC Independent may have more bias because it is an advocacy voter guide compared to other formal government and nonprofit journalism sources. ## Sources 1. [OC Registrar of Voters — Election results, June 2, 2026 primary](https://ocvote.gov/results) 2. [OC Registrar of Voters — Contest/Candidate Proof List, General Election 11/3/2026 (169 contests, 430 candidates filed)](https://ocvote.gov/fileadmin/user_upload/data/candlog/GEN2026/candlog.pdf) 3. [OC Registrar of Voters — certified June 2, 2026 primary results](https://www.livevoterturnout.com/ENR/orangecaenr/23/en/wd9vosg_Index_23.html) 4. [LAist — OC Board of Supervisors District 4 race guide](https://laist.com/news/politics/voter-guides/2026-election-california-primary-orange-county-board-of-supervisors-district-4) 5. [Voice of OC — "Who's On Track to Be the Next Orange County Supervisor?"](https://voiceofoc.org/2026/06/election-night-whos-on-track-to-be-the-next-orange-county-supervisor/) 6. [Fullerton Observer — "Election Update: Traut Leads as Vote Counts Shift"](https://fullertonobserver.com/2026/06/06/election-update-traut-leads-as-vote-counts-shift/) 7. [Ballotpedia — Connor Traut](https://ballotpedia.org/Connor_Traut) 8. [Ballotpedia — Tim Shaw](https://ballotpedia.org/Tim_Shaw) 9. [OC Independent — "Tim Shaw Consolidates Support for County Supervisor"](https://ocindependent.com/tim-shaw-consolidates-support-for-county-supervisor/) 10. [OC Registrar of Voters — e-filed campaign-finance transactions (NetFile)](https://netfile.com/public/coc/campaign) ## The rest of the ballot Orange County Board of Supervisors, District 4 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, "Orange County Board of Supervisors, District 4 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/orange-supervisor-4 (sources last retrieved September 21, 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.