# Palm Springs City Council, District 1 Compare records and positions simply between Don Soja or Grace Garner for Palm Springs City Council, District 1 at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person holds your district's seat on Palm Springs's 5-member City Council. They vote on city ordinances, the budget, and land use. The term is four years. The council chooses one of its own members to serve as Mayor and another as Mayor Pro Tem each year by a council vote -- the titles rotate rather than being separately elected citywide. - Jurisdiction: City of Palm Springs - 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/palm-springs-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: September 3, 2026 - Source-objectivity score: 79 out of 100 (Mixed), across 6 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology ## On the ballot - **Don Soja** - **Grace Garner** — Incumbent A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot. Grace Garner, the City Council's most senior member and a former mayor, seeks a third term against first-time candidate Don Soja, a neighborhood-organization leader, for the District 1 seat. This person holds your district's seat on Palm Springs's 5-member City Council. They vote on city ordinances, the budget, and land use. The term is four years. The council chooses one of its own members to serve as Mayor and another as Mayor Pro Tem each year by a council vote -- the titles rotate rather than being separately elected citywide. Garner's nomination was verified July 22, 2026; Soja's was verified July 29. No other candidate qualified for this seat. The Palm Springs Post is the only independent roster-and-biography source reached for Soja in the time available for this profile -- no campaign site, second news source, or official candidate-statement document was found. ## Grace Garner Grace Garner has served on the City Council since December 2019 -- the council's most senior member and the first Latina woman elected to it -- and served as mayor in 2023, including during Tropical Storm Hilary. A second-generation Palm Springs native, she previously served on the Planning Commission and the California Voting Rights Act Working Group, and currently works as senior policy advisor to Riverside County Supervisor V. Manuel Perez. She also sits on the boards of Desert Regional Medical Center and Cal State San Bernardino's Philanthropy Board. Her campaign centers on affordable housing, infrastructure, youth programming, and pedestrian/traffic safety, pointing to hundreds of affordable-housing units built in District 1 and the Tramview Heights specific plan as key to diversifying housing stock and bringing retail, including a grocery store, to northern Palm Springs. **Strengths:** The council's longest-tenured member, with direct mayoral experience and a specific, sourced housing-and-infrastructure record to point to in her own district. **Trade-offs:** A long incumbency means her record carries the city's accumulated trade-offs, and her day job as a county supervisor's policy advisor is a second public-sector role alongside her council seat. **Keep in mind:** Her day job advising a county supervisor could overlap with city business in ways some voters want to weigh; no reporting found in this pass raised it as a conflict, but it wasn't specifically addressed either. ## Don Soja Don Soja is a Mountain Gate resident making his first run for elected office. He is a former vice chair of the city's Human Rights Commission, a founding member of Organized Neighborhoods of Palm Springs, and a former president of the Racquet Club West Neighborhood organization. He is running on "transparency, a balanced city budget, equal rights and opportunities," per the Palm Springs Post. No independent biography, campaign site, or additional platform detail beyond that was found in the time available for this profile. **Strengths:** Years of hands-on neighborhood- and commission-level civic experience across two different organizations, plus prior appointed service on a city commission. **Trade-offs:** No prior elected office, and no independently reported platform detail beyond the three broad priorities named above. **Keep in mind:** His neighborhood-organization background suggests a bottom-up, resident-advocacy approach, which voters may want to weigh against Garner's institutional, county-level policy experience. ## Sources 1. [Riverside County Registrar of Voters — 2026 Annual Election Calendar (lists every November 3, 2026 General Municipal Election office by city, including "City of Cathedral City: City Council District 3 / District 4 / District 5 / City Treasurer")](https://voteinfo.net/sites/g/files/aldnop371/files/2026-02/Annual%20Election%20Calendar%202026.pdf) 2. [The Palm Springs Post -- "Two challengers join three incumbents in Palm Springs City Council race" (Mark Talkington, Aug. 13, 2026; names all five qualified candidates across Districts 1, 2, and 3 with nomination-verification dates, challenger occupation/background notes, and the Nov. 3, 2026 general-election date)](https://thepalmspringspost.com/two-challengers-join-three-incumbents-in-palm-springs-city-council-race/) 3. [The Palm Springs Post -- "Naomi Soto sworn in as Palm Springs' 28th mayor, pledges inclusive city for all" (Mark Talkington, Dec. 10, 2025; states Soto "became Palm Springs' 28th mayor through a unanimous City Council vote" for a one-year term, with David Ready appointed Mayor Pro Tem -- confirms the rotating, council-selected Mayor/Mayor Pro Tem structure)](https://thepalmspringspost.com/naomi-soto-sworn-in-as-palm-springs-28th-mayor-pledges-inclusive-city-for-all/) 4. [Wikipedia -- "Palm Springs, California": infobox lists the current City Council as of retrieval -- Mayor Naomi Soto, Mayor Pro Tem David Ready, and Councilmembers Grace Elena Garner, Jeffrey Bernstein, and Ron De Harte -- corroborating the five-person roster and confirming Garner/Bernstein/deHarte (the three Nov. 2026 candidates' shared incumbency) hold no Mayor/Mayor Pro Tem title this cycle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Springs,_California) 5. [The Palm Springs Post -- "Garner seeks re-election with focus on affordable housing, infrastructure, youth programs" (Mark Talkington, Feb. 1, 2026; Garner first elected Dec. 2019, the council's most senior member and first Latina woman elected to it, served as mayor in 2023, currently senior policy advisor to Riverside County Supervisor V. Manuel Perez)](https://thepalmspringspost.com/garner-seeks-re-election-with-focus-on-affordable-housing-infrastructure-youth-programs/) 6. [City of Palm Springs NetFile — public campaign-disclosure search](https://netfile.com/public/CPS/campaign/search-entities) ## The rest of the ballot Palm Springs 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, "Palm Springs City Council, District 1 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/palm-springs-council-1 (sources last retrieved September 3, 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.