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City of Palos Verdes Estates · Statewide General Election

Palos Verdes Estates City Council

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 one of three at-large seats up this cycle on Palos Verdes Estates' 5-member City Council: the city budget, zoning and land-use rules, and municipal ordinances. A 4-year term. The council doesn't elect its mayor directly -- members rotate the largely ceremonial title among themselves each December, and day-to-day operations run through an appointed city manager.

Palos Verdes Estates elects three of its five City Council seats on November 3, 2026 -- and for once, nobody has to choose between rivals. Exactly three candidates qualified for the three open seats: Mayor Michael Kemps and Councilmember Victoria A. Lozzi, both seeking reelection, and retired surgeon Mark Saroyan, running for the seat Councilmember David McGowan is vacating.

Each winner serves a 4-year term on PVE's 5-member City Council, which sets the city's budget, zoning and land-use rules, and municipal ordinances for a city of roughly 13,300 residents. The council doesn't elect its mayor directly; members rotate the largely ceremonial title among themselves each December, and day-to-day operations run through an appointed city manager -- so the job is one vote among five, not an executive post.

With every seat effectively decided before Election Day, the practical decision left to voters is narrower than usual: whether to mark all three names, some of them, or none. Kemps and Lozzi represent continuity -- both already vote on the council today -- while Saroyan is the only clean changeover, taking the seat McGowan is leaving rather than challenging a sitting member.

Michael Kemps

Michael Kemps is Palos Verdes Estates' sitting Mayor and a second-term councilmember first elected in November 2022, now seeking a third term. He's running on the same platform as his current term: fiscal responsibility, transparency, and preserving the city's character. He's run a legal-industry technology firm, Innovative Computing Systems, since founding it in 1989, and has lived on the Peninsula most of his life.

Strengths

A full mayoral term plus a prior council term give him the most institutional continuity of the three -- he already knows the budget, staff, and open items on the dais.

Trade-offs

He's unopposed for a third term, so voters get no rival platform to weigh his fiscal-responsibility record against this cycle.

Keep in mind

As of this retrieval, no 2026 campaign committee is on file with the state for him -- consistent with a small, low-spend municipal race, not necessarily an absence of campaigning.

Victoria A. Lozzi

Victoria A. Lozzi is a second-term councilmember and two-time former Mayor (2021-22 and 2024-25), seeking a third council term. She's running on fiscal discipline and organizational efficiency, drawing on a 35-year career as a corporate banker. She previously served a term as PVE's elected City Treasurer, from 2017 to 2019, before first winning a council seat.

Strengths

Two mayoral terms plus a prior term as elected Treasurer give her the broadest financial-oversight record in the race, built on a 35-year banking career financing large organizational projects.

Trade-offs

Her platform for a third term reads close to her second -- continuity has been her case each cycle, not a change in what she'd do differently.

Keep in mind

She's the only one of the three who needed the city's extended filing window, qualifying on its last day, Aug. 12. Like Kemps, she has no active 2026 campaign committee on file with the state.

Mark Saroyan

Mark Saroyan is a retired vascular and general surgeon who grew up in PVE's Malaga Cove neighborhood, running for the seat Councilmember David McGowan is vacating. He's running on public-safety funding, the city's unfunded pension liability, and pushing back on state-imposed housing mandates. He spent nearly three decades in vascular and general surgery at Kaiser South Bay, retiring from full-time practice in 2019.

Strengths

Nearly three decades practicing vascular and general surgery, plus eight years chairing Kaiser South Bay's budget-management committee, give him real large-budget oversight experience.

Trade-offs

He's never held elected office, and the seat came open only because McGowan chose not to run -- untested against a competitive field.

Keep in mind

He has no campaign committee on file with the state under either spelling of his name (the city's own table spells it 'Saroyen'; his campaign uses 'Saroyan') -- a discrepancy this dataset flags rather than resolves.

Source review: Strong (87/100) · 5 cited sources

Official records anchor this contest, with several source types checked for context; advocacy or endorsement sources are treated as attributed perspective.

Review note: Mark Saroyan for PVE City Council -- campaign site: platform (public safety/police retention, infrastructure, open space, opposing state housing mandates, the city's structural deficit and pension liability) and biography (Palos Verdes High School 1975, USC 1979, Tulane School of Medicine 1983, Harbor-UCLA surgical residency, retired chief of surgery at Kaiser South Bay) may have more bias because it is an advocacy voter guide compared to other formal government and nonprofit journalism sources.

  • pvestates.org (opens in a new tab)City of Palos Verdes Estates — City Clerk, Elections page: November 3, 2026 General Municipal Election for three (3) City Council seats, full 4-year terms; Candidate Nomination Status table (Victoria Lozzi, Mark Saroyen, Michael Kemps, each with issued/filed/qualified dates); Notice of Election and Notice of Extended Nomination Period (extended to Aug. 12, 2026)
  • pvestates.org (opens in a new tab)City of Palos Verdes Estates — City Council roster and individual member bios: Mayor Michael Kemps, Mayor Pro Tem Derek Lazzaro, Councilmember Victoria A. Lozzi, Councilmember David McGowan, Councilmember Craig Quinn (McGowan's and Quinn's/Lazzaro's terms are not up in 2026)
  • cal-access.sos.ca.gov (opens in a new tab)California Secretary of State — CAL-ACCESS campaign-finance filer search, checked by candidate name 2026-08-31: no active 2026 committee for Kemps, Lozzi, or Saroyan/Saroyen. Kemps: 'Kemps for PVE Council 2019' (Filer 1414925) and 'Kemps for PVE Council 2022; Re-Elect Michael' (Filer 1451378), both terminated. Lozzi: 'Lozzi for PVE City Treasurer 2017' (Filer 1394279), 'Lozzi for PVE City Council 2019' (Filer 1415198), and 'Lozzi for PVE City Council 2022; Re-Elect Victoria' (Filer 1454679), all terminated. No entity found for Saroyan or Saroyen.
  • dailybreeze.com (opens in a new tab)Daily Breeze (Southern California News Group, via The Beach Reporter) — "Michael Kemps chosen Palos Verdes Estates mayor": Kemps named mayor at the Dec. 9, 2025 City Council meeting, succeeding outgoing Mayor Victoria Lozzi; independently names the full sitting council (David McGowan, Derek Lazzaro, Craig Quinn) present at the meeting
  • mark4pve.org (opens in a new tab)Mark Saroyan for PVE City Council — campaign site: platform (public safety/police retention, infrastructure, open space, opposing state housing mandates, the city's structural deficit and pension liability) and biography (Palos Verdes High School 1975, USC 1979, Tulane School of Medicine 1983, Harbor-UCLA surgical residency, retired chief of surgery at Kaiser South Bay)

Last updated August 31, 2026.