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City of Pleasant Hill · Statewide General Election

Pleasant Hill 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 would hold one of five district seats on Pleasant Hill's City Council: city ordinances, the budget, and land use for this Contra Costa County city of about 34,600 residents, under a council-manager government with an appointed City Manager. Pleasant Hill is a General Law City where the Mayor is chosen each year by fellow Council members, not directly elected by voters -- so this seat is simply "Councilmember," regardless of whether its holder later becomes Mayor. A 4-year term, decided by whichever candidate gets the most votes -- no ranked-choice voting.

Mayor Zac Shess, a sitting at-large councilmember whose current term ends this cycle, faces first-time candidate Jason Seto for Pleasant Hill's brand-new District 3 seat.

This person would hold one of five district seats on Pleasant Hill's City Council: city ordinances, the budget, and land use for this Contra Costa County city of about 34,600 residents, under a council-manager government with an appointed City Manager. Pleasant Hill is a General Law City where the Mayor is chosen each year by fellow Council members, not directly elected by voters -- so this seat is simply "Councilmember," regardless of whether its holder later becomes Mayor. A 4-year term, decided by whichever candidate gets the most votes -- no ranked-choice voting.

This is the first-ever election for Pleasant Hill's District 3 seat. The city moved from at-large to five-district elections under a 2023 Council ordinance responding to a California Voting Rights Act concern; Districts 1, 2, and 5 were elected in 2024, and Districts 3 and 4 -- the last two -- are up for the first time this November. That's why the county's own candidate record lists no incumbent for this race at all, even though Zac Shess is a sitting councilmember: his current at-large term, dating to his 2022 election, is one of the two ending this cycle as the city completes its shift to full district representation. A third resident, Samara Al-Jumaily, pulled nomination papers for District 3 but never returned them, leaving a direct two-candidate field.

Zac Shess

The city's current Mayor, chosen by his fellow Council members on December 1, 2025; his filed ballot designation is "Councilmember, City of Pleasant Hill." He was first elected to the Council at-large in November 2022. A San Diego native, Shess lived briefly in Pleasant Hill as a child in the 1970s (attending Pleasant Hill Elementary) before returning to the city in 2003 with his wife and two young sons. Before his election he served nearly 10 years on the Pleasant Hill Recreation & Park District board, including three years as Board Chair, and coached youth sports for the Pleasant Hill Baseball Association. He holds a journalism degree from San Jose State University and brings 30 years of marketing and communications experience to the seat.

Strengths

nearly four years on the Council, including his current selection as Mayor, plus a decade of prior Park District board service.

Trade-offs

he is running for a seat that has never had an election before, so unlike a true incumbent he has no direct electoral track record in District 3 specifically to point to.

Keep in mind

this dataset located no campaign-finance filing for his 2026 campaign -- Pleasant Hill links only to NetFile's generic public-data landing page, not a queryable agency-specific portal, so no fundraising picture exists for either candidate.

Jason Seto

A first-time candidate; his filed ballot designation is "University Student." This dataset made a real, multi-method search for independent depth beyond that self-declared occupation -- the city's own site, Ballotpedia (no page exists for Pleasant Hill's 2026 election), Wikipedia, and general web search (this session's web-search tool budget was also exhausted partway through the attempt) -- and found no campaign website, news coverage, or further biographical detail.

Strengths

not established in the sourcing found for this race.

Trade-offs

as a first-time candidate with no located public record, voters have little beyond his name, his self-declared occupation, and the fact that he qualified for the ballot to go on.

Keep in mind

this is a documented sourcing gap, not evidence against him -- a real, multi-method search turned up nothing further to report, and this dataset located no campaign-finance filing for him either.

Source review: Very strong (90/100) · 13 cited sources

Official records anchor this contest, with multiple sources checked.

  • contracostavote.gov (opens in a new tab)Contra Costa County Elections Division -- "Positions Up for Election, November 3, 2026, General Election": the only county-section contest in the document is County Board of Education Areas 2, 4, and 5 (under Schools) -- no Board of Supervisors, row office, or Superior Court seat appears anywhere, consistent with both Supervisor seats up this cycle (Districts 1 and 4) having been decided outright in the June 2026 primary
  • contracostavote.gov (opens in a new tab)Contra Costa County Elections Division -- "Contest/Candidate Proof List" (8-27-26_candidatelist_detail_final.pdf), the county's post-certification ballot-order-proofing export: shows Area 2 as a 3-candidate contest (Sarah Butler, incumbent; Pamela West; Sibyl Minighini) with each candidate's filed ballot designation and qualification date -- this export omits single-filer contests entirely, which is why Areas 4 and 5 do not appear in it (see cc-candidate-summary-2026)
  • contracostavote.gov (opens in a new tab)Contra Costa County Elections Division -- "Candidate List" (8-14-26_candidatelist_summary_final.pdf), the county's complete qualified-candidate roster including single-filer contests: confirms Area 2 (Sarah Butler, Pamela West, Sibyl Minighini), Area 4 (Mike Maxwell, sole qualified candidate), and Area 5 (Clyde Henry Lewis, Jr., sole qualified candidate)
  • phillca.gov (opens in a new tab)City of Pleasant Hill -- official "City Council" page: confirms Pleasant Hill is a General Law City with a 5-member Council on staggered 4-year terms, a Council-Manager government, and that the Mayor is "annually selected from among the City Council" rather than directly elected, plus names every sitting member and their district or at-large seat.
  • phillca.gov (opens in a new tab)City of Pleasant Hill -- "District Based Election Process" page: the Council's July 17, 2023 ordinance transitioning the city to a five-district map, with Districts 1, 2, and 5 first elected in 2024 and Districts 3 and 4 first elected in 2026 -- the source for why the county's own record shows no incumbent in either 2026 Pleasant Hill race.
  • phillca.gov (opens in a new tab)City of Pleasant Hill -- official "2026 Election" page: the certified candidate table for Districts 3 and 4 with nomination and qualification dates for Jason Seto, Zac Shess, Quy Tran, and Sue Noack, plus Samara Al-Jumaily's unreturned District 3 nomination papers and the election calendar.
  • phillca.gov (opens in a new tab)City of Pleasant Hill -- official "City Clerk" page: confirms voters converted City Clerk from an elected to an appointed position via a Nov. 4, 2014 ballot measure, effective Dec. 2016 -- why City Clerk is not on the 2026 Pleasant Hill ballot.
  • phillca.gov (opens in a new tab)City of Pleasant Hill -- official "City Treasurer" page: confirms the Council's Ordinance 969 (adopted June 3, 2024) converted City Treasurer from an elected to an appointed position, effective after the Nov. 2024 election was certified -- why City Treasurer is not on the 2026 Pleasant Hill ballot either, leaving City Council as the city's only elected office.
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia's Pleasant Hill, California article -- 2020 census population of 34,613, in Contra Costa County.
  • phillca.gov (opens in a new tab)City of Pleasant Hill -- Zac Shess's own official Council biography page: elected to the Council in Nov. 2022 and elected Mayor by the Council on Dec. 1, 2025; a San Diego native who attended Pleasant Hill Elementary in the 1970s before returning in 2003; nearly 10 years on the Pleasant Hill Recreation & Park District board including three years as chair; a San Jose State journalism graduate with 30 years of marketing and communications experience.
  • contracostavote.gov (opens in a new tab)Contra Costa County Elections Division -- "Positions Up for Election, November 3, 2026, General Election": lists Pleasant Hill's only two offices this cycle as District 3 and District 4 Councilmember -- no Mayor, City Clerk, or City Treasurer line item, confirming none of those are directly elected.
  • contracostavote.gov (opens in a new tab)Contra Costa County Elections Division -- "Contest/Candidate Proof List" (8-27-26_candidatelist_detail_final.pdf), the county's post-filing-deadline, final export: shows both Pleasant Hill contests ON BALLOT with 2 qualified candidates each, each candidate's filed ballot designation and qualification date, and both contest headers reading "Incumbent(s): Vacant / Vacated."
  • contracostavote.gov (opens in a new tab)Contra Costa County Elections Division -- "Candidate List" (8-14-26_candidatelist_summary_final.pdf), the county's complete qualified-candidate roster: independently confirms the same two 2-candidate Pleasant Hill fields with each candidate's qualification date and time.

Last updated September 1, 2026.