City of San Jacinto

San Jacinto City Council

This person holds one of two seats up this cycle. The seat is an at-large seat on San Jacinto's City Council. The council has five members. They vote on city ordinances, the budget, and land use citywide. An appointed city manager runs day to day operations. The council does not elect its Mayor by separate citywide vote. Each year, the council picks one of its own members to serve as Mayor. It also picks one member to serve as Mayor Pro Tem. The term is four years.

Four candidates are running for two at-large seats on the San Jacinto City Council. Incumbents Alonso Ledezma and Valerie Vandever face two first-time challengers, Susan Acevedo and Brian E. Hawkins. You can vote for up to two, and there is no primary or runoff.

Winners join San Jacinto's 5-member City Council, which sets city ordinances, adopts the budget, and decides land use citywide, with day-to-day operations run by an appointed city manager. San Jacinto doesn't elect its Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem by separate citywide vote -- the city's own City Clerk page describes both as "ceremonial" titles the council selects annually from among its own members, typically for a calendar year. Terms on the council itself run four years, staggered so that two or three seats come up every two years; this cycle it's the two seats Ledezma and Vandever currently hold.

Both incumbents have long council tenures to run on, each with a specific record of committee and regional-agency service described on the city's own site; neither challenger has a comparable public record that surfaced in this pass, and the city's own promised link to each candidate's filed statement and ballot designation is dead on the page itself, so there is less to compare Acevedo and Hawkins against than a typical contested race.

Alonso L. Ledezma

Alonso Ledezma is a real estate broker with San Jacinto Realty, Ledezma & Associates. He was first elected to the City Council in November 2010. He has represented San Jacinto on several regional bodies. These include the Western Riverside Council of Governments and the Riverside County Transportation Commission. They also include the Riverside Transit Agency and the Western Riverside County Regional Conservation Authority. His official bio says his real estate work built relationships across the city. Those relationships led him to decide to run for office.

Valerie Vandever

Valerie Vandever is the council's other incumbent on this ballot. They are described as a "Community Service Advocate." They are involved with Rotary, Kiwanis, and Soroptimist. They are also involved with the American Legion Auxiliary and the Greater San Jacinto Valley Chamber of Commerce. They have volunteered with local food drives and veterans' causes. They have lived in the San Jacinto Valley for more than 50 years. They have been married for 35 years and have one son.

Susan Acevedo

Susan Acevedo is a qualified candidate for San Jacinto City Council. They appear on the city's official list of 2026 candidates. No campaign statement, official bio, campaign website, or news coverage of them was found.

Brian E. Hawkins

Brian E. Hawkins is a qualified candidate for San Jacinto City Council. They appear on the city's official list of 2026 candidates. No campaign statement, official bio, campaign website, or news coverage of them was found.

Your picks · choose up to 2

A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot.

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