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City of San Leandro · Statewide General Election

San Leandro City Council, District 2 (Short Term)

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 San Leandro's District 2 seat on the 7-member City Council (six district members plus the mayor): city ordinances, the budget, and land use, under a council-manager government with an appointed City Manager. A 4-year term. This is the first district-based election for this seat -- Measure F, passed at the city's June 2, 2026 special municipal election, converted Council elections from citywide (at-large) voting to single-member districts starting this cycle.

James Aguilar, appointed to the Council in April 2026, drew no opponent for the remainder of this District 2 term and is unopposed.

This person would hold San Leandro's District 2 seat on the 7-member City Council (six district members plus the mayor): city ordinances, the budget, and land use, under a council-manager government with an appointed City Manager. This is a short-term seat -- the winner serves only the balance of the current term before the seat returns to San Leandro's regular 4-year election cycle.

This is also the first district-based election for this seat: Measure F, passed at the city's June 2, 2026 special municipal election, converted Council elections from citywide (at-large) voting to single-member districts starting this cycle. Because the district itself is new, the city's own candidate-filing notice treats this office as having no "eligible incumbent" for filing-deadline purposes, even though a sitting councilmember (appointed to an at-large seat earlier this year) is running for it.

James Aguilar

Appointed to the San Leandro City Council for District 2 in April 2026 for a partial term expiring December 2026; his filed ballot designation is "Appointed City Councilmember." By trade he is a high-school social-science teacher and Activities Director in the San Lorenzo Unified School District, where he graduated in 2018 -- he began at Arroyo High School before transferring to San Lorenzo High School, teaching Ethnic Studies, World History, U.S. History, Government, and AP courses, while running student leadership programs as Activities Director. He holds a BA in Political Science from San Francisco State, completed teacher-education coursework at UC Berkeley, an MEd from National University, and is pursuing a doctorate in Educational Leadership at USC. He was elected to the San Leandro school board at eighteen in 2018 -- his own city biography states this made him "the youngest person elected to public office in California history" -- and served on that board through 2025, including as School Board President in 2022. His stated priorities as a councilmember center on youth and family stability, economic opportunity, governance improvements, budget pragmatism, climate-crisis mitigation, road safety, and economic development.

Strengths

eight years on the school board including a term as its President, a professional background in education relevant to his stated priorities, and months of sitting council experience already.

Trade-offs

his current seat came by appointment, not election, and this is his first time on a ballot for Council itself; no independent (non-city) reporting on his appointment or brief tenure was found.

Keep in mind

there is no financial info to report here since this is an unopposed race.

Source review: Strong (88/100) · 7 cited sources

Official records anchor this contest, with multiple sources checked.

  • alamedacountyca.gov (opens in a new tab)Alameda County Registrar of Voters -- official Candidate List system (electionId 260, "General Election - 11/03/2026 (Official)"), queried directly via its own JSON/HTML API (POST /rov_app/candidatelist/) for all five San Leandro races (categoryId 600, raceIds 124-128): For Mayor (Juan González III, James Maes); For Member Of City Council #1 (Sbeydeh Viveros-Walton, unopposed); For Member Of City Council #2 -- Short Term (James Aguilar, unopposed); For Member Of City Council #3 (Lee Thomas, Joseph Trujillo); For Member Of City Council #5 (Xouhoa Bowen, unopposed). Names ballot designations verbatim as filed: "Mayor, City of San Leandro" (González), "Business Operations Director" (Maes), "San Leandro Councilwoman" (Viveros-Walton), "Appointed City Councilmember" (Aguilar), "Nonprofit Executive Director" (Thomas), "Chief Plant Operator" (Trujillo), "San Leandro Councilmember" (Bowen). The system's own "Incumbent" field reads "N" for every San Leandro candidate, including sitting councilmembers -- this dataset does not treat that field as reliable for city races given San Leandro's own confirmation (see san-leandro-clerk-candidate-info-2026) that the district seats have no incumbent for filing purposes this cycle only because the district structure itself is new, not because no one currently holds the office.
  • sanleandro.org (opens in a new tab)City of San Leandro -- City Clerk's "Candidate Information" page for the November 3, 2026 General Municipal Election: states the July 13 - August 7, 2026 nomination period; that Measure F (passed at the city's own June 2, 2026 special municipal election) converted City Council Districts 1, 2, 3, and 5 from at-large to single-member-district elections starting this cycle, so "these offices have no eligible incumbents for the purposes of the incumbent filing provisions"; and that Measure F did not affect incumbent eligibility for the separately, citywide-elected office of Mayor, for which the City Clerk issued nomination papers to the incumbent.
  • sanleandro.org (opens in a new tab)City of San Leandro -- official City Council directory and "City Council" page: names the current Mayor (Juan González III) and all six district councilmembers -- Sbeydeh Viveros-Walton (District 1, Vice Mayor), James Aguilar (District 2), Victor Aguilar, Jr. (District 3), Fred Simon (District 4, not up this cycle), Xouhoa Bowen (District 5), and Dylan Boldt (District 6, not up this cycle) -- confirming which sitting officeholders are, and (for Victor Aguilar, Jr., absent from the county's District 3 candidate list) are not, seeking this cycle's seat covering their district.
  • sanleandro.org (opens in a new tab)City of San Leandro -- "Ranked Choice Voting" page: states RCV applies only to Mayor and City Council races (not county, state, federal, special-district offices, or ballot measures), that voters may rank a first, second, and third choice, and that the city charter requires a successful candidate to receive at least 50 percent plus one vote to be elected.
  • southtechhosting.com (opens in a new tab)City of San Leandro's own Campaign Finance Disclosure Portal (a SouthTech eRetrieval system, southtechhosting.com/SanLeandroCity/CampaignDocsWebRetrieval), checked directly: it is a DevExpress ASPX web-forms grid application whose candidate-name search requires a stateful postback keyed to a per-session token generated by the page's own client-side JS, not a plain queryable API -- it was not practically retrievable by a direct fetch in this pass. Separately, NetFile's own public agency directory (netfile.com/api/public/sites/api/agencies) was queried directly and confirmed San Leandro has no entry under any agency code among all 729 listed agencies, so San Leandro's candidates are not using that platform either. No dollar figure is asserted for any San Leandro candidate as a result.
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia's San Leandro, California article -- 2020 census population (91,008), cited only for general context.
  • sanleandro.org (opens in a new tab)City of San Leandro -- James Aguilar's own official biography page: states he was appointed to the City Council for District 2 in April 2026 for a partial term expiring December 2026; his career as a high-school social-science teacher and Activities Director in the San Lorenzo Unified School District (Arroyo High School, then San Lorenzo High School), teaching Ethnic Studies, World History, U.S. History, Government, and AP coursework; his education (BA Political Science, San Francisco State; teacher-education coursework at UC Berkeley; MEd, National University; in-progress EdD, University of Southern California); his election to the San Leandro school board at eighteen in 2018 ("the youngest person elected to public office in California history"), serving through 2025 and as School Board President in 2022; and his stated priorities (youth and family stability, economic opportunity, governance improvements, budget pragmatism, climate mitigation, road safety, and economic development).

Last updated September 1, 2026.