# San Leandro City Council, District 2 (Short Term)

James Aguilar is running uncontested for San Leandro City Council, District 2 (Short Term). Full ballot at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person would hold San Leandro's District 2 seat on the 7-member City Council (six district members plus the mayor). They vote on city ordinances, the budget, and land use, under a council-manager government with an appointed City Manager. The term is four years. 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.

- Jurisdiction: City of San Leandro
- 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/san-leandro-council-2
- 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 1, 2026
- Source-objectivity score: 88 out of 100 (Strong), across 7 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology

## On the ballot

- **James Aguilar** — Appointed City Councilmember · Incumbent

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

James Aguilar was appointed to the Council in April 2026. They drew no opponent for the rest of this District 2 term. They are unopposed.

This person would hold San Leandro's District 2 seat on the 7-member City Council (six district members plus the mayor). They vote on 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

Aguilar was appointed to the San Leandro City Council for District 2 in April 2026. The partial term expires in December 2026. Their filed ballot designation is "Appointed City Councilmember." By trade they are a high-school social-science teacher. They are also Activities Director in the San Lorenzo Unified School District. They graduated from that district in 2018. They began at Arroyo High School before transferring to San Lorenzo High School. They teach Ethnic Studies, World History, U.S. History, Government, and AP courses. They also run student leadership programs as Activities Director. They hold a BA in Political Science from San Francisco State. They completed teacher-education coursework at UC Berkeley. They hold an MEd from National University. They are pursuing a doctorate in Educational Leadership at USC. They were elected to the San Leandro school board at eighteen in 2018. Their own city biography states this made them "the youngest person elected to public office in California history." They served on that board through 2025. They were School Board President in 2022. Their stated priorities as a councilmember center on youth and family stability. They also cover economic opportunity, governance improvements, and budget pragmatism. They name climate-crisis mitigation, road safety, and economic development too.

**Strengths:** eight years on the school board, including a term as its President. A background in education relevant to their stated priorities. Months of sitting council experience already.

**Trade-offs:** their current seat came by appointment, not election. This is their first time on a ballot for Council itself. No independent reporting on their appointment or brief tenure was found.

**Keep in mind:** there is no financial info to report here. This is an unopposed race.

## Sources

1. [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.](https://www.alamedacountyca.gov/rov_app/candidatelist)
2. [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.](https://www.sanleandro.org/202/Candidate-Information)
3. [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.](https://www.sanleandro.org/178/City-Council)
4. [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.](https://www.sanleandro.org/209/Ranked-Choice-Voting)
5. [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.](https://www.southtechhosting.com/SanLeandroCity/CampaignDocsWebRetrieval/)
6. [Wikipedia's San Leandro, California article -- 2020 census population (91,008), cited only for general context.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Leandro,_California)
7. [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).](https://www.sanleandro.org/182)

## The rest of the ballot

San Leandro City Council, District 2 (Short Term) 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, "San Leandro City Council, District 2 (Short Term) — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/san-leandro-council-2 (sources last retrieved September 1, 2026).

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