City of San Leandro · Statewide General Election
San Leandro 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
- Lee Thomas — Nonprofit Executive Director
- Joseph Trujillo — Chief Plant Operator
This person would hold San Leandro's District 3 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.
District 3 is San Leandro's only contested council race and an open seat: sitting councilmember Victor Aguilar, Jr., whose residence falls in the newly drawn district, did not file for it. Two first-time candidates, Lee Thomas and Joseph Trujillo, are running. Ranked-choice voting decides the winner, though with only two candidates it comes down to a straightforward majority.
This person would hold San Leandro's District 3 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.
Neither candidate is a current officeholder, making this the one San Leandro council race this cycle with no incumbent of any kind on the ballot. The city's own council directory confirms the sitting at-large member whose residence falls in District 3, Victor Aguilar, Jr., is absent from the county's certified candidate list for this race -- this dataset treats that absence as confirmation he is not seeking the seat, the same standard it applies elsewhere for a non-filing officeholder, without asserting a reason he didn't file.
Lee Thomas
A first-time candidate. Their filed ballot designation is "Nonprofit Executive Director." This dataset searched the city's own site, Ballotpedia, Vote411, local news coverage, and general web search and found no campaign website, news coverage, or further biographical detail beyond that self-declared occupation.
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 the filed name, self-declared occupation, and the fact of qualifying for the ballot to go on.
Keep in mind
this is a documented sourcing gap, not evidence against them -- a real, multi-method search turned up nothing further to report.
Joseph Trujillo
A first-time candidate. His filed ballot designation is "Chief Plant Operator." This dataset searched the city's own site, Ballotpedia, Vote411, local news coverage, and general web search and found no campaign website, news coverage, or further biographical detail beyond that self-declared occupation.
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 the filed name, self-declared occupation, and the fact of qualifying 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.
Source review: Strong (87/100) · 6 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.
Last updated September 1, 2026.