# San Leandro City Council, District 5 Xouhoa Bowen is running uncontested for San Leandro City Council, District 5. Full ballot at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person would hold San Leandro's District 5 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-5 - 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 - **Xouhoa Bowen** — San Leandro Councilmember · Incumbent A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot. Xouhoa Bowen, San Leandro's District 5 councilmember, drew no opponent and is unopposed. This person would hold San Leandro's District 5 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. 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 (elected citywide in an earlier cycle) is running for it. ## Xouhoa Bowen Bowen is San Leandro's District 5 councilmember. They are serving a term that expires in December 2026. Their own city biography states they are the first woman of Asian descent to serve on the San Leandro City Council. They work as Director of Strategic Development for the San Leandro Boys and Girls Clubs. They lead the organization's strategic growth and outreach initiatives. Earlier in their career they served with the Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan. They were a teacher and community-development specialist focused on education and gender equality. In 2016 they founded Community Impact LAB. It is a grassroots organization working on gender equality and community-driven social and environmental impact. They hold a BA from Marquette University in International Affairs, covering economics and political science, and in psychology. They also hold an MBA from Norwich University. They hold a Certificate in Social Sector Leadership from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Their stated council priorities are investing in community resources to improve quality of life. They also include economic growth and business development. They list fighting climate change and addressing homelessness and its root causes. They also list increasing public safety. **Strengths:** A nonprofit career in strategic development at the Boys and Girls Clubs, tied to their stated priorities. They also have Peace Corps experience and founded their own group before the council. **Trade-offs:** No independent reporting on their council record so far was found. What is here leans on their own official city biography rather than outside scrutiny. **Keep in mind:** There is no financial info to report here, since 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 -- Xouhoa Bowen's own official biography page: names her District 5 term (expires December 2026) and states she is the first woman of Asian descent to serve on the San Leandro City Council; her career as Director of Strategic Development for the San Leandro Boys and Girls Clubs and earlier Peace Corps service in Kyrgyzstan (teaching, community development, gender equality); her 2016 founding of Community Impact LAB; her education (BA International Affairs and Psychology, Marquette University; MBA, Norwich University; Social Sector Leadership certificate, UC Berkeley Haas); and her stated priorities (community-resource investment, economic growth, climate action, homelessness, and public safety).](https://www.sanleandro.org/185/Xouhoa-Bowen) ## The rest of the ballot San Leandro City Council, District 5 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 5 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/san-leandro-council-5 (sources last retrieved September 1, 2026). Link the canonical page above rather than this Markdown file. Coverage is updated as the race develops, so quote it with its retrieval date.