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City of San Leandro · Statewide General Election

Mayor of San Leandro

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

San Leandro's Mayor is directly elected citywide and is one of the seven members of the City Council (six district councilmembers plus the mayor); an appointed City Manager runs day-to-day city operations. A 4-year term.

Mayor Juan González III, elected in 2022, faces a single challenger: first-time candidate James Maes. Ranked-choice voting decides the race, though with only two candidates it comes down to a straightforward majority.

San Leandro's Mayor is directly elected citywide and is one of the seven members of the City Council (six district councilmembers plus the mayor), presiding over meetings and representing the city publicly. An appointed City Manager runs day-to-day city operations. A 4-year term.

This is Mayor González's first bid for reelection since taking office in 2022. San Leandro has no primary for city races -- Mayor and Council candidates go straight to the November ballot, decided by ranked-choice voting if no one wins a first-choice majority.

Juan González III

The sitting Mayor of San Leandro, elected in 2022. He holds a BA in Economics from the University of Texas and a PhD in Economics from MIT, and spent roughly 30 years advising clients on data analytics, financial modeling, pension analysis, regulatory compliance, and fraud analytics; he also spent six years as a UC Berkeley lecturer teaching Government Regulation of Industry. He and his wife have lived in San Leandro for about 30 years and raised four children in the district's public schools. His community record includes three decades of volunteer work -- the San Leandro warming shelter, creek restoration projects, and nonprofit boards including the San Leandro Education Foundation, Big Brothers Big Sisters East Bay, and Side by Side -- plus leadership roles as President of the San Leandro High School Site Council and the Bancroft PTA. As Mayor he currently sits on the East Bay Community Energy Board, the Alameda County Transportation Commission, the ABAG General Assembly, and the League of California Cities' East Bay Division board.

Strengths

a full first term, three decades of civic and nonprofit involvement, and current seats on regional bodies (East Bay Community Energy, Alameda CTC, ABAG) shaping city energy plans.

Trade-offs

this dataset found no independent (non-city) reporting evaluating his first term's record, so what's here leans on his own official biography rather than outside scrutiny.

Keep in mind

no campaign-finance figures were confirmable for either candidate in this race -- see Financial info.

James Maes

A first-time candidate challenging the incumbent Mayor. His filed ballot designation is "Business Operations 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 his name, his self-declared occupation, and the fact that he qualified for the ballot to go on.

Keep in mind

this is a documented sourcing gap, not evidence against him -- a real, multi-method search (city and county sites, Ballotpedia, campaign-site domain guesses, Vote411, Patch, general web search) turned up nothing further to report.

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 -- Mayor Juan González III's own official biography page: education (BA Economics, University of Texas; PhD Economics, MIT), a 30-year career in data analytics, financial modeling, and fraud analytics for clients, six years as a UC Berkeley lecturer teaching Government Regulation of Industry, three decades of local volunteer and nonprofit-board service (San Leandro Education Foundation, Big Brothers Big Sisters East Bay, Side by Side, the San Leandro warming shelter, creek restoration, President of the San Leandro High School Site Council and Bancroft PTA), and current intergovernmental roles (East Bay Community Energy board, Alameda County Transportation Commission, ABAG General Assembly, League of California Cities East Bay Division board). States his term expires December 2026.

Last updated September 1, 2026.