# Santa Ana City Council, Ward 6

Compare records and positions simply between Giovanni Chavez or Isuri S. Ramos for Santa Ana City Council, Ward 6 at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person holds your ward's seat on Santa Ana's 6-member City Council. They vote on city ordinances, the budget, and land use, alongside the citywide-elected Mayor and an appointed city manager who runs day-to-day operations. Not all six wards are elected the same year -- only Wards 2, 4, and 6 have terms expiring in 2026. The term is four years, limited to three terms.

- Jurisdiction: City of Santa Ana
- 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/santa-ana-council-6
- 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: October 6, 2026
- Source-objectivity score: 79 out of 100 (Mixed), across 5 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology

## On the ballot

- **Giovanni Chavez** — Housing Commissioner/Lawyer
- **Isuri S. Ramos** — Nonprofit Executive Director

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

Giovanni Chavez and Isuri S. Ramos are running for this open seat -- incumbent David Penaloza (Mayor Pro Tem) did not file for re-election. Whichever candidate gets the most votes on November 3 wins outright; there's no runoff.

This person holds Ward 6's seat on Santa Ana's 6-member City Council. They vote on city ordinances, the budget, and land use, alongside the citywide-elected Mayor and an appointed city manager who runs day-to-day operations. Not all six wards are elected the same year -- only Wards 2, 4, and 6 have terms expiring in 2026. The term is four years, limited to three terms.

This is Santa Ana's one genuinely open council seat this cycle: no incumbent is on the ballot. Both candidates currently sit on city commissions and campaign on affordability, housing, and neighborhood safety. Chavez, a former president of the California Young Democrats, centers their campaign on a "safe, affordable, and accessible" city; Ramos, chair of the Planning Commission and a longtime Ward 6 tenant-rights advocate, centers hers on affordable housing, tenant protections, and community safety.

## Giovanni Chavez

Chavez is the son of Mexican immigrants who Chavez says emphasized "hard work, respect, human decency," and community service, growing up in a family that struggled financially but prioritized education and giving back. They served as President of the California Young Democrats, where they say they championed worker protections and community advocacy, focusing on living wages for essential workers, opposing immigration-enforcement actions targeting residents, and protecting affordable-housing initiatives. They currently serve as a Santa Ana Housing Commissioner and are a lawyer, per their filed ballot designation ("Housing Commissioner/Lawyer"). Their campaign centers on making Santa Ana "safe, affordable, and accessible" for all residents, prioritizing city budgets around residents' needs. Their listed endorsers include U.S. Representatives Lou Correa and Robert Garcia, State Treasurer Fiona Ma, Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis, and sitting Santa Ana Mayor David Penaloza -- i.e., the outgoing Ward 6 incumbent is backing Chavez as his successor rather than running again himself.

**Strengths:** A law background plus current Housing Commission service. Chavez led the California Young Democrats, a state party role. The outgoing Ward 6 incumbent, now the sitting Mayor, has endorsed them.

**Trade-offs:** They have held no elected office before. Their organizing work with the California Young Democrats is statewide and partisan. It is not specific to Ward 6.

**Keep in mind:** No campaign-finance figures are available; see Financial info.

## Isuri S. Ramos

Born and raised in Santa Ana to Mexican immigrant parents, Ramos is the current Chair of the Santa Ana Planning Commission. She began her public-service career as a youth commissioner at Santa Ana High School and says she has spent more than a decade advocating for residents, including leading advocacy efforts in Ward 6's Lacy neighborhood focused on tenant rights and housing conditions. She serves as Executive Director of a local nonprofit developing leadership among young Latinos in Orange County, per her filed ballot designation ("Nonprofit Executive Director"). Her platform emphasizes making "the city more affordable, transparent, and welcoming of economic development." On affordable housing, she says she led efforts resulting in 93 affordable units at Legacy Square and strengthened affordable-housing funding ordinances. On tenant protections, she points to championing rent-control adoption and expanded legal services for renters facing eviction. On community safety, she cites helping create a Police Oversight Ordinance. She also lists neighborhood quality of life (park improvements and regulating smoke shops in residential areas) and immigrant rights (she says she was instrumental in Santa Ana becoming a Sanctuary City and has opposed ICE enforcement actions). In her Vote411 questionnaire she describes growing up on Minnie Street and relying on public spaces like the library, an urban-planning degree at UC San Diego, and early organizing as a student liaison for a campus labor union. She says that within five years of graduating she helped secure the Mariposa Park that followed Legacy Square and led rent-stabilization and just-cause eviction campaigns. She also says she pushed the city to write higher affordable-housing standards into its development solicitations and led the effort to regulate smoke shops. She adds that she is a former Housing Commissioner.

Her three stated priorities are housing affordability; environmental justice in Ward 6's industrial corridors; and community investment through an equitable budget. On housing, she wants community input before deals are made and preserved, well-enforced rent control and just-cause eviction rules. On the environment, she points to Madison Park's air quality and says the ward has felt neglected by its councilmember for eight years. On the budget, she says the city faces a shortfall if its voter-approved sales tax is not continued, and wants new revenue sources rather than burdens on residents. On Flock cameras she says she does not support automated license-plate readers in Santa Ana. She has called on the Council to cancel its Flock and Motorola contracts and sign no new surveillance contracts, says the oversight audit it promised at the one-year mark is overdue, and cites reporting that city Flock data was accessed by federal agencies.

**Strengths:** Chairs the Planning Commission, a former Housing Commissioner, with a decade of hands-on housing and tenant advocacy in the ward, by her own account.

**Trade-offs:** She has held no elected office before. Her record comes from her own campaign material and questionnaire, and none of it was checked by an outside source.

**Keep in mind:** Her housing results are self-reported. So is her claim that Ward 6 has been neglected for eight years. No campaign-finance figures are available; see Financial info.

## Review notes

- Giovanni Chavez's own campaign site ("Giovanni Chavez for Santa Ana City Council" -- Ward 6): his own framing of his candidacy, background, platform, and endorsements and Isuri S. Ramos's own campaign site ("Isuri S. Ramos for Santa Ana City Council" -- Ward 6): her own framing of her candidacy, background, and platform may have more bias because they are advocacy voter guides compared to other formal government and nonprofit journalism sources.

## Sources

1. [OC Registrar of Voters -- Contest/Candidate Proof List, General Election 11/3/2026 -- City of Santa Ana section (PDF pages 150-154 of 188, recovered by locally inflating the document's FlateDecode page streams with Python's zlib, since a plain fetch returns undecodable PDF stream data): confirms Mayor (3 qualified candidates), City Council Ward 2 (2), Ward 4 (2), and Ward 6 (2) as the city's four November 2026 races, each Vote for 1, with incumbent flags and every candidate's filed ballot designation -- including that Ward 6's named incumbent, David Penaloza, does not appear among Ward 6's two qualified candidates](https://ocvote.gov/fileadmin/user_upload/data/candlog/GEN2026/candlog.pdf)
2. [City of Santa Ana -- City Council page: confirms the seven-member body (Mayor elected citywide plus six ward councilmembers), 4-year/three-term-limit councilmember terms vs. the Mayor's 2-year/four-term-limit terms, and the sitting roster (Mayor Valerie Amezcua; Mayor Pro Tem David Penaloza; Ward 1 Thai Viet Phan; Ward 2 Benjamin Vazquez; Ward 3 Jessie Lopez; Ward 4 Phil Bacerra; Ward 5 Johnathan Ryan Hernandez)](https://santa-ana.gov/departments/city-council/)
3. [Giovanni Chavez's own campaign site ("Giovanni Chavez for Santa Ana City Council" -- Ward 6): his own framing of his candidacy -- the son of Mexican immigrants, former President of the California Young Democrats -- and platform (an affordable, accessible, safe Santa Ana), plus his listed endorsers, including sitting Mayor David Penaloza](https://www.giochavez.com)
4. [Isuri S. Ramos's own campaign site ("Isuri S. Ramos for Santa Ana City Council" -- Ward 6): her own framing of her candidacy -- born in Santa Ana to Mexican immigrant parents, current chair of the Santa Ana Planning Commission, executive director of a Latino youth-leadership nonprofit -- and platform (affordable housing, tenant protections, community safety, immigrant rights)](https://www.isuriramos.com)
5. [League of Women Voters -- Vote411 voter guide, 'City of Santa Ana City Council Member, Ward 6' race (statewide All Races list): each candidate's self-submitted ballot designation and campaign contacts, plus answers to the League's questions -- 'If elected, what are your top 3 priorities?', 'What background, experience and/or education qualify you for this elected office?' and the Santa Ana League's own question 'What is your position on the use of Flock cameras or similar devices?'. Answers on file from Ramos (listed as 'Isuri Ramos'), though the middle of her priorities answer was not captured. Capture in data/nov-2026/sources/vote411/santa-ana-council-6.json.](https://www.vote411.org/plan-your-vote)

## The rest of the ballot

Santa Ana City Council, Ward 6 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, "Santa Ana City Council, Ward 6 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/santa-ana-council-6 (sources last retrieved October 6, 2026).

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