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City of West Covina · Statewide General Election

West Covina City Council, District 2

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

This person holds your district's seat on West Covina's 5-member City Council: city ordinances, the budget, and land-use decisions. A 4-year term. Council members choose one of their own to serve as mayor, presiding over meetings but casting only one vote like any other member.

Incumbent Mayor Letty Lopez-Viado, on the council since 2018, faces Carlos Yado, a 17-year municipal-government career employee making his first run for elected office, for the District 2 seat.

This person holds one of five district seats on West Covina's City Council: city ordinances, the budget, and land-use decisions. A 4-year term. Council members choose one of their own to serve as mayor, presiding over meetings but casting only one vote like any other member.

Lopez-Viado is campaigning on continuity from nearly a decade in office, pointing to community programs she founded and her current seats on regional agency boards. Yado, a first-time candidate, is campaigning on his career-long municipal experience in public safety, code enforcement, and economic development, under a fiscal-responsibility and public-safety platform.

Letty Lopez-Viado

Letty Lopez-Viado is the incumbent, first elected in 2018 as the first Mexican-Filipina American to serve on the West Covina City Council; the council selected her as Mayor for the current term. She founded Film It West Covina, an annual student film festival, and Taste of West Covina, a local-business promotion initiative, and worked with community partners to help bring the Haven City Market dining destination to the city. She currently sits on the boards of the LA County Sanitation Districts and the Foothill Transit Governing Board. Professionally she is a Senior Director with the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

Strengths

Nearly a decade on the council, two regional board seats (LA Sanitation Districts, Foothill Transit), and community programs she founded (a student film festival, a business initiative).

Trade-offs

A long incumbency built largely on community-engagement programming — her record on the seat's budget and land-use votes is less publicly documented than her civic-event founding.

Keep in mind

Her day job is a Senior Director role at LA City Recreation and Parks, a different city government than the one she'd keep helping run in West Covina — parallel public service, worth knowing about.

Carlos Yado

Carlos Yado is a first-time candidate for elected office with more than 17 years in municipal government across Southern California cities, in community and economic development, public safety, code enforcement, building services, and fire prevention, per his own campaign site. He holds a Bachelor's in Public Administration (Southern New Hampshire University) and a Master's in Organizational Leadership (Arizona State University). He is campaigning on fiscal responsibility, economic development, public safety, parks and community services, and government transparency.

Strengths

17-plus years inside municipal government, across code enforcement, public safety, and economic development — direct administrative experience most first-time candidates lack.

Trade-offs

No prior elected or appointed office — his record is staff-level municipal work, not a voting or policymaking record a voter can check.

Keep in mind

His campaign site names five specific priorities but, as a career staffer rather than a prior officeholder, he has no council votes yet for a voter to measure them against.

Source review: Mixed (79/100) · 6 cited sources

Official records anchor this contest, with multiple sources checked; advocacy or endorsement sources are treated as attributed perspective.

Review note: Carlos Yado for West Covina City Council District 2 and Carlos Yado (@yadoforwestcovina) may have more bias because they are advocacy voter guides compared to other formal government and nonprofit journalism sources.

  • westcovina.gov (opens in a new tab)City of West Covina — Elected Officials (dated "Term: November 20XX to November 20XX" line for every officeholder; shows Districts 2, 4, 5, City Clerk, and City Treasurer each expiring November 2026, and Districts 1 and 3 expiring November 2028)
  • westcovina.gov (opens in a new tab)City of West Covina — Mayor & City Council (council-manager government structure, current roster by district, confirms the city moved to by-district elections in November 2018)
  • westcovina.gov (opens in a new tab)City of West Covina — Campaign Disclosure Reports & Public Official Appointments (the City Clerk's own per-councilmember index of filed campaign-finance statements; indexes City Council candidate committees only, not City Clerk/Treasurer. Lopez-Viado's and Wu's committees each show continuous activity back to 2018/2015, but the newest report posted for either as of this retrieval is a 2024 semi-annual statement — no 2026-dated filing for either, and none at all under Carlos Yado's name)
  • westcovina.gov (opens in a new tab)City of West Covina — Staff Directory: Mayor Letty Lopez-Viado (official bio: first Mexican-Filipina American elected to the council in 2018, career and community record, degrees, family)
  • carlosyado.com (opens in a new tab)Carlos Yado for West Covina City Council District 2 — official campaign website (career background, education, family, and five stated priorities)
  • instagram.com (opens in a new tab)Carlos Yado (@yadoforwestcovina) — campaign Instagram account

Last updated August 31, 2026.