# West Covina City Council, District 2 Compare records and positions simply between Letty Lopez-Viado, Carlos Yado, or Leslie H. Garcia for West Covina City Council, District 2 at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person holds your district's seat on West Covina's 5-member City Council. They vote on city ordinances, the budget, and land-use decisions. The term is four years. Council members choose one of their own to serve as mayor, presiding over meetings but casting only one vote like any other member. - Jurisdiction: City of West Covina - 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/west-covina-council-2 - 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 4, 2026 - Source-objectivity score: 77 out of 100 (Mixed), across 8 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology ## On the ballot - **Letty Lopez-Viado** — Incumbent - **Carlos Yado** - **Leslie H. Garcia** A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot. Incumbent Mayor Letty Lopez-Viado, on the council since 2018, faces two challengers for the District 2 seat: Carlos Yado, a 17-year municipal-government career employee making his first run for elected office, and Leslie H. Garcia, a first-time candidate and air-quality scientist. This person holds one of five district seats on West Covina's City Council. They vote on city ordinances, the budget, and land-use decisions. The term is four years. Council members choose one of their own to serve as mayor. The mayor presides over meetings but casts only one vote, like any other member. Lopez-Viado is campaigning on continuity from nearly a decade in office. She points 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. That work spans public safety, code enforcement, and economic development, under a fiscal-responsibility and public-safety platform. Garcia, also a first-time candidate, is campaigning against data-center development and for tenant protections and immigrant-community safety. Garcia has endorsements from a former West Covina mayor and a sitting West Covina councilmember. The California Working Families Party also backs them. ## 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 and two regional board seats, LA Sanitation Districts and Foothill Transit. Plus community programs she founded, a student film festival and 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. That is 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. That is 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 he is a career staffer, not a prior officeholder. He has no council votes yet for a voter to measure them against. ## Leslie H. Garcia Leslie H. Garcia is a first-time candidate, a lifelong West Covina resident who grew up in District 2, and a Teamsters Local 986 union member, per their own campaign site. Professionally they are an Air Quality Instrument Specialist II at the South Coast Air Quality Management District, having previously worked at the California Air Resources Board on a statewide incentive program to reduce air pollution; they hold a Master's in Earth Sciences and a Bachelor's in Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences from UC San Diego. They are campaigning against data-center development in the city, for tenant protections and small-business relief, and against West Covina's Flock Automated License Plate Reader surveillance contract, citing local ICE enforcement concerns. Garcia is endorsed by former West Covina Mayor Brian Calderón Tabatabai, the national candidate-recruitment group Run for Something, and the California Working Families Party; a Facebook video from sitting District 4 Councilmember Ollie Cantos also names them as a District 2 candidate, independent of his own reelection campaign. **Strengths:** Endorsed by a former mayor, a sitting councilmember, and a national candidate-recruitment nonprofit. That is unusually strong outside backing for a first-time local candidate. **Trade-offs:** No prior elected or appointed office. Like Yado, Garcia has no council votes yet for a voter to check their platform against. **Keep in mind:** Their day job is at the regional air-quality agency. That is a different line of government work than the city council seat they're seeking. Lopez-Viado's day job at LA City Recreation and Parks is similar. ## Review notes - Carlos Yado for West Covina City Council District 2, Leslie for West Covina City Council, and Carlos Yado (@yadoforwestcovina) may have more bias because they are advocacy voter guides compared to other formal government and nonprofit journalism sources. ## Sources 1. [Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk — General Election Final List of Qualified Candidates to Appear on the Ballot (Election 4348, generated September 2, 2026 at 1:15 PM)](https://content.lavote.gov/docs/rrcc/documents/final-list-of-qualified-candidates-to-appear-on-the-ballot9fcf3b64-1a33-4882-9e17-8cbc3b3c8d76.pdf) 2. [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)](https://www.westcovina.gov/177/Elected-Officials) 3. [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)](https://www.westcovina.gov/172/Mayor-City-Council) 4. [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)](https://www.westcovina.gov/186/Campaign-Disclosure-Reports-Public-Offic) 5. [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)](https://www.westcovina.gov/m/directory/employee?eid=37) 6. [Carlos Yado for West Covina City Council District 2 — official campaign website (career background, education, family, and five stated priorities)](https://www.carlosyado.com) 7. [Carlos Yado (@yadoforwestcovina) — campaign Instagram account](https://www.instagram.com/yadoforwestcovina/) 8. [Leslie for West Covina City Council — official campaign site (Leslie H. Garcia; career as an air-quality scientist, community background, platform; footer names FPPC ID# 1493916 and states "Election on November 3, 2026")](https://www.leslieforwestcovina.com) ## The rest of the ballot West Covina City Council, District 2 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, "West Covina City Council, District 2 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/west-covina-council-2 (sources last retrieved September 4, 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.