San Francisco County · Statewide General Election
San Francisco Public Defender — San Francisco County
Draft candidate list — early preview until the state’s official list publishes on August 27, 2026.
On the ballot
- Manohar Raju — Incumbent
This person leads the office that provides legal defense to San Franciscans charged with crimes who cannot afford a lawyer.
Only one candidate qualified for this seat. Incumbent Manohar "Mano" Raju was the sole candidate to qualify by the filing deadline and appears unopposed on the November 3 ballot — so this contest is settled and your vote here does not change the outcome. San Francisco elects this office directly in the general election; there was no June primary contest for it.
The Public Defender leads the office that represents San Franciscans charged with crimes who cannot afford a lawyer. The office describes the post as California's only elected public defender seat, which makes this ballot line the public's direct check on how indigent defense is run here. The seat carries a four-year term.
With no opponent, the useful question is what to expect and what to watch. The office enters the term in an open dispute with the Superior Court over caseloads: a judge held Raju in contempt in March 2026 for refusing new cases, and his office says the real problem is understaffing. How that dispute resolves will shape the office's next four years more than this settled ballot line will.
Manohar Raju
The sitting Public Defender, unopposed for re-election. A career defense lawyer — seven years as a deputy public defender in Contra Costa County, then San Francisco's office, where his predecessor Jeff Adachi recruited him and he rose from line attorney to felony unit manager — he was re-elected to a four-year term in November 2022 (per his office). Since May 2025 his office has declared itself unavailable for new cases one day a week, citing excessive workloads, and in early 2026 it declined dozens of new cases outright; Raju's position, per KQED, is that taking every case would make constitutionally effective representation impossible.
Strengths
A career defense lawyer who rose through this office to run its felony unit, re-elected in 2022; his office grounded its workload claims in a 2023 national staffing study.
Trade-offs
In March 2026 a Superior Court judge found him in contempt — 26 counts, $26,000 — for refusing new cases, ruling his office had attorneys available and was obligated to accept them (per KQED).
Keep in mind
The dispute is structural: his office says misdemeanor caseloads grew 78% and felonies 56% since 2019, citing a study that found it 36 attorneys short; the judge found the office still had attorneys available when it refused. Both positions are on the record via KQED.
Financial info
- Small donors
Manohar Raju
$20,011 raised
- Small donors$410100%
1Public matching funds are city money earned through small-donor support; totals here combine reported contributions with approved public funds. Figures are each committee's latest FPPC filings as summarized by the SF Ethics Commission's campaign-finance dashboard and the city's public-financing dataset, retrieved 2026-08-21.
Source review: Very strong (94/100) · 4 cited sources
Official records anchor this contest, with multiple sources checked.
- sf.gov (opens in a new tab)SF Department of Elections — Candidates, November 3, 2026 General Election
- kqed.org (opens in a new tab)KQED — San Francisco public defender caseload dispute coverage
- sfpublicdefender.org (opens in a new tab)San Francisco Public Defender — office biography and statements
- campaign.sfethics.org (opens in a new tab)SF Ethics Commission — campaign-finance dashboard and public-financing dataset
Last updated August 21, 2026.