Carmel-by-the-Sea: who represents it, and who is running

California General Election consolidated with the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea General Municipal Election votes on 2026-11-03. It elects city: Mayor (two-year term: David Boland v Councilmember Hans Buder) and two Councilmembers at large (four-year terms: Alissandra Dramov (I), Bobby Richards, Stefan Karapetkov); city Measures M (TOT 10%->12%) and N (sales tax +0.375% to 1.875%). Governor (Becerra D v Hilton R) and other statewide offices; U.S. Representative CA-19 (Panetta D (I) v Peter Coe Verbica R); State Assembly AD-30 (Addis D (I) v Shannon Kessler R). No U.S. Senate seat and no SD-17 contest in 2026..

Holding office11
the sitting council
On the ballot11
4 sitting members running again

The official candidate list ↗ · What Carmel-by-the-Sea is like — the /local page

Congressional district (city hall): California's 19th congressional district (whole city) — Jimmy Panetta (Democratic)

1

Mayor

NameOfficeParty / slateSeatSource
Dale Byrne ✉️ Elected Mayor Independent City of Carmel-by-the-Sea
Hans Buder ✉️ Elected Councilmember → Running for Mayor Independent City of Carmel-by-the-Sea
David Boland Mayor Running Independent City of Carmel-by-the-Sea
2

Councilmember

NameOfficeParty / slateSeatSource
Bob Delves ✉️ Elected Councilmember Independent At-Large City of Carmel-by-the-Sea
Jeff Baron ✉️ Elected Councilmember Independent At-Large City of Carmel-by-the-Sea
Alissandra Dramov ✉️ Elected Councilmember → Running Independent At-Large City of Carmel-by-the-Sea
Bobby Richards Councilmember Running Independent At-Large City of Carmel-by-the-Sea
Stefan Karapetkov Councilmember Running Independent At-Large City of Carmel-by-the-Sea
3

Governor

NameOfficeParty / slateSeatSource
Gavin Newsom Elected Governor Democratic Office of Governor Gavin Newsom (news releases dated 2026-10-21/22)
Steve Hilton Governor Running Republican Santa Cruz County Elections
Xavier Becerra Governor Running Democratic Santa Cruz County Elections
4

Member of the State Assembly — AD-30

NameOfficeParty / slateSeatSource
Dawn Addis Elected State Assembly Member → Running for Member of the State Assembly Democratic California State Assembly
Shannon Kessler State Assembly Member Running Republican Santa Cruz County Elections
5

State Senator — SD-17

NameOfficeParty / slateSeatSource
John Laird Elected State Senator Democratic California State Senate - Senators
6

U.S. Senator

NameOfficeParty / slateSeatSource
Adam B. Schiff Elected U.S. Senator Democratic @unitedstates congress-legislators (CC0); senate.gov not fetched
Alex Padilla Elected U.S. Senator Democratic @unitedstates congress-legislators (CC0); senate.gov not fetched
7

U.S. Representative — CA-19

NameOfficeParty / slateSeatSource
Jimmy Panetta Elected U.S. Representative → Running Democratic U.S. House of Representatives
Peter Coe Verbica U.S. Representative Running Republican Santa Cruz County Elections
i

Notes on this record

How the lists were read, and what could not be.

  • Municipal: City Clerk 'Elections' page (ci.carmel.ca.us/elections, read 2026-11-01): 'Elections for City Council positions are held in November of even-numbered years. Council Members and the Mayor are elected at-large ... The Mayor's term is 2 years, and Councilmember terms are 4 years.' The page lists the qualified candidates in ballot order with ballot designations; nomination period was extended to August 12, 2026 and has closed. Campaign websites kept; Hans Buder's campaign-domain email kept; P.O. boxes and the gmail addresses printed for Richards and Karapetkov not copied. The city's Candidate List PDF and the candidate statements of qualification are under /sites/main/files/, which robots.txt disallows, so they were not opened and standsFor is null for everyone.
  • Sitting council from the City Council page (ci.carmel.ca.us/city-council, read 2026-11-01): Mayor Dale Byrne (term expires December 2026), Councilmembers Bob Delves (2028), Jeff Baron (2026), Hans Buder (2028), Alissandra Dramov (2026). Official @ci.carmel.ca.us emails kept; Baron's printed phone not copied. Photo URLs are linked from the page's img tags (under the robots-disallowed /sites/main/files/ path; never fetched). Non-partisan: party null, partyShort 'None'. If Buder wins the mayoralty his council seat (to December 2028) would become vacant - not stated by the City. Next municipal election after 2026: November 2028 (Delves and Buder council seats, and the Mayor's two-year seat).
  • Federal/state candidates: Santa Cruz County Elections 'Contact Candidates' page (re-read 2026-11-01), which states the 'Certified list of state and federal candidates comes from Secretary of State' and prints U.S. Representative 19th District and State Assembly 30th District with incumbents - both districts cross into Santa Cruz County. It stands in for Monterey County, whose elections site is Akamai-blocked (see us-salinas; not retried). Panetta's printed mailing address and phone were not copied. The SOS certified list (elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov / sos.ca.gov) was not fetched (403 / Incapsula on robots.txt in earlier rounds).
  • Districts: Census geocoder coordinates endpoint (Current_Current: 120th Congress, 2026 state lines), 5x5 grid around City Hall; all 7 points inside 'Carmel-by-the-Sea city' are CA-19, SD-17, AD-30 (slivers narrower than ~0.6 km could be missed). SD-17 is not on the 2026 ballot (the county list carries no State Senate contest).
  • Sitting members: Panetta from house.gov/representatives (read 2026-11-01); Addis 'District: 30 Democrat' from assembly.ca.gov/assemblymembers (read 2026-11-01); Senators Padilla and Schiff, Governor Newsom and State Senator Laird carried from us-salinas (same offices/district; sources and dates in each row). Robots: ci.carmel.ca.us (User-agent * with Crawl-delay: 10, honoured; disallows /sites/main/files/ and /sites/default/files/; no ClaudeBot/anthropic group); votescount.santacruzcountyca.gov and geocoding.geo.census.gov have no robots.txt (404); house.gov and assembly.ca.gov allow the pages used. Ballotpedia, Wikipedia and news not used.
s

Sources

Prepared 2026-11-01. Nomination papers are never opened: they carry home addresses. After voting day a candidate list becomes a result; these rows are reconciled, not deleted.