Palmdale: who represents it, and who is running

California General Election (federal, state and county offices) consolidated with the City of Palmdale General Municipal Election votes on 2026-11-03. It elects city: Council Districts 3, 4 and 5 (one member each, four-year terms), plus a city measure on whether to make Mayor an at-large elected office from the November 2028 election (Ordinance No. 1669). U.S. Representative for CA-27; Governor (open seat) and other statewide offices; State Assembly Districts 39 and 34 (by address); Los Angeles County, school and water district offices. No U.S. Senate seat and no State Senate seat (SD-23 is odd-numbered) is up..

Holding office11

the sitting council

On the ballot16

3 sitting members running again

The official candidate list ↗ · What Palmdale is like — the /local page

Congressional district (city hall): California's 27th congressional district (City Hall and the whole city, on both the 119th map and the 2026 map) — George Whitesides (Democratic)

Councilmember — District 3

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Laura Bettencourt ✉️ Elected	Councilmember → Running	Independent	District 3	City of Palmdale - City Council (and member page)
Anain Robles	Councilmember Running	Independent	District 3	City of Palmdale - City Clerk, Notice of Nominees for Public Office (published and posted 2026-10-10), General Municipal Election 2026-11-03
Carlos D. Cordero	Councilmember Running	Independent	District 3	City of Palmdale - City Clerk, Notice of Nominees for Public Office (published and posted 2026-10-10), General Municipal Election 2026-11-03
Franzelle Louis Johnson Jr.	Councilmember Running	Independent	District 3	City of Palmdale - City Clerk, Notice of Nominees for Public Office (published and posted 2026-10-10), General Municipal Election 2026-11-03
Jeremiah Farrell	Councilmember Running	Independent	District 3	City of Palmdale - City Clerk, Notice of Nominees for Public Office (published and posted 2026-10-10), General Municipal Election 2026-11-03

Councilmember — District 4

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Eric Ohlsen ✉️ Elected	Mayor → Running for Councilmember	Independent	District 4	City of Palmdale - City Council (and member page)
Francisco Sanchez	Councilmember Running	Independent	District 4	City of Palmdale - City Clerk, Notice of Nominees for Public Office (published and posted 2026-10-10), General Municipal Election 2026-11-03
Getro Elize	Councilmember Running	Independent	District 4	City of Palmdale - City Clerk, Notice of Nominees for Public Office (published and posted 2026-10-10), General Municipal Election 2026-11-03
Mark Maldonado	Councilmember Running	Independent	District 4	City of Palmdale - City Clerk, Notice of Nominees for Public Office (published and posted 2026-10-10), General Municipal Election 2026-11-03

Councilmember — District 5

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Andrea Alarcón ✉️ Elected	Councilmember	Independent	District 5	City of Palmdale - City Council (and member page)
Cynthia “Cyndi” Garcia	Councilmember Running	Independent	District 5	City of Palmdale - City Clerk, Notice of Nominees for Public Office (published and posted 2026-10-10), General Municipal Election 2026-11-03
Raycine Ector	Councilmember Running	Independent	District 5	City of Palmdale - City Clerk, Notice of Nominees for Public Office (published and posted 2026-10-10), General Municipal Election 2026-11-03
V. Jesse Smith	Councilmember Running	Independent	District 5	City of Palmdale - City Clerk, Notice of Nominees for Public Office (published and posted 2026-10-10), General Municipal Election 2026-11-03

Councilmember

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Austin Bishop ✉️ Elected	Councilmember	Independent	District 1	City of Palmdale - City Council (and member page)
Richard J. Loa ✉️ Elected	Councilmember	Independent	District 2	City of Palmdale - City Council (and member page)

Governor

Name	Office	Party / slate	Source
Gavin Newsom Elected	Governor	Democratic	Governor's Proclamation for the November 3, 2026 General Election, via the Secretary of State
Steve Hilton	Governor Running	Republican	California Secretary of State
Xavier Becerra	Governor Running	Democratic	California Secretary of State

State Assembly Member — AD-39

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Juan Carrillo Elected	State Assembly Member	Democratic		California State Assembly

State Senator — SD-23

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Suzette Martinez Valladares Elected	State Senator	Republican		California State Senate

U.S. Senator

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
Adam B. Schiff Elected	U.S. Senator	Democratic		@unitedstates congress-legislators (legislators-current.json)
Alex Padilla Elected	U.S. Senator	Democratic		@unitedstates congress-legislators (legislators-current.json)

U.S. Representative — CA-27

Name	Office	Party / slate	Seat	Source
George Whitesides Elected	U.S. Representative → Running	Democratic		U.S. House of Representatives
Jason Gibbs	U.S. Representative Running	Republican		California Secretary of State

Notes on this record

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

Municipal: five-member City Council from https://www.cityofpalmdaleca.gov/304/City-Council and each member page (retrieved 2026-10-23). All five seats are by district (1-5). The council page lists Eric Ohlsen (District 4) as Mayor and Austin Bishop (District 1) as Mayor Pro Tem; the Mayor is currently a council-chosen title (Loa's page: 'named Mayor on January 1, 2025'). No other city-wide elected office was found on the city site. Official @cityofpalmdaleca.gov emails as printed on member pages; no phones.
City 2026 election: City Elections page (https://www.cityofpalmdaleca.gov/322/City-Elections): 'One Councilmember for District 3, four-year term; One Councilmember for District 4...; One Councilmember for District 5...'; 'Incumbent Andrea Alarcón in District 5 did not file.' Candidates from the City Clerk's Notice of Nominees for Public Office (published and posted 2026-10-10): D3 5 (incl. incumbent Laura Bettencourt), D4 4 (incl. Mayor Eric Ohlsen), D5 3 (open seat). Names are as printed on the Notice; the Final Candidate List (file dated 09-29-2026) prints mailing addresses, phones and emails, and none of these were copied (one campaign website, votezelle.com, was kept). One write-in candidate on that list (District 4) is skipped as the brief requires.
City measure (Notice of Measure, posted 2026-07-11): 'Shall the ordinance establishing the office of Mayor as an at-large, elected position beginning with the November 2028 general municipal election be adopted?'
Next municipal election after 2026-11-03: November 2028, consolidated with the statewide general, for Districts 1 and 2 (terms expire November 2028 per member pages), and for an at-large Mayor if the measure passes. The City says regular elections are 'consolidated with statewide elections in November of even-numbered years'. The exact 2028 date is not yet published.
Los Angeles County Registrar candidate list (lavote.gov Candidate List, GENERAL ELECTION - 11/3/2026, id=4348, retrieved 2026-10-23) was read. It carries only local district contests (Palmdale School District, Palmdale Water District and others), not the federal, state or City of Palmdale council contests. School and water offices are skipped as the brief requires. That list prints candidates' addresses and phones, and none were copied. The county's candidate-statement tool (apps.lavote.gov/candidate-statements) and its interactive sample ballot are JavaScript apps (the first behind Incapsula), so they were not used.
FEDERAL AND STATE CANDIDATES - SECOND-HAND: As instructed, the SOS Certified List of Candidates (elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov, dated 2026-08-27) was not fetched, because that host returns 403 on robots.txt. voterguide.sos.ca.gov also returns 403 on robots.txt, and every candidate list linked from the SOS general-election page (www.sos.ca.gov) is on the cdn host. The Governor (Becerra, Hilton) and CA-27 (Whitesides, Gibbs) candidate rows, with their ballot designations, were therefore copied from the sibling record us-santa-clarita.json, whose agent read that certified list on 2026-10-22. They cite the certified list as their source, but they were not re-verified here. No sibling record covers AD-39 or AD-34, so no Assembly candidates are listed, and Assemblymember Juan Carrillo (AD-39) is left 'elected' with his 2026 ballot status unknown.
Districts covering the city: Census Geocoder coordinates endpoint on a 16x24 grid over 34.47-34.67 N, 118.34-117.84 W (384 points, 101 inside 'Palmdale city', 0 errors). On both the 2026 map (Current_Current: 120th Congress, 2026 legislative districts) and ACS2025_Current (119th Congress, 2024 legislative districts), all 101 points were in CA-27 and SD-23, with Assembly split AD-39 57 / AD-34 44. City Hall (34.57758,-118.11623, from the Census address matcher): CA-27, SD-23, AD-39. This is a point sample, not polygon area, and slivers narrower than about 1.5-2 km could be missed. Only City Hall's Assembly member is listed. AD-34's member is not listed, as the brief requires. tigerweb.geo.census.gov rejected the robots.txt request ('Request Rejected'), so it was treated as not allowed and not used.
Federal: Representative George Whitesides (CA-27) re-checked on https://www.house.gov/representatives (California table, retrieved 2026-10-23). Senators Padilla and Schiff are from the CC0 @unitedstates legislators-current.json via the sibling record, and senate.gov was not fetched. No U.S. Senate contest is up in California in 2026.
State: Governor Gavin Newsom (term-limited; open seat). The row was copied from the sibling record, which cites the Governor's Proclamation on the SOS cdn host (not fetched here). State Senator Suzette Martinez Valladares (SD-23, R) was re-checked on https://senate.ca.gov/senators on 2026-10-23. Assemblymember Juan Carrillo (AD-39, Democrat) was read from https://www.assembly.ca.gov/assemblymembers on 2026-10-23.
LICENCE: cityofpalmdaleca.gov copyright notice (/site/copyright): 'All content (c) 2006-2026 Palmdale, CA and its representatives. All rights reserved.' Only facts are recorded, and council photos are linked, not copied. If ResearchUpon's ad-supported use is a concern, Jim may want the City's permission before showing the linked photos. lacounty.gov/disclaimer is an advertising and hotlink policy with no reuse restriction. sos.ca.gov states only 'Copyright (c) 2026 California Secretary of State'.
Robots/terms: cityofpalmdaleca.gov robots.txt (User-agent * group; it also has a named-AI group with the same path disallows and no 'Disallow: /') - none of the paths used (/304, /305-308, /518, /322, /DocumentCenter/View, /ImageRepository, /site/copyright) are disallowed; Crawl-delay 10 was honoured. lavote.gov and apps.lavote.gov serve no robots.txt (404). lacounty.gov robots allows /disclaimer. www.sos.ca.gov robots.txt is empty. house.gov, senate.ca.gov and assembly.ca.gov robots allow the member pages. geocoding.geo.census.gov serves no robots.txt. One plain User-Agent was used throughout. No terms were accepted, there were no logins, and nothing was requested. No home addresses, phones or personal emails were recorded. standsFor is null for everyone, because member-page biographies are the City's text. Write-ins and primary losers are excluded.

Sources

Prepared 2026-10-23. Nomination papers are never opened: they carry home addresses. After voting day a candidate list becomes a result; these rows are reconciled, not deleted.