By Jorge Casuso
August 17, 2026 -- Eleven candidates are in the running for three City Council seats -- including two incumbents and a former mayor -- down from 20 hopefuls who pulled nominating papers for the November 3 race.
Six of the candidates who qualified by Wednesday's deadline will run as members of two rival slates. One slate is headed by incumbent Mayor Caroline Torosis and includes fellow LA County official Brett Morrow and Rent Board member Danny Ivanov.
The other is headed by Councilmember Lana Negrete and includes environmentalist Ashley Oelson and businessman Doug Trussler. Incumbent Councilmember Jesse Zwick, who ran with Torosis two years ago, did not pull papers after being hired as director of a statewide housing advocacy group.
Among the independent candidates who qualified for the ballot are former mayor Phil Brock, who is seeking to regain the seat he lost in 2024; Rent Board member Ericka Lesley; abundant housing advocate Eli Gill, street performer Wade Kelley, and Derrick Townsend, an occupational therapist at Kaiser-Permanente.
Public Safety Reform and Oversight Commissioner Angela Scott withdrew from the Council race and is running for a seat on the College Board.
While the Council race won't flip the current 6 to 1 majority on the Council, it saw the City's two most powerful political groups failing to align their forces.
The local Democratic Club made no endorsements after the slate headed by Negrete upended the group's convention by seeking the backing of its members and splitting the votes, depriving any candidate from gaining the 55 percent needed ("Dem Club Makes No Council Endorsements," July 16, 2026).
Meanwhile, Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights (SMRR) endorsed Torosis and Ivanov at the group's convention August 9, and its ten-member Steering Committee added Morrow to the slate three days later ("SMRR Endorses Torosis, Ivanov for Council," August 10, 2026).
Because he was not endorsed by the membership, Morrow cannot identify himself as having been endorsed by SMRR on personal campaign literature, but his name and picture will appear on the organization’s campaign materials.
The other candidates who pulled nominating petitions either withdrew, did not return them or failed to submit the 100 signatures of registered Santa Monica voters needed to make the ballot. The nomination period to be a write-in candidate opens on September 7.
This year's election pool of 11 candidates falls between the 10 candidates who ran in 2024 and the 12 who ran in 2022. In 2020, a total of 21 candidates qualified for the ballot, while in 2018, only eight, including one-write-in candidate, qualified.