Part 1: Quick Ballot Cheat Sheet
At a glanceState & Federal Races
Local & Municipal Districts
Measures & Propositions
Judicial Seats & Retention
Part 2: Why I Made These Choices
Explanations & ContextFederal & Statewide Offices
Whitesides is a former corporate aerospace CEO who voted to fund weapons for Israel and defund UNRWA. The seat is safely blue post-redistricting, so we can withhold our vote on anti-war and anti-imperialist grounds.
Dueñas is an unapologetic Berniecrat running on Medicare for All and a Green New Deal. Establishment incumbent Luz Rivas takes money from Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) and refused to back the Block the Bombs Act; Dueñas is an essential anti-imperialist vote.
Incumbent Laura Friedman won in 2024 with progressive hopes, but has since accepted support from Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) and refused to sponsor the Block the Bombs Act. Safe blue seat; leave blank on anti-imperialist grounds.
A progressive Latina veteran who introduced bills to permanently ban ICE agents from serving as CA police officers and expanded mental health services for youth against conservative Tony Rodriguez.
Has fought for CalCare, reproductive freedom, and shutting down Aliso Canyon. While she has moderated on criminal justice bills, keeping her hard-right opponent out of the assembly is vital.
Running on tenant protections, corporate taxation, and holding industrial polluters accountable against a conservative Republican in an open seat.
Incumbent Celeste Rodriguez is fast-tracked for corporate Dem leadership and funded by Netflix, Amazon, and police PACs. Her Republican opponent has raised zero dollars and is completely inactive; leave blank.
Endorsed by Bernie Sanders and DSA; a proven progressive organizer dedicated to taking on predatory insurance cartels and establishing a public disaster insurance option.
A democratic socialist and labor organizer fighting to close corporate tax loopholes, running against a corporate Democrat funded by police PACs and fossil fuels.
Fresno City Councilmember Nelson Esparza is an essential defensive harm-reduction vote to block Republican state senator Shannon Grove, one of the most reactionary anti-labor politicians in California.
A tactical harm-reduction vote recommended by DSA Kern County to block MAGA Republican Vince Fong (Kevin McCarthy's hand-picked successor). Keeping a hard-right Trump loyalist out of the House reduces legislative harm.
A defensive harm-reduction vote for Democrat William Brown Jr. to block hard-right Republican Fresno County Supervisor Nathan Magsig from taking the state senate seat.
Conservative Republican supervisor David Couch is the sole listed candidate on the ballot and an anti-worker corporate ally. Per DSA Kern County, leave this blank as an explicit vote of No Confidence.
Per Silicon Valley DSA, no recommendation. Sam Liccardo is an establishment corporate Democrat closely aligned with big tech and real estate interests; leave blank on principled grounds.
Per Silicon Valley DSA, no recommendation. Marc Berman is a quintessential Sacramento moderate who has consistently resisted meaningful, transformative tenant protections and public housing solutions.
Per Silicon Valley DSA, no recommendation. Kevin Mullin is a corporate-aligned establishment Democrat who needs to be pressured to support working-class and anti-war legislation; safe blue seat.
Per Silicon Valley DSA, no recommendation. Incumbent Diane Papan is a centrist Democrat who avoids structural progressive reforms.
Strongly recommended by Silicon Valley DSA. Khanna has been an outspoken critic of Israel's war and genocide, explicitly calls for ending all U.S. military arms transfers to Israel, champions Prop 40's billionaire tax, rejects corporate PAC money, and fights for Medicare for All and a Green New Deal.
Per Silicon Valley DSA, no recommendation. Scott Sakakihara is a former Palantir finance operative backed by Uber, Meta, and crypto PACs who championed police militarization in Union City; leave blank.
Recommended by Silicon Valley DSA. A reliable advocate on the Assembly Health Committee for universal healthcare for all Californians, college affordability, and dedicated funding for public affordable student housing.
Barrera has traditional teachers' union backing. A strictly necessary defensive vote to stop Sonja Shaw, a far-right culture warrior backed by Moms for Liberty.
Incumbent Board of Equalization member and former assemblymember fighting for corporate tax accountability and tax justice. Recommended by California DSA and Silicon Valley DSA over corporate Democrat John Pimentel.
CA-47 (Katie Porter’s former seat) is a critical national battleground and dead-heat toss-up that could determine majority control of the U.S. House. Republican challenger Scott Baugh is a MAGA extremist opposing reproductive freedom, LGBTQ+ rights, labor protections, and climate action. While Dave Min accepts corporate PAC donations, is backed by Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), and opposed student ceasefire activists, voting Min is a strategic harm-reduction defensive vote to prevent a Republican flip. If your personal standard is strictly refusing to vote for DMFI-endorsed candidates, leaving this race blank remains a principled anti-war protest.
In AD-73, incumbent Cottie Petrie-Norris is a reliable business-coalition corporate moderate with no progressive record. Safe blue seat; leave blank in protest.
Kevin Kiley is one of California's most dangerous far-right culture warriors, known for drafting anti-union legislation, leading the Newsom recall, attacking public health, and fighting against reproductive freedom. Richard Pan is a pediatrician, former state senator, and mainstream Democrat backed by the California Labor Federation, California Teachers Association (CTA), and healthcare unions. A vital harm-reduction vote to keep MAGA out of Congress.
Endorsed by the California Labor Federation, California Democratic Party, CTA, Sierra Club, and local working families coalitions. Frame is a former public school trustee and climate advocate fighting for universal healthcare, wildfire mitigation, and fully funded public schools over wealthy corporate Republican incumbent Roger Niello.
Endorsed by the California Labor Federation, Placer County Democratic Party, Planned Parenthood Advocates Mar Monte, and Sierra Club. Parker is running on reproductive rights, affordable housing, public school funding, and green jobs against conservative former Rocklin mayor Joe Patterson.
Esparza is an economics instructor and Fresno councilmember endorsed by the California Labor Federation and California Democratic Party. He opposes corporate tax loopholes, running against far-right former Senate Republican leader Shannon Grove.
Recommended by DSA San Francisco over Scott Wiener. While DSA SF notes valid critiques of Chan's compromises, she remains far more accountable to working-class, labor, and tenant coalitions. Her opponent Scott Wiener is deeply bankrolled by tech billionaires, corporate real estate landlords, and pro-Israel PACs.
Per DSA San Francisco: Haney has disappointed progressives by pivoting rightward in Sacramento on Housing First and courting corporate donors. However, he is running against far-right Republican Manuel Noris-Barrera, who pushes election denial and anti-vaccine conspiracies. Haney is the necessary harm-reduction vote.
Establishment Democrats with massive structural advantages who will win easily. Leaving these blank registers a protest against corporate status-quo politics without putting the seats in jeopardy.
Local Government, Municipal & Schools
Pure harm reduction: a tactical vote to ensure disgraced, corrupt former sheriff Alex Villanueva never regains power over the department.
Advocates for public transit expansion, municipal modernization, building a local public hospital, and ending abusive mass surveillance like Flock cameras over corporate-backed rivals.
Community volunteer and non-profit founder backed by environmental clubs and youth groups, fighting for true affordable housing and climate resilience over incumbent Mayor Laurene West.
Experienced social services and child welfare leader prioritizing community infrastructure and renter protections over a landlord opponent with a predatory track record.
Endorsed by local teachers' unions and youth groups; supports special education, anti-ICE protections, and vulnerable students over a Moms for Liberty candidate.
Dedicated public school advocate running to finally oust right-wing culture warrior Joe Messina, who has spent 15+ years pushing book bans, anti-vaccine rhetoric, and attacks on queer students.
Educator-backed slate protecting public elementary education from a coordinated Moms for Liberty takeover across Saugus and Valencia.
Endorsed by COC faculty and classified employee unions (AFL-CIO) to bring transparency and push back against top-down administrative chaos.
Food & Water Watch organizer fighting for clean tap water, affordable utility rates, and protecting our watershed from rapacious real estate developers.
Dedicated conservationist fighting corporate developers and chemical dumps. Vote only for Plambeck—giving a second vote to Maria Gutzeit dilutes Plambeck's vote tally against the developer majority.
Raman slashed homelessness by 49% in CD4 through supportive housing, passed historic tenant protections, and stood tall at a forum defending BDS and calling Israel's war a genocide. Karen Bass denied the genocide, gave LAPD budget-busting raises, and took money from Airbnb.
Civil rights attorney with 94% DSA chapter support, endorsed by major labor unions to take on corporate polluters and abusive landlords; running against right-wing prosecutor John McKinney.
Adriana Cabrera brings grassroots community budgeting; Darryn Harris builds affordable student housing backed by UTLA; Randall Winston is backed by Hugo Soto-Martinez to connect students to union jobs.
A defensive harm-reduction vote recommended by DSA Kern County to block conservative culture warriors Kathy Scrivner and Bill Mell from capturing control of the high school board.
Recommended by DSA Kern County over corporate agribusiness ally Tamara S. Johnson to defend public oversight and water access for working-class communities.
Recommended by Silicon Valley DSA. All three are grassroots organizers fighting for aggressive municipal affordable housing growth, downtown revitalization, and tenant protections.
Conley has expanded free after-school childcare for working-class families and student mental health counselors; Subbarayan provides grounded, student-centered budget accountability.
Per Silicon Valley DSA, incumbent Rebecca Eisenberg's toxic conduct toward staff makes her unfit to continue in public office. Dailey is recommended, though community members must organize against his openness to data center water usage.
Corporate moderate municipal incumbents with no progressive platform differences; leave blank.
Diana Harris is a career public school teacher and parent advocate focused on educational equity and teacher support in Area 3. Leave Area 5 blank.
Per Silicon Valley DSA, no recommendation. All candidates have close entanglements either with 49ers corporate ownership (Park, Hardy, Ferraris) or real estate developer Lisa Gillmor (Kertes, Watanabe).
Recommended by Silicon Valley DSA. Wilson is a Foothill professor endorsed by the South Bay Labor Council and trustee colleagues to champion affordable higher education.
Per OC DSA, lapsed DSA member Larry Agran has aligned with commercial business lobbies, opposed ranked choice voting, and undercut hotel workers. Republican challenger Maksim Egorov runs an explicitly right-wing campaign with an AI-generated platform. Leave blank.
Per OC DSA, incumbent Katrina Foley supported the dispersal of the UCI Palestine solidarity encampment in 2024, consistently directed more money to police, and backed herbicide spraying in waterways. Republican Diane Dixon is anti-union and anti-minimum wage. Leave blank.
In Council District 6, Kathleen Treseder took extreme anti-Palestinian stances during the 2024 student encampments, while Scotty Hong opportunistically weaponizes the issue. In IUSD Area 2, incumbent Katie McEwen voted to cut classified school staff pensions by 3%. Leave both blank per OC DSA.
All three candidates in this race—incumbents Jill Gayaldo and Bill Halldin, and challenger Walter Moore—represent conservative or Chamber of Commerce business interests with no progressive, tenant, or labor platform. Neither local labor coalitions nor the Placer County Democrats made an endorsement here. Leaving this race blank is the principled choice rather than validating conservative politics.
Per DSA San Francisco: Rank progressive tenants' rights organizer Michael T. Nguyen (who opposes Mayor Lurie's luxury upzoning and champions social housing) and Darshini Patel (the only candidate openly identifying as a democratic socialist and backing Prop B public bank & Prop I social housing). Gary McCoy is a viable labor-backed harm reduction choice. DO NOT RANK Manny Yekutiel, a corporate moderate backed by real estate and police PACs facing serious sexual misconduct allegations.
Reina Tello is officially endorsed by DSA San Francisco. Along with Virginia Cheung and Ryan Hazelton, they form the United Educators of San Francisco (UESF teachers' union) progressive slate. They are fighting to protect neighborhood public schools from closures, stop charter school privatization, and defend public education funding against the billionaire-funded GrowSF conservative slate (Phil Kim, Autumn Brown Garibay, Tim Tung).
Bunny McFadden is officially endorsed by DSA San Francisco. McFadden, Leah Pimentel, and Jeremy Lee are endorsed by the faculty union (AFT 2121) to protect Free City College, preserve working-class and immigrant community education programs, and halt austerity cuts driven by corporate-backed GrowSF candidates.
Judicial Seats & Retention
Rhonda Haymon and David Ross are career public defenders recommended by abolitionist judicial group La Defensa to inject decarceral humanity into the courtroom. For Office 65, vote Justine Alan Clayton, and for Office 87, vote Anthony "A.J." Bayne as progressive community champions bringing fairness to the bench.
Vote YES on Justice Kelli M. Evans, a former public defender, ACLU civil rights attorney, and legal aid champion. Vote NO / Blank on Justice Joshua P. Groban, a career establishment and corporate attorney.
Evaluated by DSA Kern County for Central Valley appellate seats: Vote YES to Retain Kathleen A. Meehan and Thomas DeSantos. Vote NO / Do Not Retain on Arlan L. Harrell, Sonny S. Sandhu, Amy K. Guerra, and Mark W. Snauffer based on carceral, pro-prosecution, and conservative judicial records.
Rule of Thumb: Vote YES to retain former public defenders, legal aid attorneys, and civil rights advocates (Appellate Justices Rashida Adams, Helen Zukin, Gonzalo Martinez, Michelle Kim, Anne Richardson, Mark Hanasono, Kenneth Yegan, and Victor Viramontes). Vote NO / Blank on corporate defense partners and career federal prosecutors (e.g., Brian Hoffstadt, Gregory Weingart, Steve Goorvitch, and John Wiley).
Ballot Measures & Initiatives
Bankrolled by the deputy sheriffs' union (ALADS) with over $2M; takes away the legal right to strike from civilian county workers and locks county budgets into unaccountable binding arbitration.
Creates an independent county ethics watchdog and restores dedicated 10% funding for housing, mental health, and incarceration alternatives.
Builds affordable housing (Prop 1); protects social services from recession cuts (Prop 2); makes taxes on the wealthy permanent to prevent teacher layoffs (Prop 3); authorizes public campaign financing (Prop 4); and ends undemocratic recall exploits (Prop 5).
Prop 37 subsidizes private mortgage debt over social housing; Prop 38 is billionaire Gary Michelson's self-dealing bond scheme; Prop 39 is a right-wing voter ID voter suppression effort.
Prop 40 is essential: it enacts a 5% wealth tax on California's ~220 billionaires to backfill billions in lost federal funding for Medi-Cal healthcare and prevent clinic closures. Props 41, 42, and 43 are corporate/billionaire poison pills funded by Google founder Sergey Brin and anti-tax groups: if Prop 41 or 42 gets more votes than Prop 40, it legally nullifies the billionaire tax. We must vote YES on 40 and decisively NO on 41, 42, and 43.
Vote NO on Prop 44: Disguised as patient reform, this measure was funded by the California Apartment Association (corporate landlord lobby) as a targeted political attack to defund progressive tenant and rent-control advocacy. CAIR-CA and healthcare equity groups project the rigid spending penalty threatens the survival of over 30% of safety-net community clinics serving immigrant and low-income patients. Vote NO on Prop 45: A Chamber of Commerce corporate deregulation measure stripping local communities of environmental review protections.
Vote YES on Measure Z to secure dedicated funding for native wildlife rescue, educational programs, and facility care at the California Living Museum (CALM).
Endorsed by Silicon Valley DSA and DSA San Francisco. Essential funding to prevent devastating 70% transit cuts, closed stations, and abandoned routes across Bay Area public transit networks (BART, Muni, Caltrain, VTA, and SamTrans).
YES on E: Modernizes city charter governance, extends vacancy filling windows, and removes archaic requirements. YES on F: Progressively raises the hotel tax on corporate travelers to fund city services. YES on S: Enacts term limits for El Camino Healthcare District directors.
YES on L: Establishes climate and extreme-weather resilience as a permanent county charter priority. YES on AA: Embeds human dignity, civil rights, and equal opportunity into the charter preamble. YES on U: Replaces politicians drawing district maps with an independent citizens redistricting commission. YES on J: Requires public hearings before county supervisor vacancy appointments. YES on V & W: Secures vital school and community college facility funding.
Updates an outdated 1952 charter threshold ($1,000) to $250,000 and authorizes best-value delivery methods so Santa Clara can build public infrastructure faster while maintaining lowest-responsible-bidder standards.
Enthusiastically endorsed by OC DSA and YDSA at UCI as one of four key county priority endorsements. Transitions Irvine municipal elections to Ranked Choice Voting, empowering voters to rank candidates by preference without fear of vote splitting or spoilers.
Vote NO on TE: It is a tax-break loophole for multimillion-dollar Palisades properties that drains up to $66M from tenant eviction defense funds. Vote YES on LA (legalizes municipal public enterprise), YES on PL (streamlines planning), YES on PRK (doubles guaranteed park maintenance funds), and YES on PRT (strengthens community oversight on airport/port noise & pollution).
Measure C (City of Rocklin): Half-cent sales tax generating ~$8M/year for emergency 911 response, wildfire protection, and parks. Sales taxes are regressive, but under Prop 13 constraints, Lean YES for essential wildfire & emergency services. YES on Measure D: $288M school facility bond for Rocklin Unified to fix roofs, update HVAC, modernize labs, and upgrade aging schools funded by ad valorem property taxes—strongly supported by teachers and public education advocates. Measures G & H: Technical county administrative charter updates regarding supervisor vacancy windows and CEO removal; leave blank.
Endorsed as top priority campaigns by DSA San Francisco: YES on Prop B establishes a San Francisco Public Bank, divesting municipal funds from predatory Wall Street banks and deploying public capital into permanently affordable social housing, green infrastructure, and small worker co-ops. YES on Prop I restores dedicated real estate transfer tax revenues from high-value property sales directly into affordable social housing, tenant rent relief, and eviction defense.
YES on Prop H: Vital funding for Muni to preserve reliable public transit service for working-class commuters. YES on Prop J: Closes a tax loophole on foreclosed commercial real estate transactions exploited by corporate developers. NO ON PROPOSITIONS D, E, & F: A billionaire-backed consolidation of power by Mayor Daniel Lurie that guts democratic accountability, eliminates supervisory oversight on massive city contracts, and dismantles citizen commission checks on city departments.
Want to look up other districts or read full candidate analyses?
Check out the CAIR Action California Voter Guide, the statewide California DSA Voter Guide, or read chapter voter guides for local races: DSA-LA, OC DSA, DSA San Francisco, Silicon Valley DSA, and DSA Kern County.
Remember to postmark your mail-in ballot or drop it off at an official drop box by 8:00 PM on Election Day (Tuesday, November 3, 2026).