There are 15 candidates in the running for three Santa Clarita City Council seats that will be on November’s ballot.
The candidates who filed papers by the Aug. 10 city deadline were: challengers Cherry Ortega, Diane Trautman, Logan Smith, TimBen Boydston, Paul Wieczorek, Brett Haddock, Sandra Nichols, Jason Gibbs, Matthew Hargett, Sankalp Varma, Ken Dean and Sean Weber; and incumbents Councilman Bill Miranda, Mayor Pro Tem Marsha McLean and Mayor Laurene Weste, according to Santa Clarita City Clerk Mary Cusick.
“All 15 candidates who filed by the deadline, as listed on votesantaclarita.com, have been qualified to appear on the ballot through verification of the requisite number of (20-30) signatures on their nomination papers,” Cusick said.
The election is scheduled for Nov. 6.
New candidates can still enter the race on a write-in basis, Cusick said. The filing time for write-ins is Sept. 10 to Oct. 23.
Although write-in candidates don’t officially appear on the ballots, they are still eligible to run if they file a statement of write-in candidacy to the city, along with the sponsor signatures stating that he/she is a write-in candidate, she said.
Boydston, who filed papers on Aug. 9, is the only challenger who previously served on the council.
He was appointed to the council to serve from 2006-2008 for the remainder of Councilman Cameron Smyth’s second council term, when Smyth left the council to serve in the state Assembly. Boydston had promised not to seek re-election as an appointee, so he did not run in 2008, but returned in 2012 and was elected to a four-year term.
Boydston said he is optimistic about his chances of election this year.
“The last time I ran and was defeated, I came in third (to Smyth and Bob Kellar),” he said. “But there were only two seats in that election. Now there are three seats open.”
Trautman ran in 2000 and 2008. She was on the City Council’s Planning Commission from 2002 to 2010, and from 2012 to 2016.
Ken Dean, Brett Haddock, Matthew Hargett, Sandra Nichols and Paul Wieczorek ran in the 2016 race.
Weste was first elected in 1998 and McLean in 2002. Miranda was appointed in 2017 to fill the remaining term of Assemblyman Dante Acosta.
The city of Santa Clarita recently consolidated its elections with Los Angeles County, and as a result, its timeline for elections is regulated by county policy and law.
For more information on candidacy, interested residents can visit votesantaclarita.com.