Where are all the candidates?

For the first time in recent memory, voters in Agoura Hills will not cast ballots for City Council this November — because no one stepped up to run against anyone.

All four cities in the area — Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Hidden Hills and Westlake Village — saw every open council seat go either to unopposed incumbents or lone newcomers after candidate filing deadlines passed in early August, The Acorn reported. The cities of Agoura Hills, Calabasas and Westlake Village scheduled special meetings for Aug. 19 to formally cancel their municipal elections.

Local officials say the clean sweep of uncontested races is unprecedented in the Conejo Valley area.

"This has never happened before, and will probably not occur again for a long, long time," Calabasas Mayor James Bozajian, the city's unofficial historian, told The Acorn.

What happened in Agoura Hills

In Agoura Hills, the candidate filing deadline closed Aug. 12 without a single contested race.

The open seat left by Mayor Pro Tem Deborah Klein Lopez — who is running to succeed Jacqui Irwin in representing California's 42nd Assembly District — drew exactly one applicant: Morgan Roth, chair of the city's Planning Commission. With no opponents, Roth is now positioned to be appointed to the council in December rather than elected.

Mayor Jeremy Wolf and Councilmember Chris Anstead, both up for reelection, filed for new terms and drew no challengers, guaranteeing their return to the dais.

The development means Agoura Hills residents will have no say, via the ballot box, in the composition of their five-member City Council this cycle. Under California election law, when the number of qualified candidates equals the number of open seats, cities may forgo the election and appoint the candidates directly, sparing taxpayers the cost of administering a vote.

A regionwide phenomenon

Agoura Hills was not alone. The same scenario played out across the 805's neighboring cities:

• Calabasas: Mayor Bozajian and Councilmembers David Shapiro and Ed Albrecht all filed for additional terms with no opposition. Bozajian estimated the canceled election will save Calabasas about $100,000.
• Westlake Village: Mayor Susan McSweeney, Mayor Pro Tem Brad Halpern and Councilmember Ray Pearl are likewise assured new terms. The city expects to avoid $40,000 to $50,000 in election costs.
• Hidden Hills: The gated enclave faces a near-total turnover of its City Council — with residents having no vote in it. Four seats were up, but only one incumbent, Councilmember Larry Weber, filed papers, and he opted to seek a two-year partial term rather than a full four-year term. Mayor Joe Loggia, Councilmember Laura McCorkindale and Mayor Pro Tem Stuart Siegel are not running. Three newcomers — retired business attorney Jeff Grogin, community volunteer Esther Hahn and businessman David ZeBrack — filed for the three full-term seats, ensuring appointment rather than election.

Siegel, who previously served on the council for 28 years, had been appointed in May 2025 to fill a vacancy created by the resignation of Councilmember Adam Wasserman.

Where the savings go

For Agoura Hills, canceling the election is expected to save roughly $80,000 — a meaningful sum for a city of roughly 20,000 residents.

Mayor Wolf said the savings will likely be directed toward home hardening and wildfire preparedness, though the City Council has not yet officially allocated the funds. The prioritization reflects the region's hardened post-fire reality: Agoura Hills sits at the edge of the Santa Monica Mountains, and the surrounding corridor has repeatedly faced wildfire threats, making structure-hardening and defensible-space programs a top municipal concern.

The next scheduled City Council actions will include formal appointments. Roth's appointment to fill the Klein Lopez seat is expected in December, once the assembly race outcome resolves the timeline for the vacancy.

Why it matters

An uncontested election cycle is a double-edged sword for local democracy. On one hand, it signals broad satisfaction — or at least an absence of organized discontent — with the direction of city government. Incumbents who might have faced bruising campaigns instead sail through, and cities bank five-figure savings.

On the other, it removes the public's most direct check on local power. City councils in California's small cities make consequential decisions about development, wildfire mitigation, public safety budgets and open space — issues that have historically drawn fierce debate in Agoura Hills, from the fight over the Agoura Village specific plan to decades of open-space preservation battles along the 101 corridor.

The quirk also has a downstream effect on the region's political bench. When seats go uncontested, aspiring officeholders like Roth move up through appointment rather than the crucible of a campaign — a path that several current 805-area legislators, including Irwin herself, once traveled on their way from city halls to Sacramento.

Whether 2026's quiet ballot is a one-off, as Bozajian predicts, or a symptom of broader disengagement from municipal politics will become clearer in 2028, when these same seats — and these same incumbents — come up again. Agoura Hills residents who want a contested race next time around know the remedy: pull the papers, gather the signatures, and run.