Council Candidate Endorsement Review Reveals Stark Differences
Woehleke and Mapel's endorsements are overwhelmingly local, while two-thirds of Hillis's come from outside Moraga—including regional elected officials and political, labor and advocacy organizations.
A SMARTMoraga review of endorsements published by the four candidates for Moraga Town Council reveals a striking difference in where their support comes from.
Nearly all of the endorsements published by Steve Woehleke and Alexis Mapel are local to Moraga. Kerry Hillis's endorsement list is almost the inverse: approximately two-thirds come from outside Moraga.
Bill Carman has not yet published endorsements on his campaign website.
The differences are substantial:
For purposes of this review, SMARTMoraga classified Moraga residents and Moraga-based organizations as local. Individuals residing or holding office elsewhere, along with regional, countywide, statewide and other organizations not based in Moraga, were classified as non-Moraga.
Organizations are included in the totals but identified separately below.
Two Very Different Endorsement Profiles
Woehleke's 79 published endorsements are almost entirely local. Seventy-eight are Moraga residents or people identified through Moraga-specific civic roles. The sole non-Moraga endorsement is Orinda Councilmember Latika Malkani.
Mapel's list is similarly local. All 27 of her individual endorsements are Moraga/local under the same methodology. Her one non-local endorsement is organizational: the Democratic Party of Contra Costa County.
Hillis publishes considerably more outside support.
Of his 74 endorsements, SMARTMoraga classifies 25 as Moraga/local and 49 as non-Moraga. His non-Moraga endorsements therefore outnumber his local endorsements by nearly two to one.
The 49 include 41 individuals and eight outside organizations.
Hillis's individual endorsers include numerous elected officials from elsewhere in Contra Costa County and throughout the Bay Area, as well as federal and state officeholders. His campaign separates many of them into a section labeled “Regional.”
Two additional people appearing in Hillis's “Moraga” section were classified by SMARTMoraga as non-local: Contra Costa County Supervisor Candace Andersen and Contra Costa County Board of Education President Sarah Butler. Andersen represents a district that includes Moraga but does not reside in Moraga. Butler resides in Orinda.
With those classifications, 25 of Hillis's 66 individual endorsers are local and 41 are non-local.
The contrast is therefore substantial even before organizational endorsements are considered: about 38% of Hillis's individual endorsers are local, compared with essentially all of Woehleke's and Mapel's.
Political, Labor and Advocacy Organizations
The difference extends beyond geography.
Hillis lists endorsements from eight organizations, none of which is a Moraga-based civic organization.
They include the California Democratic Party, Democratic Party of Contra Costa County, Lamorinda Democratic Club and Contra Costa Jewish Democratic Club.
Hillis also lists YIMBY Action, an advocacy organization, and three organized-labor endorsements: North Coast States Carpenters Union Local 152, Contra Costa Building & Construction Trades Council and IBEW Local 302.
Moraga Town Council is a nonpartisan office. Political organizations are nevertheless free to endorse candidates in nonpartisan elections, just as candidates are free to seek and publicize those endorsements.
Mapel also lists an endorsement from the Democratic Party of Contra Costa County.
What distinguishes Hillis's published list is the number and breadth of outside organizations involved: political organizations, organized labor and an advocacy organization accompany a roster already dominated numerically by individuals from outside Moraga.
One Endorsement Also Came With $2,000
At least one of those organizational endorsements has also been accompanied by financial support.
IBEW Local 302 is listed by Hillis as an endorsing organization. On October 1, the IBEW 302 Community Candidates PAC reported making a $2,000 contribution to Kerry Hillis for Town Council 2026, according to a late-contribution report filed through Contra Costa County.
SMARTMoraga searches of the same county electronic filing system found no comparable outside-committee filings supporting Carman or Mapel. A search for Woehleke produced a $200 transaction in the opposite direction: Woehleke made a contribution to the Yes on Measure W school campaign.
Those county records should not be confused with the candidates' complete campaign-finance reports. Moraga Town Council candidates file their campaign disclosures manually with the Town of Moraga. The county search captures separate filings made by outside committees and other entities subject to county reporting requirements.
Nor does an endorsement or campaign contribution establish that a candidate owes an organization anything. Political organizations and labor groups routinely participate in elections elsewhere in California, and such participation is lawful.
Its appearance in a Moraga Town Council campaign is nevertheless noteworthy.
Regional Connections or Local Support?
There is a reasonable argument for endorsements from outside Moraga.
Town Councilmembers deal with Contra Costa County, neighboring communities, state legislators, transportation agencies and other regional bodies. Relationships with those officials can potentially help a councilmember advocate for Moraga.
Hillis also has a professional background that helps explain the breadth of his regional network. His campaign biography describes more than 25 years in public affairs, policy and government relations, and he serves on the Bay Area Council board and its Transportation Policy Committee.
But regional connections and local support measure different things.
An endorsement from an elected official elsewhere may tell voters something about a candidate's regional relationships. An endorsement from a Moraga resident, commissioner, former mayor, school-community leader or longtime volunteer may instead reflect firsthand experience with that candidate within the community he or she seeks to govern.
The 2026 endorsement lists show dramatically different balances between the two:
For Woehleke, 98.7% of all published endorsements are local.
For Mapel, 96.4% are local.
For Hillis, 33.8% are local.
An Unusual Presence in a Moraga Council Election
SMARTMoraga has covered multiple Moraga Town Council elections, and we do not recall another Council race in which a candidate's published endorsement list was predominantly composed of people and organizations from outside Moraga, or one in which organized labor had this visible a role through both endorsements and direct campaign financial support.
That observation is specific to Town Council elections.
Union participation is not foreign to every local race. Labor organizations have supported candidates in elections for the Moraga-Orinda Fire District, for example. But MOFD is a two-community special district with its own labor relationships and employee unions. A Moraga Town Council election is different: the electorate is Moraga, and the five elected councilmembers govern the Town of Moraga.
Moraga has also historically placed considerable emphasis on local participation and local control. That doesn't make relationships beyond the town's borders undesirable, nor does it make an outside endorsement inherently less valuable than a local one.
But the scale of the difference in 2026 is difficult to overlook.
Two candidates who publish endorsements draw virtually all of that support from within the community. Another draws nearly two-thirds of his published endorsements from outside it, supplemented by eight outside political, labor and advocacy organizations and a $2,000 campaign contribution from the political committee of one of his union endorsers.
Whatever significance voters choose to attach to those differences, the endorsement lists themselves tell markedly different stories about the coalitions supporting Moraga's candidates for Town Council.
