The race for the 4th Supervisor District is shaping up to be a contest to see which Democrat candidate will emerge from the June 2026 primary to face Republican Tim Shaw in the November general election.
Shaw, a member of the Orange County Board of Education and former long-time La Habra city councilman, is the sole Republican in a four-candidate field. The other three are Democrats: Buena Park Vice Mayor Connor Traut, Fullerton Mayor Fred Jung and La Habra Mayor Rose Espinoza.
The 4th Supervisor District is currently represented by termed-out Supervisor Doug Chaffee. It encompasses the cities of Brea, Buena Park, Fullerton, La Habra, Placentia, Stanton and portions of Anaheim. The voter registration breakdown is 40.1% Democrat, 30.6% Republican and 23.2% No Party Preference.
The primary in a midterm election typically has a very low turnout, so filtering the expected universe to reliable “high propensity” voters is important, and reveals a closer political balance: 42.1% Democrat, 39.0% Republican, and 18.9% No Party Preference.
The district Shaw represents in the OC Board of Education largely overlaps the 4th Supervisor District.
Then-La Habra Councilman Shaw ran for the seat in 2018, and came within a hair of defeating then-Fullerton Councilman Doug Chaffee, losing by less than a percent.
There’s been some chatter in GOP circles that a Republican can’t win the 4th District, citing the 10-point Democratic voter registration advantage, in what appears to be a whisper campaign aimed at convincing party poobahs to back Fred Jung as preferable to the more progressive Connor Traut.
The Democrats have held a 10-point registration advantage since Shawn Nelson – Chaffee’s predecessor – held the seat. Democrats had a 10-point registration advantage in 2018, when Shaw nearly won the seat in a year when Republican candidates were being wiped out all over Orange County – and despite being outspent more than 2-to-1 by Chaffee.
Some observers have noted that if the Democrats had adopted a similarly defeatist attitude toward the 5th Supervisor District in 2022, now-Supervisor Katrina Foley wouldn’t have run – and won – in a district with a similar gap in favor of Republicans.
Tim Shaw was first elected to the La Habra City Council in 2008 and served on that body until 2021. He is the only 4th District candidate who has waged a competitive race in a jurisdiction larger than a council district. He has been on the ballot district-wide multiple times, running serious races – including victorious races for the OC Board of Education from the 4th District in 2020, 2022, 2024.
In his 2020 OCBE run, Shaw defeated three Democrats – Vicki Calhoun, Paulette Chaffee (wife of Supervisor Doug Chaffee) and Jordan Brandman – taking 33% of the vote in the March primary (OCBE seats are winner-take-all).
In 2022, Shaw again was the victor in a four-candidate field, winning 49.96% of the vote in a re-match with Paulette Chaffee. Chaffee spent heavily – nearly $300,000 – but finished a distant second with 33%. Shaw raised and spent slightly less than Chaffee, but still walloped her.
In 2024, Shaw faced a less resourced opponent, David Johnson, and walked away with the election, taking just shy of 60% of the vote.
Throughout his years of service on the OCBE, Shaw has been the target of repeated Democrat lawfare attacks. In 2021, a close friend of Paulette Chaffee filed a lawsuit alleging that simultaneously serving on the La Habra City Council and Orange County Board of Education violated state law against holding “incompatible offices.” Shaw disputed that assertion, but resigned from the council to avoid expensive litigation. The lawsuit was never resolved and the question of whether the two offices are actually incompatible was never adjudicated.
Despite the relentless lawfare, Shaw has prevailed at the ballot box every time.
Connor Traut: The Democrat Establishment’s Choice
On the Democratic side, Traut has emerged as the favorite of the party establishment. Indeed, this week he was officially endorsed by the Democratic Party of Orange County.
Traut is something of political wunderkind. He is an attorney and works at his family’s personal injury law firm. and has been politically active from a young age. In 2012, while in high school, he was a member of the Ladera Ranch Civic Council. In 2013 his family moved to north Orange County. In 2014, while a junior at Chapman University, he was elected to the Centralia School District Board of Education. In 2015, he engineered a takeover of the West Anaheim Neighborhood Council as part of a Democrat “Take Back Anaheim” campaign, and was widely expected to run for Anaheim City Council.
In 2018, Traut continued hisa northward migration and moved to Buena Park in time to run for city council that year in one of the newly-drawn council districts. Traut won decisively and was re-elected in 2022.
Shortly after the November 2024 election, Traut set his sights on the OC Board of Supervisors, and quickly garnered a raft of endorsements from elected officials – including Chaffee and Supervisor Katrina Foley – and unions.
READ: 2026 Elections: Buena Park Vice Mayor Connor Traut Running For 4th Supervisor District
He also has a serious campaign warchest of slightly more than $200,000 – although half of that was transferred over from his Buena Park council campaign committee.
The piles of campaign cash and endorsements obscure some obvious weaknesses for Traut. Although he is a Buena Park councilman, he didn’t get elected until the city switched the district elections. Traut moved into the Buena Park just in time to run for council in District 5 in 2018, winning with 3,026 votes. He had no opponent in 2022.
The only other time Traut has faced the voters was in 2014 in the tiny Centralia School District.
The other is his youth. Traut is smart and talented, but he is only 31 years old. His optics issue, however, is he doesn’t even look that old. Traut looks like he just got his drivers license, and voters take such optics into account when making decisions about whom to give their vote.
Fred Jung: Is Running As A DINO A Strategy?
Fullerton Mayor Fred Jung occupies an interesting position in the field. He is a registered Democrat, but a number of party critics sees him as a DINO (Democrat In Name Only) who is too cozy with business interests.
Jung also has a hefty warchest, and like Traut, the bulk of it was transferred over from his Fullerton council campaign account – to the tune of nearly $200,000 in 2024. Since the beginning of this year, Jung has raised another $60,900. After accounting for expense, Jung’s has $237,040.30 cash-on-hand in his county supervisor committee.
This week, Jung voted in favor of Fullerton joining a lawsuit against ICE. Voters may have mixed opinions about the particulars of the Trump Administration’s approach to apprehending illegal immigrants, but they aren’t enamored of politicians using taxpayer dollars in an attempt to hamstring the enforcement of immigration laws.
In May of this year, Jung declared his support for hiking Fullerton’s sales tax from 7.75% to 8.75%.
While there are whispers of Jung possibly re-registering as a Republican, he shows no signs of retreating from that affiliation or his political positions that are far more harmonious with the Democratic Party. Jung recently joining several other Democrat mayors in endorsing Democrat Assemblyman Avelino Valencia’s campaign for the 34th Senate District, in which Placentia Councilwoman Rhonda Shader is the presumed GOP standard bearer.
Needless to say, pushing a tax increase, suing the Trump administration, and endorsing Democrats for the state legislature is not likely to endear Jung to Republican voters.
Rose Espinoza…Again
Rounding out the field is perennial candidate Rose Espinoza. This is her fourth try for the 4th Supervisor District seat, having previously run in 2006, 2010 and 2018. She also ran for the state Assembly in 2022. Every time, Espinoza garnered somewhere between 9% and 12% of the vote – with the exception of 2006, when she was incumbent Supervisor Chris Norby’s sole opponent and still only took 27%.
There’s little reason to expect Espinoza to outdo her past election performances.
