- Samuel Gallucci: Republican, Pastor, Nonprofit Leader, Former Business Executive
Gallucci has been a 40-year resident of Ventura County and most recently was senior pastor at Embrace Church in Oxnard. According to his campaign website, he is the founder and chief executive of Kingdom Center, a nonprofit that provides shelter and transitional housing for at-risk women and children in Ventura County, and has started another to provide food and legal and educational resources to migrant farm workers. According to his LinkedIn bio, before becoming a pastor, he worked as an executive at IBM.
- Michael Koslow: Republican, Retired Air Force Veteran, Retired Federal Agent, Small Business Owner
According to his campaign website, Koslow is a retired state command chief master sergeant in the California Air National Guard. He simultaneously worked as a federal agent for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, which investigates fraud and abuse in Defense Department programs. He later founded the Enigma Investigation Agency, a private investigation firm based in Westlake Village.
- Jackie Irwin: Democrat, state assemblyman, former Thousand Oaks mayor
Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks) has Served in the State Assembly of California Since 2014 and is the only candidate to hold elected office in the 26th District. While in the Assembly, he has chaired committees on veterans affairs, taxation, climate change, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, and has authored legislation to increase local university funding and expand the Santa Monica Mountains Preserve, according to his government biography. He began his public-service career on the Thousand Oaks City Council in 2004 and served two terms as mayor. According to Irwin’s biography, his background is in engineering and he worked at the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University.
- Chris Espinosa: Democrat, environmental law advocate
Espinosa is a consultant on federal public policy and organizational development strategies for his own consultancy company, Communities First Consulting. Previously, he was legislative director of climate and energy policy at Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization; Worked as director of outreach and engagement for the House Committee on Natural Resources and was chief operating officer at GreenLatinos, a nonprofit focused on environmental issues in the Latino community.
- Sonia Devgan-Kaikar: Democrats, physicians and small business owners
Devgan-Kacker is the owner of Westlake Village Urgent Care. According to her website, she completed her undergraduate degree from Stanford University and her medical degree from UC Irvine and teaches other professionals and physicians at UCLA, USC and other schools.
Other candidates include:
- William Scott: Republican, retired Defense Department civil servant
- Kyle Langford: Democrat, construction professional
- Crystal Golden: republican
- Liam Andres Hernandez: democrat
