A well-funded challenger falls short as party endorsements and a contentious ballot dispute shape the open-seat primary for a pivotal supervisorial seat.

Connor Traut

• Mayor, City of Buena Park
• Democratic endorsement
• Raised ~$225,000 in 2025

Tim Shaw

• OC Board of Education Trustee
• Republican endorsement
• Lower fundraising; NAR independent spending $125k+

Fred Jung

• Mayor, City of Fullerton
• No Party Preference
• Raised $350,000+ in 2025

Rose Espinoza

• Mayor, City of La Habra
• No Party Preference
• Self funded $150,000

Early election returns in the race for Orange County’s 4th Supervisorial District indicate that Buena Park Mayor Connor Traut and Orange County Board of Education Trustee Tim Shaw are positioned to advance to the November general election under California’s top-two primary system — a result that surprised many observers, given the fundraising advantage held by a rival candidate.

The open-seat contest was triggered by the impending departure of Supervisor Doug Chaffee, who is term-limited. The district encompasses Fullerton, Buena Park, La Habra, Brea, Placentia, Stanton, and portions of Anaheim. Four candidates qualified for the June 2 primary: Traut, Shaw, Fullerton Mayor Fred Jung, and La Habra Mayor Rose Espinoza.

Money didn’t buy a top-two finish

Among the most notable developments in the early returns was the performance of Jung, whose campaign reported raising more than $350,000 during 2025 — one of the strongest fundraising totals in the race. That figure included nearly $200,000 transferred from a previous Fullerton City Council campaign account, with filings showing the campaign maintaining a substantial cash balance entering the final weeks before Election Day.

By comparison, Traut reported raising approximately $225,000 over the same period, while Shaw reported significantly lower totals. However, the National Association of Realtors spent more than $125,000 on independent advertising in support of his campaign. Despite the financial gap among the candidates themselves, both Traut and Shaw appeared to hold early leads, underscoring the limits of campaign spending in a race where institutional endorsements and outside spending carried considerable weight.

In Orange County’s nonpartisan county supervisor races, candidates often align with political parties for support. This election cycle, Traut received backing from the Orange County Democratic Party and various labor organizations, while the Orange County Republican Party endorsed Shaw.

Fullerton Mayor Fred Jung: Political Alliances and Legal Challenges

Candidate Jung, who shifted from Democrat to No Party Preference, secured an endorsement from the Lincoln Club of Orange County, a major conservative donor network. His campaign connects him to a wider array of conservative activists, including Dr. Jeff Barke, a vocal opponent of pandemic-related health measures and co-founder of the Orange County Classical Academy.

Jung faced legal challenges when an Orange County Superior Court judge ordered changes to his ballot materials due to contested claims in his candidate statement, including his assertion that he had built 9 parks and resolved a $9 million deficit. His designation as a “Businessowner” was also questioned, with opponents arguing it lacked current support.

Despite these issues, Jung remains on the Fullerton City Council after winning a four-year term in 2024. Questions arose regarding his business disclosures on Form 700, California’s financial disclosure for public officials. He initially reported a partnership in Game Changers, a wholesale company, but this was absent from his 2024 filing, which only listed his wife’s income. Jung claims he sold the business before the reporting period. No formal complaints or FPPC investigations are linked to Jung’s disclosures.

In contrast, Mari Barke, Dr. Barke’s wife, is under FPPC investigation for failing to disclose significant income and business interests since her tenure on the Orange County Board of Education began in 2018. The board, under a conservative majority, has drawn attention for its opposition to pandemic restrictions and lawsuits against state policies, prompting a state audit of its activities set for 2026. The State Auditor has not yet issued a timeline for completion, though the audit is expected to take at least six months. The Joint Legislative Audit Committee approved the request on March 24, 2026, so at the earliest, a completed report would arrive sometime in the fall of 2026 — well after the November general election. 

The audit aims to evaluate the board’s governance practices, litigation activities, and use of taxpayer funds. More specifically, it will examine a pattern of governance disputes, litigation activity, and policy decisions over recent years that raise questions about transparency, fiscal stewardship, civil rights compliance, and adherence to statutory responsibilities — including opposition to the California Healthy Youth Act, efforts to reopen schools without public health safeguards during the pandemic and related litigation, controversial charter school approvals, and multiple lawsuits involving state policy and internal governance.

The board’s vice president, Ken Williams, pushed back, calling the audit purely a political effort by Senator Umberg, who was running in the June primary for the Board of Equalization. 

These developments highlight the connections among education policy, pandemic politics, and local political dynamics in Orange County, situating Jung’s campaign within a complex network of conservative interests.

Questions that followed Buena Park Mayor Connor Traut

Traut, 31, entered the race as the Democratic establishment’s favored candidate, backed by a deep roster of endorsements from elected officials at the state and local level. Critics, however, raised questions about the depth of his roots in the communities he seeks to represent. Traut moved to Buena Park ahead of his 2018 city council race, winning a district seat in a newly redrawn district with 3,026 votes. He ran unopposed in 2022. Conservative commentators have characterized his political trajectory as opportunistic, arguing that he relocated specifically to pursue elective office rather than emerging from an established civic presence in the district.

Traut has also drawn scrutiny for his close political association with the late Jordan Brandman, the former Anaheim city councilman who resigned in 2021 amid controversy over crude text messages sent to a colleague, and who died of acute methamphetamine intoxication, according to an autopsy report from the Orange County Coroner’s Office in 2023 amid a sprawling FBI corruption investigation into Anaheim city politics. Traut publicly acknowledged Brandman as a formative mentor, stating after his death that he “wouldn’t be where I am without him.” Critics have used that association to question Traut’s political judgment, while his supporters argue the friendship was personal rather than political and should not define his record.

Tim Shaw’s legal and electoral history

Shaw’s path to the supervisor’s race has been marked by legal turbulence of its own. After winning a seat on the Orange County Board of Education in 2020, Shaw simultaneously held his longtime seat on the La Habra City Council. This situation triggered a lawsuit in January 2021 alleging he was violating California’s prohibition on holding incompatible public offices. Shaw initially maintained that the two roles did not create a meaningful conflict of loyalties, but resigned from the Board of Education in November 2021 to avoid the cost of protracted litigation. The issue regarding incompatible offices was never definitively resolved.

Shaw then resigned from his La Habra council seat, was reappointed by his OCBE colleagues to his former board position in December 2021, and promptly faced a second lawsuit challenging that reappointment as a violation of state law. A judge temporarily blocked him from serving in May 2022 before courts ultimately allowed him to remain. He won his seat outright in a June 2022 special election, defeating Paulette Chaffee, the wife of Supervisor Doug Chaffee, whose term-limited departure created the supervisorial vacancy now at stake.

That 2022 race produced a third legal action against Shaw: Chaffee sued him for defamation, alleging that campaign mailers calling her a “convicted thief” — referencing her 2018 guilty plea to two misdemeanor petty theft charges for stealing campaign signs. After she completed restitution and community service, the charges were dismissed. Chaffee argued that the mailers were, therefore, false and defamatory. Shaw called the lawsuit without merit. The outcome of that defamation case was not publicly resolved as of this writing.

Shaw’s legal entanglements were largely products of a contested political environment rather than personal misconduct findings, and he was reelected to the OCBE in 2024 without significant opposition. Nonetheless, they form part of the biographical record that will likely resurface as the November general election campaign takes shape.

What comes next

Orange County Registrar of Voters officials will continue processing vote-by-mail, provisional, and late-arriving ballots in the days following Election Day. Final certified primary results are expected by July 10. If the early returns hold, Traut and Shaw will face each other in November, setting up a contest that will likely draw renewed attention to the ideological fault lines that shaped this primary.