Cambria's Honorary Mayor's Race Is Back, and the Joke Is Doing Real Work
August 13, 2026
August 13, 2026
At the Fourth of July Picnic in the Park this year, four adults stood at a podium in Shamel Park and delivered three-minute campaign speeches. Then organizers told them, mid-applause, that they'd also be entering a pie-eating contest. Nobody had agreed to this in advance. Everybody did it anyway, because that's roughly how campaigning works in Cambria's Honorary Mayor's Race: say something ridiculous, eat something messy in front of a crowd, and somewhere underneath the noise, real money moves toward real causes.
The race has been dormant for close to twenty years. It came back this summer, and if you live here, you've probably already caught wind of it at Soto's or in line at the post office. What's easy to miss, if you only see it as small-town theater, is that the fundraising mechanics behind the joke are doing something a straightforward donation drive rarely manages: getting four unrelated local organizations to out-raise each other in public, on a deadline, for a Chamber of Commerce that has a genuine cash problem.
Cambria's last honorary mayor was Kimberly Mastrantonio, elected in 2006. She stayed on in an informal emeritus capacity for a few years after that, until, as one account of the town's history put it, the demands of life and her own real estate business pulled her attention elsewhere, and the whole tradition faded without anyone officially ending it. That's a two-decade gap. This year the Cambria Chamber of Commerce revived it, and Chamber president Renee Linn has been characteristically direct about what it actually is.
"It's literally an election you can buy."
That's not a knock on the process. It's the point. In most elections, money buying influence is the scandal. Here, the transaction is the entire mechanism, and it's printed on the ballot in plain terms: a dollar buys a vote, there's no cap on spending, and out-of-towners can vote too. According to New Times San Luis Obispo, candidates had raised roughly $9,000 collectively as of July 13, with Dianne "Lady Ti Di" Brooke in the lead.
This year's ballot has more range than a typical civic fundraiser, because each candidate is raising money for a completely different corner of town life:
None of these groups would normally be competing against each other for the same donor dollars. A PTA bake sale doesn't cannibalize a Legion post's fundraiser. But the mayor's race puts all four in the same public arena, checking the same running tally, which appears to be raising money faster than any of them would manage running solo campaigns on their own timelines. Reported splits on where the money goes vary slightly depending on the source. New Times and a Tribune-syndicated account both put it at 75 percent to the Chamber's operating budget and 25 percent to the candidate's chosen nonprofit, while a KSBY segment cited a 60/40 split. Whichever figure is precise, the shape of the arrangement is the same: the bulk of every dollar keeps the Chamber running, and a smaller share goes straight to the cause a Cambrian actually cares about.
The Chamber has owned its downtown building on Main Street since it purchased the property on Valentine's Day in 1950, and it needs real repair work done on it now. It also can't currently staff its visitor center on weekends, which is precisely when most visitors show up. Bahringer, whose campaign platform otherwise involves keeping fog off the coast at sunset and personally growing a few inches taller, said the practical goal behind his run is helping the Chamber cover weekend staffing so the office isn't sitting empty on Saturdays and Sundays.
Clegg's Rotary Club funds have a different, almost startling destination. Part of what his campaign raises is going toward solar panels in Mexico City, tied to a water project there, which is a reminder that Cambria's Rotary chapter operates on the same international scale as any other Rotary Club, even from a town this size. Brooke, meanwhile, has framed her run around her own sons moving back to Cambria with their young families. Her message to newcomers is simple: volunteer for something, that's how you actually get folded into the place.
None of this requires the town to take the election seriously as governance. It has no legal authority, no ordinances attached to it, no budget to approve. Cambria isn't incorporated as a city, so there's no legitimate mayor's seat to contest in the first place. What the race produces instead is a concentrated, time-boxed burst of civic attention that a scattered set of separate fundraisers wouldn't generate on their own.
The race closes on September 5, 2026, during Pinedorado weekend, at what organizers are calling the first Mayoral Inauguration Ball. Candidates get one final stump speech before the last votes are counted. That timing isn't incidental. Pinedorado is Cambria's oldest continuous community tradition, running since 1949, and this year marks its 76th parade. According to Visit SLO CAL's event listing, the parade steps off at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, September 5, from Bridge and Main Street, moving through the East Village to the West Village along a 1.25-mile route, with marching bands, horse groups, and classic cars competing for prizes along the way. The Pinedorado Grounds fill out the rest of the weekend with a car show and performances of the Cambria Follies at the Vets Hall.
Folding the mayor's race finale into that same weekend means the winner gets crowned in front of the exact crowd that's already gathered for the town's biggest annual gathering, rather than at some smaller, separate event that half of Cambria would miss.
The mayor's race isn't the only thing that's changed on Main Street this year. Salty Pages, a new independent bookstore, opened in March at 2024 Main Street inside Cambria's Garden Shed Shops. Founder Julie Saunders, a Cambria resident, stocks contemporary fiction, speculative and literary titles, journals, stationery, and artisan jewelry, and has described wanting the shop to feel personal and rooted in the community rather than like a stop built for passersby, according to Paso Robles Daily News. It's a small addition, but it's one more storefront run by someone who already lives here, which tends to matter more in a town this size than in a place where turnover is constant.
Further out on the calendar, the Scarecrow Festival returns October 1 through 31, its 18th year running, with more than 200 handmade scarecrows appearing along Main Street, Moonstone Beach Drive, and into San Simeon, per the event's official 2026 guide. It's worth flagging now, in early August, because the same volunteer network currently fundraising through pie contests and dollar votes is the one that will spend September building scarecrows out of chicken wire and old clothes. It's not two separate communities running two separate events. It's the same core group of people, cycling through whichever tradition the calendar calls for next.
None of this changes property values or school enrollment or anything a spreadsheet would track. What it does is answer a question that's easy to overlook when you're just going about a normal week in town: who actually keeps a place like Cambria running when there's no city government to do it? The answer, at least this year, looks like four people eating pie in a park, a bookstore owner named Julie who decided to open shop on Main Street anyway, and a Chamber of Commerce trying to keep its own front door staffed on weekends. It's a smaller, stranger kind of civic infrastructure than most towns have, and it happens to be working.
If you're already part of this community and ever find yourself thinking about what's next for your own home here, whether that's a move within Cambria or a change somewhere else on the Central Coast, Leslie Dougherty is always glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
Over 20 years of experience guide a strategic, thoughtful approach grounded in deep market insight. Every step is handled with clarity, precision, and a strong focus on your goals.