The mayor presides over the local city council, composed of six members, and serves as the civic representative of the commune.

José María Caro Martínez, elected in 1894, was the inaugural mayor of the commune, and served for almost four consecutive terms, interrupted by his resignation in 1905.

Some mayors are particularly notable, for example: Conservative José María Caro Martínez (1830–1916), father of José María Caro Rodríguez, the first Chilean Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church;[4][5] Radical Carlos Rojas Pavez, the founder of Pichilemu, a newspaper which counted with collaborations of local journalist and historian José Arraño Acevedo and municipal worker Miguel Larravide Blanco;[6] and Christian Democrat Jorge Vargas González (b.

This has happened several times in Pichilemu: following the resignation of René Maturana Maldonado in April 1992, municipal secretary Gustavo Parraguez Galarce took over his office since, at the time, there were no councilors; in November 1998, mayor Jorge Vargas González was convicted of illegally giving a driver's license,[12] and the city council chose councilor Carlos Leyton Labarca until Vargas González resumed his duties in November 1999.

Candidates must comply a number of requisites in order to run for mayor of Pichilemu; those include: to have completed secondary education (Enseñanza Media), to be a citizen, literate, to have resided in the Libertador General Bernardo O'Higgins Region for at least two years before the election, and to have their military status regularized.

According to the Decree #5655 of 4 December 1945, regidores were popularly elected, and they had the faculty to vote for the mayor that would rule for the local government three-year term.

[14] The 1973 Chilean coup d'état interrupted Washington Saldías Fuentealba's mayoral term, hence terminating possibilities of new elections.

The military regime of Augusto Pinochet appointed seven mayors, who held the office in a period of nineteen years.

[16] Excluding Parraguez Galarce, the shortest term of a mayor of Pichilemu was that of Osvaldo Sotomayor Ilabaca, which lasted a span of nine days, between 25 February and 6 March 1935.