# Mayor of Corning Compare records and positions simply between Robert Snow or Jose "Chuy" Valerio for Mayor of Corning at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person would serve a two-year term as Corning's directly elected, at-large Mayor. They preside over City Council meetings and represent the city. City Manager Brant Mesker runs day-to-day operations. Corning is a Tehama County city with a population of 8,244. It calls itself the Olive Capital of the World. Bell-Carter Foods, the largest U.S. table-olive processor, is headquartered there. City Council members serve overlapping four-year terms. - Jurisdiction: City of Corning - Election: November 3, 2026 California general election - Publisher: Vote or Else (https://voteorelse.com) — a free, nonpartisan ballot guide for California voters. No endorsements. - Canonical page: https://voteorelse.com/2026/corning-mayor - Full ballot: this page covers one race. Every contest on a voter's own ballot, by address, with the same breakdown for each: https://voteorelse.com/ - Sources last retrieved: September 2, 2026 - Source-objectivity score: 84 out of 100 (Strong), across 7 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology ## On the ballot - **Robert Snow** — Plant Supervisor · Incumbent - **Jose "Chuy" Valerio** — Realtor A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot. Two candidates qualified for Corning's Mayor seat. Jose "Chuy" Valerio is a sitting City Councilmember running to move up. Robert Snow is the incumbent Mayor. Tehama County's own certified candidate list marks this contest as on the ballot. It is a genuinely contested race that goes to voters. The city could not appoint a winner and skip the election. This person would serve a 2-year term as Corning's directly elected, at-large Mayor. They preside over City Council meetings and represent the city, within a council-manager government where City Manager Brant Mesker handles day-to-day operations as the city's chief executive and administrative head. Corning (2020 Census population 8,244), in Tehama County, calls itself the "Olive Capital of the World" -- Bell-Carter Foods, the largest table-olive processor in the United States, is headquartered there. Corning's Mayor is elected on a different clock than its City Council: the Mayor serves a 2-year term while the four other Council seats serve staggered, overlapping 4-year terms. That means the Mayor's race comes back to voters twice as often as any single Council seat -- Snow themselves was just elected Mayor two years ago, unopposed, in November 2024. Tehama County's own pre-filing "Offices on Ballot" notice lists this seat's term as 4 years, matching the notation on the City Council row directly below it -- but that figure doesn't hold up for the Mayor specifically. The county's own November 2024 Statement of Votes Cast shows Corning's Mayor race was on the ballot that year too, won unopposed by the same Robert Snow now running again. A city doesn't hold the same election twice, two years apart, on a 4-year term -- and the City of Corning's own City Council page independently confirms a 2-year Mayoral term in plain language. This dataset treats the county notice's 4-year figure as a table error for that one row rather than as fact, the same kind of formatting slip already documented elsewhere in that same PDF. ## Robert Snow Robert Snow is the incumbent Mayor of Corning, seeking a second term. They were elected unopposed in November 2024, per Tehama County's own certified results. Their 2026 ballot designation is "Plant Supervisor." No further biographical detail, platform statement, or news coverage of their tenure or this campaign was found. The county's qualified candidate list shows they did not file a paid candidate statement. No Corning-specific 2026 election coverage was found in local or regional press. **Strengths:** Sitting incumbent. Two separate official Tehama County election records confirm this. They are Snow's unopposed 2024 win and this year's certified candidate list. **Trade-offs:** No independent record of their platform, priorities, or Council-era decisions as Mayor was found. Their incumbency is well-documented. Little else about them is. **Keep in mind:** The absence of coverage reflects Corning's thin local-news environment. It is not anything unusual about this candidate. Their opponent has an equally bare public record beyond a confirmed occupation and current Council seat. ## Jose "Chuy" Valerio Jose "Chuy" Valerio is a sitting Corning City Councilmember. They were elected to that seat in November 2024, per the county's own certified results. They are now running for Mayor rather than seeking Council reelection. Their 2026 ballot designation is "Realtor." Their current Council seat runs through 2028. If elected Mayor, that seat would become vacant partway through. No reporting was found on how the city would fill it. No further biographical detail, platform statement, or news coverage of this campaign was found. The county's list shows no paid candidate statement on file for them either. **Strengths:** Current Council experience, elected in 2024 and confirmed by official county results. That means familiarity with city business, even for a different office. **Trade-offs:** No independent record of Valerio's platform or priorities was found. Nothing explains why they are challenging the incumbent Mayor rather than seeking Council reelection. **Keep in mind:** A win would open their own Council seat two years early. That is a real practical consequence of this race. Neither candidate's ballot designation reflects it. Candidate background for this race is genuinely thin for both names, not lopsided: beyond confirmed occupation and current officeholding, neither Snow nor Valerio has an independently verifiable platform or civic record locatable in this pass. Corning (population about 8,200) has no locatable dedicated local newspaper covering this specific race; the regional outlets checked directly (Red Bluff Daily News, KRCR/Action News Now) returned nothing Corning-election-specific. This reflects the genuinely small scale of local press attention this race draws, not anything being withheld. ## Sources 1. [Tehama County Elections -- "Offices on Ballot for November 3, 2026" (pre-filing notice): names City of Corning Mayor (1 seat) and Member of City Council (2 seats) as the two Corning offices up this cycle. Its "4 years" term-of-office figure for the Mayor row is contradicted by Tehama County's own 2024 election results (see corning-tehamacounty-sov2024-2026) and treated here as a table-transcription error for that one row.](https://www.tehama.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Offices-Up-for-Election-11.3.2026-1.pdf) 2. [Tehama County Elections -- "Qualified List of Candidates," November 3, 2026 General Election (posted Aug. 10, 2026): names all four qualified Corning candidates -- Jose "Chuy" Valerio (Realtor) and Robert Snow (Plant Supervisor) for Mayor; Stefano "Steve" Miraglia (no ballot designation) and David L. Demo (Incumbent) for the two Council seats -- and explicitly marks both contests "On Ballot: Yes," ruling out a Section 10229 cancellation for either.](https://www.tehama.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/8.10.2026-Qualified-List-of-Candidates.pdf) 3. [City of Corning -- City Council (current membership roster): names the sitting five-member Council -- Mayor Robert Snow, Vice Mayor Dave Demo, and Members Jose "Chuy" Valerio, Shelly Hargens, and Lisa Lomeli -- and states in its own words, "The registered voters elect the Mayor every two years, and the City Council members are elected to four year terms that overlap with the Mayor's term," resolving the county document's term-length discrepancy for the Mayor's seat.](https://www.corning.org/departments/city-council/) 4. [City of Corning -- Administration: confirms the council-manager form of government and names City Manager Brant Mesker as the city's chief executive and administrative head.](https://www.corning.org/departments/administration/) 5. [City of Corning -- "Friday Notes" weekly newsletter, Aug. 7, 2026 edition: the City Clerk's own report that "there were four completed packets turned in before the deadline -- two applicants were for the Mayor position and the other two were for the Councilmember position," with no election-cancellation language.](https://www.corning.org/friday-notes-for-august-7-2026/) 6. [Tehama County Elections -- Statement of Votes Cast by District, November 5, 2024 Consolidated General Election (workbook): shows "1 CITY OF CORNING MAYOR" was itself on the Nov. 2024 ballot, won unopposed by Robert E. Snow (1,642 votes) -- the same Robert Snow on the 2026 Mayor ballot two years later, establishing a 2-year Mayoral term -- and shows Jose "Chuy" Valerio and Michele "Shelly" Hargens won Corning's two Council seats that cycle (terms to 2028), confirming neither is up for Council reelection in 2026.](https://www.tehama.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Statement-of-Votes-Cast-by-District.xlsx) 7. [Wikipedia, "Corning, California": used narrowly for the 2020 Census population (8,244).](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corning,_California) ## The rest of the ballot Mayor of Corning is one contest among the many a California voter decides on November 3, 2026 — Congress, the Legislature, county, city, and school board races differ by address. Vote or Else builds the full list for any California address and breaks down each contest the way this page does, with no account and without storing the address: https://voteorelse.com/ ## How to cite this page Vote or Else, "Mayor of Corning — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/corning-mayor (sources last retrieved September 2, 2026). Link the canonical page above rather than this Markdown file. Coverage is updated as the race develops, so quote it with its retrieval date.