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Mayor of Manteca

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City of Manteca

Mayor of Manteca

Manteca's Mayor is directly elected citywide. The term is four years. The Mayor presides over a five-member City Council with four district members. Manteca moved to district council elections in 2022. Since then, the Mayor has been the only citywide elected office. An appointed City Manager runs day-to-day operations.

Mayor Gary Singh is running again. He faces Jacob Naven. Naven is an insurance agent. Both campaigns say the race could cost nearly $100,000. It has included a vote buying complaint. It has included a heckling incident. It has included arson on Singh's signs.

Manteca's Mayor is elected citywide to a 4-year term. The Mayor leads the 5-member City Council, which also has four district members. The Mayor is the only citywide elected office. Manteca moved from at large to district Council elections in 2022. That followed a California Voting Rights Act challenge. The city is a San Joaquin County community of about 83,498 residents in the 2020 Census. Local press reports it is nearing 100,000. City Manager Toni Lundgren runs it day to day under Council direction.

Manteca has elected its Mayor directly since 1980. Only one person, Willie Weatherford, has served three terms in the office. Singh seeks a second term as Mayor after eight years on the Council. If he wins, he would be one of only a handful of people to serve 12 or more years in Manteca elected office.

Gary Singh

Gary Singh is a Realtor. He has owned a small business in Manteca since 1995. He champions Measure Q. That is a sales tax. It pays for new police and fire stations. He served three council terms starting in 2016. He won the Mayor's office in 2022.

Jacob Naven

Jacob Naven owns Jacob Naven Insurance Agency in Manteca. Term limits for the Mayor and Council are his signature issue. He filed a complaint about Singh's campaign. It says the campaign offered a discount for votes.

Naven accuses Singh's campaign of a vote-buying scheme

August 31, 2026 Naven's campaign filed a complaint with the San Joaquin County District Attorney. It alleges Singh violated election-integrity law. Singh had posted a video featuring a local chiropractor. In it the chiropractor offered voters $50 off their first visit. The offer applied if they said they'd voted for Singh as mayor. Singh responded in the video, "Wow, that's awesome, you know what? It does pay off to vote for your mayor." Naven's campaign consultant called it vote-buying. Singh later said, "I own it. I recognize the oversight and I take ownership of it." He said he didn't know the chiropractor would make the offer.

Singh's campaign signs targeted with arson

August 2026 Several of Singh's campaign signs were deliberately set on fire around Manteca in August 2026. Manteca Police opened an investigation. It concerns a possible violation of state Election Code protections for candidates. A Manteca Bulletin opinion columnist argued the burnings were repeated and targeted. The columnist said that suggested motivated hostility rather than random vandalism. The columnist linked it to derogatory social-media commentary about Indian business owners in the city. That interpretation is the columnist's own view, not an established finding.

Where the candidates stand on term limits

Naven wants to see term limits adopted for Manteca's Mayor and Council -- an idea he says he'd pursue if elected, citing the demands of rapid change, the toll of the job, and the built-in advantage incumbency gives officeholders against challengers. Singh says he'd support putting the question to voters if that's what they want, but has cautioned that too much Council turnover risks handing more day-to-day decision-making to city staff rather than elected officials. Neither candidate has proposed a specific limit; both have pointed to San Joaquin County's own two-term limit for Supervisors, adopted by voters in 1998, as a possible model.

Your pick

A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot.

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