City of Pacific Grove · Statewide General Election

Mayor of Pacific Grove

This is one contest. Enter your address to see every race on your November ballot, and keep track of your picks.

On the ballot

Luke Coletti — Public Policy Advocate / Former Councilmember
Nick Smith — Mayor of Pacific Grove · Incumbent

Pacific Grove's Mayor is a separately elected, citywide office, not chosen by the Council from among its own members. The Mayor presides over City Council meetings and represents the city on regional bodies, but otherwise shares policy authority equally with the six councilmembers under the city's council-manager government. A 2-year term.

Incumbent Mayor Nick Smith is seeking a second term against Luke Coletti, a former councilmember and self-described public policy advocate who says he authored the successful citizens' referendum that put the Council's own pay raise to a public vote.

Both candidates have already served in Pacific Grove city government: Smith is finishing his first term as Mayor, and Coletti previously served as a councilmember. The contest turns largely on how each frames the city's recent record -- Smith citing completed projects and plans from his term, Coletti positioning himself as a watchdog who forced Council spending decisions to a public vote.

Nick Smith

Smith, 46, is the incumbent Mayor of Pacific Grove seeking reelection. By his own account, his first term includes numerous completed street and sidewalk repair projects; adoption of a Climate Action & Adaptation Plan; completion of the city's 6th Cycle Housing Element, the state-mandated housing plan covering 2023 through 2031; the city's transition to district-based City Council elections, now underway for the first time this cycle; a move to two-year General Fund budgeting and capital improvement planning; and a partnership with the Heritage Society of Pacific Grove to restore Chautauqua Hall, a historic city-owned auditorium. He says public safety is his highest priority as Mayor, citing continued support for the police and fire departments. He is a father of three daughters attending Pacific Grove Middle and High Schools and says he has worked to build a closer partnership between the city and the Pacific Grove Unified School District.

Strengths

A full term of Mayoral experience, including steering the city through its first district-election transition and completing a state-mandated housing element.

Trade-offs

This dataset's only source for his record is his own filed statement; no independent news reporting evaluating his term was found in this pass.

Keep in mind

As the incumbent, this race functions in part as a referendum on his own account of his first term, since no outside evaluation of that record was found.

Luke Coletti

Coletti, 61, describes himself as a public policy advocate and is a former Pacific Grove councilmember making a citywide bid for Mayor. By his own account, he has spent "more than a decade" advocating for Pacific Grove residents on government reform, land use, transparency, and fiscal responsibility, and says he authored "over a dozen ordinances and policies" during that time. Most recently, he says he authored the successful citizens' referendum that let voters decide whether the Mayor and Council should receive a pay raise -- a raise that Kevin Hanley, a separate District 1 candidate, independently references in his own filed statement as a "135% pay raise" that "PG voters turned down." Coletti also says he does not believe taxpayers should pay for his medical insurance. His stated priorities are preserving Pacific Grove's residential character and natural environment, pursuing affordable housing, promoting youth recreation, reestablishing a Cultural Arts Commission, and improving upkeep of the city's business districts, electrical infrastructure, public restrooms (including at Lovers Point), roads and sidewalks, and speed-limit enforcement.

Strengths

Prior councilmember experience plus one independently corroborated claim -- the pay-raise referendum, which Hanley's separate filed statement references consistently.

Trade-offs

No independent reporting verifies which ordinances he authored or when he served on the Council, beyond his own statement and Hanley's brief corroboration of the referendum's outcome.

Keep in mind

As a former officeholder challenging a sitting Mayor, this is an incumbent-versus-critic contest; voters weighing it have only each candidate's own self-description to go on, since no third-party reporting on either candidate's record was found.

Source review: Very strong (91/100) · 7 cited sources

Official records anchor this contest, with several source types checked for context.

countyofmonterey.gov (opens in a new tab)Monterey County Elections -- official "Candidate List" page for the November 3, 2026 General Election: within the City section, exactly five Pacific Grove rows appear -- Mayor, Member/City Council 2-Year, and Member/City Council Districts 1, 3, and 5 -- confirming the office structure and count, though (as with this page's county-office rows built earlier in this file) no per-seat candidate names render in the fetched page text
cityofpacificgrove.gov (opens in a new tab)City of Pacific Grove -- official "November 3, 2026 General Election and Ballot Measures" page: lists every qualified candidate by office (Mayor: Coletti, Smith; District 1: Garfield, Hanley; District 3: Goldbeck, Kubica, Leweling; District 5: Thomas; At-Large: McDonnell, Ogle) and links each candidate's filed Candidate Statement of Qualifications, noting Ogle filed none
montereycountynow.com (opens in a new tab)Monterey County Weekly (montereycountynow.com) -- "Eight candidates are vying for four seats in P.G.'s first-ever district election" (Pam Marino): independently names the same ten candidates across all five races, reports that the at-large seat is a two-year term on the ballot because no one currently represents District 2, and that challenger James Ogle could not be reached for comment
en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia -- "Pacific Grove, California": used narrowly for population (15,090, 2020 census), incorporation year (1889), and council-manager government type; not for the article's stale 'elected at-large' description of the council, which the city's own 2026 election materials supersede
cal-access.sos.ca.gov (opens in a new tab)California Secretary of State CAL-ACCESS -- a negative-result campaign-finance search: a direct filer-search query for each of Pacific Grove's ten 2026 candidates returned an empty, contentless response with no filer or committee data renderable at all, in every attempt this session
files.cityofpacificgrove.org (opens in a new tab)Nick Smith's own filed Candidate Statement of Qualifications for Mayor of Pacific Grove, Nov. 3, 2026 election (age 46, occupation "Mayor"): his account of his first-term record -- street/sidewalk repairs, a Climate Action & Adaptation Plan, the 6th Cycle Housing Element, the transition to district elections, 2-year General Fund budgeting, and restoring Chautauqua Hall -- and his stated priorities of fiscal stability, infrastructure, coastline protection, and public safety
files.cityofpacificgrove.org (opens in a new tab)Luke Coletti's own filed Candidate Statement of Qualifications for Mayor of Pacific Grove, Nov. 3, 2026 election (age 61, occupation "Public Policy Advocate"): his account of over a decade of local advocacy, authoring the citizens' referendum on the Mayor/Council pay raise and a dozen-plus ordinances, and his stated priorities of preserving residential character, affordable housing, and downtown/infrastructure upkeep

Last updated September 1, 2026.