# Mayor of Pleasanton

Compare records and positions simply between Jack Balch or Julie Testa for Mayor of Pleasanton at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. Pleasanton's Mayor is the only city office elected citywide. The Mayor leads City Council meetings and represents the city publicly. The Mayor is one of five council members. The Mayor also votes on the budget and city laws. An appointed city manager runs day-to-day operations. The term is two years, with an 8-year term limit.

- Jurisdiction: City of Pleasanton
- 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/pleasanton-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 1, 2026
- Source-objectivity score: 88 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

- **Jack Balch** — Mayor/CPA · Incumbent
- **Julie Testa** — Councilmember, City of Pleasanton

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

Sitting Mayor Jack Balch is running for a second term against Julie Testa, a sitting District 3 Councilmember giving up their own seat to run for the citywide office instead. Whichever candidate gets the most votes on November 3 wins outright; there's no runoff.

Pleasanton's Mayor is the city's only citywide, at-large elected office. The Mayor presides over City Council meetings and represents the city publicly. The Mayor votes as one of five members on the budget and city ordinances. Day-to-day operations are run by an appointed city manager. The term is two years, subject to an eight-year limit shared with Council seats.

Both candidates emphasize fiscal discipline, water reliability, and public safety. They come at the office from different angles. Balch is running on their record as the sitting Mayor. Testa is giving up a District 3 seat they've held for eight years. Testa is running as a check on City Hall. Their own candidate statement says, "I am not a builder or developer." It says residents, not special interests, should be at the center of local government.

## Jack Balch

The sitting Mayor of Pleasanton and a certified public accountant (Balch's filed ballot designation reads "Mayor/CPA"). Their own candidate statement, filed with the City Clerk, opens "It is a tremendous honor to serve as your Mayor" and describes their term as having "honored my promises to strengthen public safety, advance long-term water reliability, cut bureaucracy, support vitality and local businesses, bring greater transparency of city actions, and strengthen Pleasanton's financial foundation." Their stated priorities for a new term: a vibrant downtown, economic vitality, robust public safety, reliable and affordable water, continued collaboration with local schools, and clean parks and open spaces. Their campaign-committee filing history with the state shows a City Council committee from 2020 and a Mayor committee from 2024, consistent with -- though not independently confirmed by news coverage of -- first winning a council seat in 2020 and the Mayor's office in 2024.

**Strengths:** Balch is the incumbent, with a specific record they describe across public safety, water reliability, and city finances. They also report the largest campaign war chest in this race.

**Trade-offs:** As the incumbent, they own the city's current fiscal and affordability challenges. Their own statement acknowledges them. No independent news profile of their record was found beyond that statement.

**Keep in mind:** Alameda County's own candidate list marks Balch "Incumbent: N" even though they are the sitting Mayor. That is a filing-system quirk, not a claim about who holds the office. See the note on this contest.

## Julie Testa

A sitting Pleasanton City Councilmember (District 3), Testa's filed ballot designation reads "Councilmember, City of Pleasanton." Their own candidate statement says, "Throughout my eight years of service on the City Council, I have put residents first, listening and advocating for transparency," and states plainly, "I am not a builder or developer." They frame their candidacy around fiscal discipline, protecting clean and safe drinking water, and keeping "special interests," not residents, out of the center of local government, citing their record addressing state housing mandates, regional pressures, and local neighborhood and business concerns. All their children attended Pleasanton Unified schools.

**Strengths:** Eight years of council experience, by their own account. They also set themselves against developer influence, which is unusual for an officeholder's platform.

**Trade-offs:** Giving up their District 3 seat leaves it open no matter who wins this race. See Pleasanton City Council, District 3. No campaign finance figures for their mayoral run were found.

**Keep in mind:** Testa's exact first-elected year was not confirmed by a second source. Their "eight years of service" implies roughly 2018.

## Sources

1. [Alameda County Registrar of Voters -- official Candidate List system (electionId 260, "General Election - 11/03/2026 (Official)"), queried directly via its own JSON/HTML API (POST /rov_app/candidatelist/) for all three Pleasanton races (categoryId 600, raceIds 104, 129, 130): For Mayor (Jack Balch, Julie Testa); For Members Of City Council #1 (Vin Kruttiventi, Kathy Narum); For Members Of City Council #3 (Reena Gupta, Jamie Yee). Names ballot designations verbatim as filed: "Mayor/CPA" (Balch), "Councilmember, City of Pleasanton" (Testa), "Business Owner" (Kruttiventi), "Businesswoman" (Narum), "Local Business Owner" (Gupta), "Communications Manager" (Yee). The system's own "Incumbent" field reads "N" for all six candidates, including sitting Mayor Jack Balch -- this dataset does not treat that field as reliable given the City of Pleasanton's own confirmation (see pleasanton-council-roster-2026) that Balch currently holds the office he is running to keep.](https://www.alamedacountyca.gov/rov_app/candidatelist)
2. [City of Pleasanton -- City Clerk's official "Qualified Candidate List" for the November 3, 2026 General Municipal Election, updated 8/12/2026 at 5:00 PM (after the nomination period): names the identical six-candidate, three-race roster as the county's own Candidate List, with each candidate's own campaign phone, email, and website.](https://www.cityofpleasantonca.gov/assets/our-government/city-clerk/2026-candidates-list-081226.pdf)
3. [City of Pleasanton -- City Clerk's official "Candidate Statements" booklet for the November 3, 2026 election: each of the six qualified candidates' own, self-authored statement and stated occupation, filed with and published by the city -- Kruttiventi ("Business Owner"), Narum ("Businesswoman / Nonprofit Director"), Gupta ("Entrepreneur/Workforce Consultant", age 56), Yee ("Public Health Communications Manager"), Balch ("Mayor / CPA"), and Testa ("Pleasanton City Councilmember") -- the backbone of each candidate's editorial profile here. Two candidates' statement occupations read slightly differently from their county-filed ballot designation (pleasanton-acgov-candidatelist-2026): Narum and Gupta, both noted in text rather than silently resolved.](https://www.cityofpleasantonca.gov/assets/our-government/city-clerk/candidate-statements-081226.pdf)
4. [City of Pleasanton -- official "Mayor & City Council" page: names the sitting Mayor (Jack Balch, at-large) and all four district Councilmembers -- Jeff Nibert (District 1), Craig Eicher (District 2), Julie Testa (District 3), and Matt Gaidos (District 4, Vice Mayor) -- confirming who currently holds each seat up this cycle (Mayor and District 1 and 3) and who does not appear among this cycle's qualified candidates (Nibert).](https://www.cityofpleasantonca.gov/our-government/mayor-city-council/)
5. [City of Pleasanton -- official "Elections & Measures" page: states the three November 3, 2026 seats up for election as "Councilmember from District 1," "Councilmember from District 3," and "Mayor at-large," and describes the city's council structure as "one mayor elected at-large and four council members elected by-district."](https://www.cityofpleasantonca.gov/our-government/elections-measures/)
6. [Wikipedia's Pleasanton, California article -- 2020 census population (79,871) and the city's council-manager government structure (a five-member council: four district representatives plus an at-large Mayor serving a 2-year term, an 8-year term limit for all seats, a Vice Mayor appointed annually by the Mayor), cited only for general context and as independent corroboration of the current roster.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasanton,_California)
7. [The City of Pleasanton's own NetFile-hosted public campaign-finance portal (netfile.com, agency code COP), queried directly for all six 2026 candidates with each available FPPC filing downloaded and read for its actual reported figures -- real dollar amounts, not estimated. Balch's Form 460 (period Jan. 1-June 30, 2026) reports $13,955 raised and $33,158 cash on hand; Gupta's reports $4,928 raised (entirely in June 2026, when her committee organized) and $4,828 cash on hand; Yee's reports $2,949 raised and $731 cash on hand. Testa's only committee on file for this period, her 2022 City Council committee, reported zero contributions and zero expenditures for the first half of 2026; a separate "Julie A. Testa" committee organized in August 2026 (Form 501) with no Form 460 yet on file. Narum's committee reorganized for this cycle in July 2026 and likewise has no semi-annual statement yet, but reported a $5,000 personal loan to her own campaign via Form 497 on Aug. 19, 2026. Kruttiventi has filed only a Form 501 candidate intention statement -- no committee, no reportable contributions as of this dataset's retrieval.](https://netfile.com/public/sites/api/agencies)

## The rest of the ballot

Mayor of Pleasanton 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 Pleasanton — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/pleasanton-mayor (sources last retrieved September 1, 2026).

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