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City of Turlock · Statewide General Election

Turlock City Council, District 1

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

On the ballot

This person holds your district's seat on Turlock's 5-member City Council: city ordinances, the budget, and land use, alongside the citywide-elected mayor and three other district councilmembers. A 4-year term. Districts 2 and 4 aren't up again until 2028.

Two candidates are running for Turlock's District 1 council seat: incumbent Kevin Bixel against challenger Jeremy Rocha, who originally entered this year's mayoral race before switching to District 1. Whichever gets the most votes on November 3 wins outright -- no runoff.

This seat is one of Turlock's four district-elected City Council seats -- Districts 1 through 4 -- each a 4-year term, alongside the citywide-elected Mayor. Councilmembers vote on the city's budget, ordinances, and land use; day-to-day operations run through an appointed city manager. Districts 2 and 4 aren't up again until 2028.

Bixel has held the seat since being elected in 2022 and is a lifelong Turlock resident. Rocha initially filed to run for Mayor in mid-2026, then withdrew from that race and filed for District 1 instead -- his District 1 papers were pulled July 27 and verified August 7, the last day of the standard filing window, well after Bixel's July 14 filing.

Kevin Bixel

Kevin Bixel is Turlock's sitting District 1 councilmember, elected in 2022 and now seeking a second term. A lifelong Turlock resident working as a Physician Assistant, the city's own council page describes his priorities as maintaining streets, public safety staffing, and fiscal responsibility. He filed his nomination papers July 14, 2026, verified July 22. No independent news profile beyond the city's own page and filing documents was found for him in this pass.

Strengths

A completed first term already in hand, deep local roots as a lifelong resident, and a stated focus on streets, public safety staffing, and fiscal responsibility.

Trade-offs

No independent news coverage or campaign website beyond the city's own bio page was found, so specific votes or initiatives from his first term aren't documented here.

Keep in mind

A second term would give him roughly six years on the council -- whether his first-term priorities were met is a question for city meeting records, not this dataset.

Jeremy Rocha

Jeremy Rocha originally entered this year's Mayor's race before withdrawing and filing for the District 1 council seat instead, with papers pulled July 27, 2026 and verified August 7 -- the final day of the standard filing window. He holds a B.A. in political science and an M.P.A. from Stanislaus State, has served on the city's Parks, Arts and Recreation Commission and the Stanislaus Council of Governments' citizen advisory committee, and ran unsuccessfully for council in 2010. He's campaigning on a platform he calls "Turlock Horizon," centered on converting Turlock into a charter city governed by its own charter rather than default state law, arguing growth should expand the tax base and strengthen public services for existing residents.

Strengths

An advanced public-administration degree and two rounds of appointed civic-board service give him policy exposure, plus a named platform voters can evaluate directly.

Trade-offs

His only prior run for office, in 2010, was unsuccessful, and his late switch from the mayoral race to District 1 is undocumented as to motive beyond what the Journal reported.

Keep in mind

A charter-city conversion is a real structural change; no source in this pass details what specific provisions Rocha would propose if elected on that platform.

Source review: Very strong (91/100) · 10 cited sources

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

  • stanvote.gov (opens in a new tab)Stanislaus County Registrar of Voters -- "Unofficial Candidate List," General Election Nov. 3, 2026 (generated 7:57 AM, 8/31/2026): the countywide candidate roster; its City of Turlock block names the same 7 qualified candidates across Mayor, Council District 1, and Council District 3 with matching ballot designations and incumbent flags, independently corroborating the city's own Candidate List -- cited for that cross-confirmation only, since the document's per-city footer labels don't reliably mark block boundaries
  • turlock.ca.us (opens in a new tab)City of Turlock -- "Elections" page: confirms the 3 open offices this cycle (Mayor, Council District 1, Council District 3), each a full 4-year term, and the July 13-Aug. 7, 2026 nomination period (extendable to Aug. 12 for an incumbent's unfilled seat)
  • turlock.ca.us (opens in a new tab)City of Turlock -- "Candidate List," Nov. 3, 2026 General Municipal Election (City Clerk, updated 8/7/2026 5:13 PM): the city's own certified, ballot-facing roster with exact papers-pulled/filed/verified dates for all 7 qualified candidates across the 3 open offices, and recording that a fourth District 3 filer, Gurjot Virk, pulled papers July 23 but never filed them ("Candidate Withdrew") and so is not a qualified candidate
  • turlock.ca.us (opens in a new tab)City of Turlock -- Public Notice, General Municipal Election Nov. 3, 2026: confirms the nomination period for Mayor, Council District 1, and Council District 3 closed Aug. 7, 2026 at 5:00 p.m. with no extension for any of the three offices
  • turlock.ca.us (opens in a new tab)City of Turlock -- "Turlock City Council" page: names current officeholders and term-expiration dates -- Mayor Amy Bublak (at-large, term expires 2026), Kevin Bixel (District 1, term expires 2026), Rebecka Monez (District 2, term expires 2028), Cassandra Abram (District 3, term expires 2026), Erika Phillips (District 4, term expires 2028) -- confirming which 3 seats are up this cycle and that Districts 2/4 are not, and giving short biographies for Bublak, Bixel, and Abram
  • turlockjournal.com (opens in a new tab)Turlock Journal -- "Local races set as candidate filing period closes": independently confirms the same 3-office, 7-candidate field, naming Bublak as the Mayor incumbent "seeking a third mayoral term" and having served on council since 2010, and identifying Reape as a health care professional and Planning Commission member
  • turlockjournal.com (opens in a new tab)Turlock Journal -- "Turlock mayoral race down to 3": profiles all 3 mayoral candidates -- Bublak (first elected to council in 2008, mayor since 2018, seeking a third mayoral term), Reape (nurse practitioner/physician assistant, Air Force veteran, planning commissioner since 2017), and Coelho (private investigator, Army Reserves veteran, county veterans commission) -- and reports that Jeremy Rocha withdrew from the mayoral race to run for the District 1 council seat instead
  • turlockjournal.com (opens in a new tab)Turlock Journal -- "Rocha joins race for mayoral seat": profiles Jeremy Rocha before his later switch to District 1 -- a bachelor's in political science and a master's in public administration from Stanislaus State, service on the Parks, Arts and Recreation Commission and the Stanislaus Council of Governments' citizen advisory committee, a prior unsuccessful 2010 council campaign, and his "Turlock Horizon" platform proposing the city adopt a charter
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia -- Turlock, California: government section confirms a council-manager government, a 5-member council (an at-large Mayor plus 4 district councilmembers, all 4-year terms), and a 2020 Census population of 72,740 -- cited only for this general structure
  • turlock.ca.us (opens in a new tab)A partial financial-info gap: the City of Turlock's own FPPC campaign-statements page lists, for every 2026 candidate, which Form 410/460/470/497/501 disclosures they've filed and when -- reachable without the NetFile CAPTCHA gate documented elsewhere in this dataset -- but the underlying filings are scanned image PDFs with no extractable text layer, so specific dollar totals (contributions raised, expenditures, cash on hand) could not be confirmed by this session's fetch tooling for any candidate

Last updated September 1, 2026.