With less than two weeks left until the end of the candidate filing deadline, the race for mayor and two city council seats is coming into clearer view.
What appeared to be a four-person race for mayor – with incumbent Mayor Amy Bublak being challenged by planning commissioner and medical professional Jim Reape, private investigator Kelley Coelho, and Jeremy Rocha – now looks to be just a three-person race.
The deadline to enter the race is Aug. 13.
In an email to the Turlock Journal, Rocha has made known his intentions to pull out of the mayoral scrum and instead seek the District 1 city council seat currently held by Councilmember Kevin Bixel, a medical professional.
According to the city’s website, Rocha has yet to officially pull his nomination papers.
“I want to be of service to the community I grew up in and in reaching out to voters I was encouraged to seek a seat on the council,” said Rocha, who ran for a city council seat in 2010. “I look forward to earning their trust and working with everyone to make Turlock and its future the best it can be. I wish the remaining candidates for mayor the best.”
That leaves Bublak, Reape, and Coelho, a veteran of the U.S. Army Reserves who recently served on the county’s veterans commission.
Coelho originally stated her intention to seek Bixel’s seat but changed course and jumped into the mayoral race. She has sparred publicly with Bublak and Police Chief Jason Hedden and in March filed a lawsuit in federal court against the city, Turlock Police Department and Turlock Unified School District. The case is centered upon allegations that a substitute teacher assaulted her teenage daughter during school hours.
She is currently being sued for defamation by Vance Yabrough, the substitute teacher accused by Coelho and her daughter. Yarbrough, who filed his civil lawsuit Dec. 4 in Stanislaus County Superior Court, is seeking monetary and punitive damages of no less than $300,000 for comments made in public and on social media, according to his Stockton-based attorney, Dustin Dyer.
Bublak, seeking a third term as mayor, first won a seat on the city council in 2008 and was reelected in 2012 and 2016. She was elected mayor in 2018 and 2022.
Reape, a nurse practitioner and physician assistant and a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, has served on various city committees since 2014, and as a planning commissioner since 2017.
In District 3, the only other city council seat up for grabs this cycle, challenger Ryan Taylor will try to unseat incumbent Cassandra Abram.
Taylor, the owner of a local lawn service and the president of the Turlock Mosquito Abatement District Board of Trustees, was one of three candidates vanquished by Abram in 2022.
Abram trounced the field with 47.4 percent of the vote, while Taylor received just 13.6 percent of the vote.
A third candidate in District 3, Gurjot Virk, pulled nomination papers on Thursday, according to the city’s website, but has not yet completed the filing process.
