There could only be one Manteca City Council race on the Nov. 5 ballot.

With eight days left to file, only Charlie Halford has pulled nomination papers for the District 1 seat representing southwest Manteca.

He has yet to turn them in with the required signatures as of Tuesday.

There are two candidates that have qualified for the ballot to represent District 2 in southeast Manteca.

Regina Lackey and Judith Blumhorst pulled and submitted nomination papers with the signatures of qualified registered district voters verified by the San Joaquín County Elections Department.

The deadline to file papers for the Nov. 5 election for either district is Aug. 9 at 5 p.m.

This is the first time voters in the the two districts will elect someone to specifically represent their area of the city.

Candidates must reside in the area they represent. And only those within the district can cast votes for their district representative on the council.

Halford, who was elected during the 2000 election  — the last and final time council members were elected at large — resides in District 1.

Jose Nuno, who was elected in 2018 but did not seek re-election, was appointed in 2022 to fill the council vacancy created when Gary Singh was elected mayor.

Nuno does not reside in District 2 so he can not run for the seat.

District 1 includes all of Manteca to the southwest of the intersection of Louise Avenue and Union Road. It also encompasses the area bounded by Louise on the north, the Tidewater Bikeway on the east then — jogging westward along Alameda Street — east of Hacienda Avenue/Walnut Avenue and El Capitan Avenue and then from El Capitan along Wawona to Union Road.

District 2 consists of the areas in Manteca that are east of Union Road and south of the 120 Bypass as well as east of Highway 99 except for the Collective neighborhood.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com