Antioch City Council, Clerk races set for November election
Third-time rematches in both council campaigns
By Allen D. Payton
With the close of filing on Friday, August 7, 2026, at 5:00 p.m., according to Appointed City Clerk Michael Mandy, all those who pulled nomination papers, except for Diane Gibson-Gray, have filed them to run for the Antioch City Council. Incumbent Councilwoman Tamisha Torres-Walker will face former Antioch Councilwoman and School Board Trustee Joy Motts for a third time in District 1 and incumbent Monica Wilson will face three challengers in the race for District 4. Gibson-Gray announced earlier Friday in a letter to the editor she will not be running in District 1, again.
Torres-Walker defeated Motts who ran for re-election in 2020, then Motts lost again to Torres-Walker in 2022 by just four votes following a recount.
Former Antioch Police Crime Prevention Commission Chair Sandra White will run for a third time against Wilson, having also run in 2020 and 2022. First-time council candidates Andrew Becker, a local homeless advocate and regular public speaker at council meetings, as well as Metty Mathews Alappat have also entered the race. According to her LinkedIn page, Alappat was a Senior Technical Account Manager for Amazon Web Services until July 2025.
Wilson is running for a fifth term, or a rather fourth-and-a-half term. She was first elected in 2012, then re-elected in 2016, then re-elected in 2020 for a two-year term following the City’s move to district elections, and again re-elected in 2022 for another full, four-year term.
Mandy will not face an opponent in the City Clerk’s race and will be elected for the two remaining years of the four-year term. He was appointed in September 2025 following the sudden departure two months earlier of Melissa Rhodes, who was elected in November 2024.
The election is Tuesday, November 3rd.
the attachments to this post:
City of Antioch Candidate & Election 2026 art
