Two slates of candidates facing off for Livingston City Council seats

 

Drive through Livingston and you’ll see a particular combination of campaign signs featuring candidates running for mayor and city council joined or standing together. That’s because two political slates have formed in separate efforts to decide the direction of leadership going forward in this growing city on the Highway 99 route.

The main field of competition includes an open mayor’s seat and two council seats.

On one side, there’s City Councilman Jason Roth who is running for the open mayor’s seat. He is joined in support with City Councilman Gurpal Samra, who is seeking reelection, and Mohinder Kanda, a city planning commissioner. Also closely aligned with this group is Robert Wallis, a previously appointed councilman in Livingston who is running unopposed for the remainder of a four-year council term left over by a resignation in early 2025.

This slate is highlighting experience in local government at a time when Livingston is poised for significant decisions on growth, land use, infrastructure and public safety.

On the other side, there’s Councilman Japjeet Singh Uppal who is running for mayor. He is joined in support by his brother and current City Treasurer, Parwinder Singh Uppal, who is running for a council seat, along with another council hopeful, Terika DeGraw, a nonprofit program manager.

This slate is promoting the need for a change in leadership and more unity on the Council, as well as building trust and confidence about local government among local residents.

 

The mayor’s race

The 54-year-old Roth is a family man with three kids. He works as a service manager for the Razzari Commercial Fleet in Merced. He’s been a band booster, a sports coach, and spent eight years on the Livingston Planning Commission. He was first elected to a four-year term on the City Council in 2022, and decided to run for a two-year mayoral term in 2024, but fell short of winning by a mere nine votes.

“I have a lot more than I’d like to get accomplished,” the councilman says, “and becoming mayor is very important to me, to the community, and the city as a whole. Our infrastructure needs help. We have continuing water issues. We have ongoing discussions with the county government. And we’re trying to get an independent fire station fully staffed.

“At the same time, our City Council needs to be transparent. We need to be transparent leaders in our community. We need to listen to our community and put our residents first. We need to all work together to make sure our city is healthy and safe for residents.

Roth adds, “This community is very special to me. It has a small town feel with great people. We made this our home, and I plan to retire here.”

Running against Councilman Roth in the mayoral race is Councilman Uppal, a 24-year-old Livingston native who was first elected to the City Council in 2024 for a four-year term. Uppal is a UC Merced graduate who went on to earn a degree in Public Policy and Administration from the University of Redlands. Earlier this year, he also ran for State Assembly as a Democrat, but his attempt was unsuccessful and he placed a distant third behind candidates Mike Murphy and Brian Pacheco in the June primary. Two months later he decided to run for mayor of his hometown.

“I had no intention to run for the seat,” he says. “There were other individuals in town that I was pushing to consider runs for both mayor and City Council. After many conversations and offerings of assistance, people simply refused to step up. So it came down to individuals in town, and on our Council, who I consider to be the status quo, and against the best interests of the city. So either I put my name in the hat, or they run uncontested. So we filed actually just a couple days before the deadline, and it really came down to not wanting the town to slip into their hands, and to be able to to build on the work that we’ve been trying to do the last two years. ”

Uppal says “we filed” because his older brother, Parwinder Singh Uppal, is also running for one of the Council seats. The two live together in a family home, and they have received criticism from the opposing slate of candidates for their living situation, though there’s no legal conflict of interest or violation of code of ethics involved.

“What I tell people is neither one of us wanted to run for these seats,” Uppal explains. “We were not jumping up at the front of the line to say, we want to be the mayor and we want to be a council member. It’s not that we’re not excited about the race. We’re very excited for the opportunity.  But to be clear, a power grab in  Livingston was not our intention. We were pushing other individuals that we thought would be great fits for leadership to step up, and with the intention of backing them fully and supporting them once they were on. Once seeing that that didn’t take place, we really looked at each other, and we said, ‘If we don’t do it, nobody’s going do it, and the town is just going to continue to fall the way it has for years.’ … We look forward to proving ourselves, to proving our ethics, to representing with integrity, and not putting on displays of power and lack of ethics, the way that those that we are running against and council members of the past have continued to display for years. We grew up here. We were educated here. We were raised by a lot of good people in this community. We love our town, and we’re looking forward to representing it the right way.”

Uppal added, “There are individuals on council right now who we are running against, who simply do not respect the fact that their job is to represent people, and to spend money that is not theirs. And it is their job to put the interests of the public over the interests of themselves. They do not respect that.”

 

Council races  

Councilman Gurpal Samra, who is running for re-election, has been a former mayor and served the city off and on since 1998. And he’s not buying what the Uppal brothers are saying. In fact, he also questions Japjeet Uppal’s loyalty to city service and his political ambition after Uppal pursued a State Assembly seat just a few months ago.

“First of all, in this day and age, experience does matter,” Samra says about the races in Livingston. “Commitment to the community matters. I’m not somebody who is going to come along today and try to point myself to another office tomorrow. If I tell the people that I’m going to serve you for this many years, or this term, I don’t just look for the next-up opportunity.

“And second, over the years, I’ve been a pretty steady leader for the city. You know, a few times when I was not there, they went in some wobbly directions. I’m sure you remember back in 2021 and 2022, there were all these big issues with lawsuits and everything. …  And I’ve had to come back, and help smooth things back out again. I bring a lot of institutional knowledge to the community, and to the City Council.”

Samra adds that Livingston is moving in the right direction. New commercial development is coming online, he says, including a new major truck stop and stores on northbound 99. He also points to road improvements, a fully-staffed independent city fire station, and new housing subdivisions.

Terika DeGraw, a 40-year-old nonprofit program manager in Merced, is running for one of the Council seats for the first time. She’s a native of the Central Valley, but she’s been a resident of Livingston for about three and half years. She is married with grown children, but still raising a young adopted child.

“I saw a post about people registering for office, and I started looking into it,” she says, adding that she noticed a lot of the same names that she had seen on previous ballots. “I thought I could put myself in there so that I would be able to help make decisions, and research, and listen to people. Their voices matter, and that’s something I stand for. ”

DeGraw said joining a supportive slate with the Uppals developed naturally and organically.

“We began a conversation together about what our beliefs are, and where our stances are, and just kind of brainstormed ideas. We thought maybe this might be a good thing if we work together to show the community that we are willing to make a difference.

“We’re not always going to agree on everything, but we do want to show the community that we have the ability to talk to each other, and work through issues, because we’re all moving towards the same cause. And for me, that’s what’s important because I know that in the past in Livingston, I’ve seen at some of the City Council meetings, some very controversial conversations in regards to the way that people are agreeing or not agreeing, and we just want the community to know that we’re here to work together for our future.”

 

Brothers in Atwater

As in Livingston, two brothers are on the ballot for two seats on the Atwater City Council; however, these candidates are running unopposed.

Shawn Conour, 37, is poised to become the council member representing District 3, and his younger brother, Adam Conour, 36, is set to be the District 4 representative.

The two brothers were raised in Winton and graduated from Atwater High School.

Shawn served four years in the Marine Corps. He currently runs a small manufacturing company that supplies parts to an impressive list of clients across multiple industries. He has a growing family in Atwater and says he wants to give back to the community. As such, Shawn has been serving on the city’s Planning Commission over the past two years. He said he saw opportunity in this year’s election with no other candidates stepping up and filing for District 3.

“I’m excited to get to work for the city of Atwater,” he says, “and for there to be some younger people on the City Council. I’m really focused on long-term plans — things that are going to affect the community 20 years from now. What I hope to bring to the City Council is a shift away from chasing down daily fires that happen, and try to focus on long-term planning.

“I’m not going to shy away from hard conversations that the city needs to have, especially as a businessman. The city of Atwater is essentially a small business, and we need to be able to operate as such. We need to be nimble. We need to be able to be dynamic.”

The candidate says he’s concerned about the lack of jobs and the low number of available homes for sale in Atwater. The city is losing valuable talent because people are leaving for more opportunities in other communities.

Adam Conour, a U.S. Army veteran and a member of the Winton VFW post, is known for being heavily involved in veterans issues and services across the Central Valley. He is also an affordable housing developer in the region who has worked on some impressive local projects that have benefited the community, including Veterans Village on R Street in Merced. He currently has 116 units under construction across Merced County.

The candidate says this experience with housing development will help Atwater government considering that the city is “probably the one larger municipality in Merced County that has not built housing, and has not gotten anything done from a housing perspective.”

Adam says he has been talking about a campaign to run for District 4 for more than a year, and at first was not expecting to run unopposed, or see his brother sign up for District 3.

As things turned out, he says, it ended up a good fit considering his brother’s willingness to serve and his experience on the Planning Commission.

“I think on local issues that are mutually beneficial for the city, I hope I can be aligned with all the members of the council,” Adam Conour added.