Manuel Teshe arrived in the United States from El Salvador at thirteen, after his mother and stepfather secured legal status. He was 23 when Chelsea elected him, the youngest person and the first Salvadoran to win a seat on its city council.
Chelsea High, and $170,000
He was an activist before he could vote. As a Chelsea High School student he campaigned for an outdoor graduation ceremony for the class of 2019, running petitions, turning up at government meetings and raising $1,400 himself for ground protection mats. The council eventually allocated $170,000.
Accounts differ slightly on what that money was for. The Posse Foundation describes it as an allocation for school materials following his advocacy; Bucknell’s account ties it to making the graduation ceremony possible. Either way, a high school student got six figures out of the body he would later join.
Bucknell, on a Posse scholarship
At eighteen he won a Posse Foundation scholarship. Posse identifies public high school students with strong leadership records and sends them to selective colleges in cohorts, on the theory that students succeed in groups where they would struggle alone.
“At 18 years old, Posse gave me the opportunity of a lifetime, a college education,” he said. “I want to have an impact in people’s lives like Posse had in mine.”
He graduated from Bucknell in 2023 with a degree in political science. He did not coast through it: he worked full time throughout, and during the pandemic kept a 40-hour week while doing coursework remotely.
The day job, and why it matters here
Teshe works as a paralegal and Spanish-language interpreter at a Boston law firm, in its Special Immigrant Juvenile department. He handles I-360 petitions, the filings that allow children without parental care to obtain green cards. He has since moved into work as a law clerk on immigration court hearings and appeals, and has said he intends to go to law school.
Hold that next to the city’s budget. Chelsea Public Schools lost close to 350 students in a single year, which the city attributed to federal immigration enforcement, producing a shortfall of roughly $6.6 million and about 50 positions cut. The councillor for District 7 spends his working days on exactly the legal machinery that determines whether those families stay.
The money question nobody else asked
At the FY27 budget hearings in May, Teshe asked City Manager Fidel Maltez whether the city would get additional financial support from Flatiron Energy for its proposed battery storage facility.
The answer was a number worth knowing: about $600,000 a year under a community agreement, with payments starting once the project launches in 2028.
Chelsea has cause to think hard about such deals. The city went to arbitration against Wynn over the Everett casino and lost, and receives $650,000 a year under terms it did not choose. Asking what a host community agreement is actually worth, three years before the money starts, is asking at the only point where the answer can still change.
Where he stood on housing
Teshe was one of five who voted against Deron Hines’s amendment on 22 June, which replaced the city manager’s flat 50-unit threshold with a sliding scale from 10 units. It passed 6 to 5 regardless. He then joined the unanimous vote for the ordinance as amended.
Local business
His stated priorities are housing, transportation, safety and immigration, but the work he has pushed hardest is small business. In 2024 he was looking for programmes to help local entrepreneurs, and in 2025 he introduced a proposal inviting them to submit business plans aimed at securing a city business licence. Business licensing is one of the few areas where a Chelsea councillor has direct leverage over whether something happens.
Uncontested, twice
Teshe ran unopposed in his first run for office and unopposed again in 2025. A councillor who has never faced an opponent has never had to make the public case for himself in a contested campaign. That is a description of his district, not a criticism of him.
The numbers
Unopposed on 4 November 2025. His term runs through 2027.
The rest of the council is in our guide to all eleven members.
Update, September 14, 2026: How this councillor has voted and what they have filed in 2026, part of our council record series.