Before Manuel Teshe was ever elected to the Chelsea City Council, he had already won something from it. As a student at Chelsea High School he coordinated an effort that led the council to allocate $170,000 for school materials.
He was 23 when he won the District 7 seat, becoming the youngest person and the first Salvadoran elected to the Chelsea City Council.
Chelsea High to Bucknell and back
Teshe went to Bucknell University as a Posse Foundation scholar. 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.
He did not coast through it. While carrying a full course load at Bucknell he worked full time as an interpreter and a paralegal.
He came back. That is the part that matters locally, because the ordinary outcome for a Chelsea student who gets to a school like Bucknell is that the city never sees them again.
On the council
His stated priorities are housing, transportation, safety and immigration.
The work he has actually pushed is about local business. In 2024 he was looking for programs to help local entrepreneurs. In 2025 he introduced a proposal inviting local entrepreneurs to submit business plans, with the aim of securing a City of Chelsea business license and starting ventures that would benefit both the owner and the neighborhood. He has pressed the city to find more ways to help Chelsea entrepreneurs generally.
That is a narrow, concrete lane, and it is a rational one for District 7. 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 public office, and ran 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 not a criticism of him. It is a description of a district where, twice running, nobody else filed.
What we could not confirm
We could not verify what he studied at Bucknell, his current occupation, the year he was first elected, or his committee assignments for 2026.
The numbers
Unopposed on November 4, 2025. His term runs through 2027.
Sourcing: this profile draws on the Chelsea Record’s reporting, the councillor’s own published biography and professional profile where one exists, and the City Council’s posted meeting agendas. The city’s official council page lists each member’s seat and contact details but publishes no biographies and no committee assignments, so those could not be verified there. Anything we could not confirm is marked as unconfirmed rather than guessed at. Photograph: City of Chelsea. Corrections are welcome and will be published.