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City of Petaluma · Statewide General Election

Petaluma City Council, District 3

This is one contest. Enter your address to see every race on your November ballot, and keep track of your picks.

On the ballot

Councilmembers vote on Petaluma's city budget, ordinances, and land use, alongside a separately, citywide-elected Mayor. This district seat is one of three (Districts 1, 2, and 3) on this November's ballot; Petaluma elects council members by district, not at-large. Population 59,776 per the 2020 Census. This dataset could not independently confirm council term lengths or the city's total number of council districts, since the City of Petaluma's own site returned an access block to every automated fetch attempt in this pass.

Incumbent Karen Nau faces one challenger, Eric Vazquez, for Petaluma City Council District 3. Whichever candidate gets more votes on November 3 wins the seat outright -- no runoff.

Councilmembers vote on Petaluma's city budget, ordinances, and land use, alongside a separately, citywide-elected Mayor. This seat is one of three district council seats (Districts 1, 2, and 3) on this November's ballot; Petaluma elects council members by district, not at-large. This dataset could not independently confirm council term lengths or the city's total number of council districts: the City of Petaluma's own site returned an access block to every automated fetch attempt in this pass.

The county's own candidate list labels itself "not final or official" pending a later posting, but every candidate here qualified before the extended August 12 nomination deadline, and Petaluma Voice's independent reporting confirms the same field -- so this dataset treats the race as settled rather than left unbuilt.

Karen Nau

Karen Nau is Petaluma's sitting District 3 councilmember and, per Wikipedia's independent confirmation, the city's current Vice Mayor. She is running for reelection to her council seat. The county's own candidate list prints her ballot designation simply as "Incumbent." No further independent news profile, campaign website, or civic-board record was found for her in this pass.

Strengths

Sitting officeholder status as both District 3 councilmember and Vice Mayor, with a checkable record in the seat.

Trade-offs

No independent news coverage, campaign website, or council-vote record from her time in office was found in this pass -- only her incumbency and Vice Mayor title, per the county's candidate list.

Keep in mind

This dataset could not reach Petaluma's own site in this pass, so no fuller account of her record on the council -- good or bad -- could be checked beyond what's here.

Eric Vazquez

Eric Vazquez is challenging incumbent Karen Nau for District 3; his ballot designation reads "Affordable Housing Advocate." No independent news profile, campaign website, or civic-board record was found for him beyond that ballot designation in this pass.

Strengths

An "Affordable Housing Advocate" ballot designation points to a specific policy focus, though no independent source in this pass described his organizational affiliation or record on the issue.

Trade-offs

No independent source describes a broader platform or civic record for him beyond that ballot designation.

Keep in mind

A thin public profile here reflects what could be found in this pass -- Petaluma's own site was unreachable throughout -- not a judgment about his candidacy.

Source review: Strong (84/100) · 5 cited sources

Official records anchor this contest, with several source types checked for context.

  • sonomacounty.gov (opens in a new tab)Sonoma County Registrar of Voters -- "Local Candidates Who Have Filed," November 3, 2026 General Election (refetched fresh this session; page's own "Last Updated" stamp reads 8/17/26, 6:45 p.m., unchanged on a live re-check 2026-09-01, after both the regular (Aug. 7) and extended (Aug. 12) nomination deadlines had passed): the "City of Petaluma" section lists MAYOR (Elect 1): Kevin McDonnell (Incumbent, "Petaluma City Mayor"), John Hanania ("Small Business Owner"), Shelina Moreda ("Businesswoman/Farmer/Athlete"); CITY COUNCIL DISTRICT 1 (Elect 1): Janice Cader Thompson (Incumbent, "Petaluma City Councilmember"), Alan W. LaPierre ("Property Manager"), Nate Martin ("Retail Manager"); DISTRICT 2 (Elect 1): John Shribbs (Incumbent), Brent Newell ("Environmental Attorney"); DISTRICT 3 (Elect 1): Karen Nau (Incumbent), Eric Vazquez ("Affordable Housing Advocate") -- given a jurisdiction-prefixed key distinct from the county-level shard's own "sonoma-rov-candidates-2026" citation of this same page, since both cite it for different contests.
  • petalumavoice.org (opens in a new tab)Petaluma Voice -- "Mayor facing two election challengers: Moreda and Hanania" (Aug. 5, 2026): independently corroborates the identical nine-candidate field across Mayor and Council Districts 1-3, and states directly "The city council has a total of four positions up for the Nov. 3 election -- mayor, District 1, District 2, and District 3." Describes John Hanania as "a small business owner who last ran for city council in 2022" and Shelina Moreda as "a professional motorcycle racer and dairy farmer who had an unsuccessful bid in the June primary for the Sonoma County Board of Supervisor's seat"; names a fourth District 2 hopeful, Elece Hempel, who withdrew before the filing deadline -- consistent with the county's final two-candidate District 2 field.
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia -- Petaluma, California: cited narrowly for the 2020 Census population (59,776), the city's council-manager form of government, and independent confirmation that Kevin McDonnell is the sitting Mayor and Karen Nau the sitting Vice Mayor -- its Government section carries no detail on council district structure or term lengths, so it is not relied on for either.
  • cityofpetaluma.org (opens in a new tab)A documented site-access gap, not a claim about any candidate's background, the city's council/district structure, or campaign-finance filing location: the City of Petaluma's own site (cityofpetaluma.org and the www. subdomain) returned HTTP 403 to every automated fetch attempt in this pass, across every path tried (site root, /city-clerk/, /elections/, /city-council/, /campaign-finance/, /city-clerk-fppc-forms/, and /government/city-clerk/elections/) -- preventing this dataset from reading the city's own notice of election, council term lengths/total district count, or campaign-finance disclosure location directly.
  • netfile.com (opens in a new tab)A documented financial-disclosure access gap: a guess against NetFile's public infrastructure under agency id "PET" 301-redirected successfully to netfile.com/public/PET/campaign, suggesting an active NetFile agency registered under that id, though this pass could not independently confirm the id belongs to the City of Petaluma specifically. The portal returned only a client-rendered "Public Portal" app shell with no server-side filer or candidate data reachable by this session's fetch tooling -- the same JS-gated NetFile pattern documented elsewhere in this dataset. No FPPC Form 460, 470, or 501 could be confirmed present or absent for any of the nine candidates.

Last updated September 1, 2026.