# Petaluma City Council, District 3 Compare records and positions simply between Karen Nau or Eric Vazquez for Petaluma City Council, District 3 at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. Council members vote on Petaluma's city budget, laws, and land use. Petaluma also has a separately elected, citywide Mayor. Three council seats are up this November. They are Districts 1, 2, and 3. Petaluma elects council members by district, not at-large. Petaluma's population is 59,776. - Jurisdiction: City of Petaluma - Election: November 3, 2026 California general election - Publisher: Vote or Else (https://voteorelse.com) — a free, nonpartisan ballot guide for California voters. No endorsements. - Canonical page: https://voteorelse.com/2026/petaluma-council-3 - Full ballot: this page covers one race. Every contest on a voter's own ballot, by address, with the same breakdown for each: https://voteorelse.com/ - Sources last retrieved: September 1, 2026 - Source-objectivity score: 84 out of 100 (Strong), across 5 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology ## On the ballot - **Karen Nau** — Incumbent - **Eric Vazquez** — Affordable Housing Advocate A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot. 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. A Mayor is elected separately, citywide. This seat is one of three district council seats on this November's ballot. They are Districts 1, 2, and 3. Petaluma elects council members by district, not at-large. Council term lengths could not be confirmed. Neither could the city's total number of council districts. The City of Petaluma's own site blocked every automated fetch attempt. The county's own candidate list calls itself "not final or official" pending a later posting. But every candidate here qualified before the extended August 12 nomination deadline. Petaluma Voice's independent reporting confirms the same field. So the race is treated 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. They are running for reelection to their council seat. The county's own candidate list prints their ballot designation simply as "Incumbent." No further independent news profile, campaign website, or civic-board record was found for them 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 their time in office was found in this pass -- only their 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 their 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; their ballot designation reads "Affordable Housing Advocate." No independent news profile, campaign website, or civic-board record was found for them 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 their organizational affiliation or record on the issue. **Trade-offs:** No independent source describes a broader platform or civic record for them 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 their candidacy. ## Sources 1. [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.](https://sonomacounty.gov/administrative-support-and-fiscal-services/registrar-of-voters/elections/november-3-2026-general-election-local-candidates-who-have-filed) 2. [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.](https://www.petalumavoice.org/candidates-file-to-run/) 3. [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.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petaluma,_California) 4. [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.](https://cityofpetaluma.org/) 5. [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.](https://netfile.com/public/PET/campaign) ## The rest of the ballot Petaluma City Council, District 3 is one contest among the many a California voter decides on November 3, 2026 — Congress, the Legislature, county, city, and school board races differ by address. Vote or Else builds the full list for any California address and breaks down each contest the way this page does, with no account and without storing the address: https://voteorelse.com/ ## How to cite this page Vote or Else, "Petaluma City Council, District 3 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/petaluma-council-3 (sources last retrieved September 1, 2026). Link the canonical page above rather than this Markdown file. Coverage is updated as the race develops, so quote it with its retrieval date.