# Mayor of Petaluma Compare records and positions simply between John Hanania, Kevin McDonnell, or Shelina Moreda for Mayor of Petaluma at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. Petaluma's Mayor presides over City Council meetings. The Mayor represents the city publicly. The Mayor votes alongside district council members on the budget and city laws. Voters elect the Mayor citywide. This dataset could not confirm the Mayor's exact term length. It also could not confirm the council's total size. - 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-mayor - 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: 85 out of 100 (Strong), across 6 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology ## On the ballot - **John Hanania** — Small Business Owner - **Kevin McDonnell** — Petaluma City Mayor · Incumbent - **Shelina Moreda** — Businesswoman/Farmer/Athlete A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot. Incumbent Mayor Kevin McDonnell faces two challengers: small business owner John Hanania and motorcycle racer/dairy farmer Shelina Moreda. Whichever candidate gets the most votes on November 3 wins outright -- no runoff. Petaluma's Mayor leads City Council meetings and speaks for the city. The Mayor also votes with the district councilmembers on the budget, ordinances, and land use. An appointed city manager runs day-to-day work. Unlike the district seats, the Mayor is elected citywide. Petaluma is a council-manager city of about 59,800 people in the 2020 Census. The Mayor's exact term length and the council's total size could not be confirmed. The City of Petaluma's own site blocked every automated visit. ## Kevin McDonnell Kevin McDonnell is Petaluma's sitting Mayor, running for reelection. The county's own candidate list prints their ballot designation simply as "Petaluma City Mayor." Wikipedia's Petaluma article independently confirms their current officeholder status. No further independent news profile, campaign website, or civic-board record was found for them in this pass -- the city's own site, which would normally carry their mayoral record, was unreachable throughout. **Strengths:** McDonnell is the sitting officeholder. They are the only candidate here with a checkable record in the seat. **Trade-offs:** No news coverage, campaign website, or record of their specific council votes as Mayor was found. Only the county's bare candidate list and their incumbency turned up. **Keep in mind:** Petaluma's own site could not be reached. No fuller account of their record as Mayor, good or bad, could be checked. ## John Hanania John Hanania is a small business owner challenging incumbent Mayor Kevin McDonnell; their ballot designation reads "Small Business Owner." Petaluma Voice's own filing-roundup reporting adds that they last ran for Petaluma City Council in 2022. No further independent news profile, campaign website, or civic-board record was found for them in this pass. **Strengths:** A prior 2022 city council run gives them a track record as a repeat local candidate. Local reporting confirms it. **Trade-offs:** No source describes a platform, a business background beyond "Small Business Owner," or a civic record. That single prior run is all that was found. **Keep in mind:** A thin public profile here reflects what could be found. Petaluma's own site was unreachable. It is not a judgment about their candidacy. ## Shelina Moreda Shelina Moreda is a professional motorcycle racer and dairy farmer challenging incumbent Mayor Kevin McDonnell; her ballot designation reads "Businesswoman/Farmer/Athlete." Petaluma Voice's own reporting adds that she ran unsuccessfully for the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors in the June 2026 primary. A residency question was raised about her mayoral eligibility in mid-August -- see the note above -- and resolved in her favor by the City Clerk before the filing deadline. No further independent news profile, campaign website, or civic-board record was found for her in this pass. **Strengths:** Her June 2026 run for the county Board of Supervisors gives her a track record as a candidate. Local reporting describes her work and farming background. **Trade-offs:** That June county campaign was unsuccessful. No source describes a platform for this mayoral race beyond her filed title, "Businesswoman/Farmer/Athlete." **Keep in mind:** The City Clerk settled the residency question before the filing deadline. She relied on documents Moreda turned in. It is not an open dispute. ## 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) 6. [Petaluma Voice -- "Moreda to remain on ballot after residency question" (Aug. 21, 2026): SEIU member Ryan Williams and North Bay Labor Council's Maddy Hirshfield submitted correspondence to the city on Aug. 15 questioning whether mayoral candidate Shelina Moreda -- previously resident at a ranch outside city limits -- met the requirement to establish city residency by July 7, 30 days before her Aug. 6 filing; City Clerk Caitlin Corley determined Moreda "has provided sufficient information to establish that her residency meets the City's code requirements," based on a lease agreement, landlord letter, an Aug. 1 rent check, and a July 1 receipt; confirms she remains on the ballot as one of three mayoral candidates.](https://www.petalumavoice.org/moreda-to-remain-on-ballot/) ## The rest of the ballot Mayor of Petaluma 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, "Mayor of Petaluma — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/petaluma-mayor (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.