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City of Red Bluff · Statewide General Election

Red Bluff City Council

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

On the ballot

This person would hold one of three open seats on Red Bluff's 5-member City Council for a 4-year term: city ordinances, the budget, and land use. Red Bluff (incorporated 1876, population 14,710 at the 2020 Census, and the Tehama County seat) doesn't directly elect a Mayor -- each December, the Council selects a Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem from among its own five members to serve a one-year term. JR Gonzales currently holds the Mayor title and Mark Clement is Mayor Pro Tem; neither of their seats is up this cycle.

Three of Red Bluff's five City Council seats are up this cycle, and four candidates filed for them: sitting Councilmembers Kris Deiters and Cassie Pope, plus non-incumbents William Ahmad Ellis and Marcella White. With four candidates for three seats, this is a genuinely contested race that goes to the ballot -- not a case where the city could appoint winners and skip the election.

This person would hold one of Red Bluff's five City Council seats for a 4-year term: city ordinances, the budget, and land use. Red Bluff (incorporated 1876, population 14,710 at the 2020 Census) is the Tehama County seat, but doesn't directly elect a Mayor -- each December, the Council selects a Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem from among its own five members to serve a one-year term. JR Gonzales currently holds the Mayor title (selected Dec. 2, 2025) and Mark Clement is Mayor Pro Tem; neither of their seats is up this cycle.

Why these particular three seats, and not an arbitrary three of the five: the City's own campaign-disclosure page lists officeholders by the year each was elected, and the three seats up in 2026 are exactly the three elected in 2022 -- Kris Deiters, Pat Hurton, and Cody Strock. Hurton did not file for re-election in 2026 and isn't a candidate this cycle. Strock resigned in November 2025; the Council appointed Cassie Pope to his vacant seat on Jan. 15, 2026, and she's now running to keep it in her own right.

Kris Deiters is a sitting Councilmember seeking re-election, confirmed by two of the City's own documents (its Council roster page and its FPPC/campaign-disclosure page, which labels her "Incumbent" in its own 2026 candidate listing). Her own filed ballot designation reads "City Council Member" rather than "Incumbent" -- both are accurate; California candidates choose their own ballot designation and aren't required to use the word "Incumbent" even when they qualify for it.

Kris Deiters

Kris Deiters is a sitting Red Bluff Councilmember, first elected in 2022, seeking a new 4-year term. She's confirmed as a current officeholder by two of the City's own official documents -- its Council roster page and its FPPC/campaign-disclosure page. No further independent record of her occupation, platform, or Council priorities was found in this pass: the City's Council page lists members by name and title only, with no linked biography, and no news coverage specific to her 2026 candidacy turned up in a genuine search of local outlets or the open web.

Strengths

Sitting incumbent with four years of current Council experience, confirmed by two of the City's own official documents.

Trade-offs

No independent record of her occupation, platform, or specific Council votes was found in this pass -- her incumbency is confirmed, but nothing else about her candidacy is.

Keep in mind

The absence of coverage reflects Red Bluff's thin local-news environment for routine council races generally, not anything unusual about this candidate -- her opponents have an equally bare public record.

Cassandre "Cassie" Pope

Cassie Pope is a sitting Red Bluff Councilmember seeking to keep the seat she was appointed to. The Council appointed her Jan. 15, 2026 to the vacancy left by Cody Strock's November 2025 resignation, per a Red Bluff Daily News report. Beyond the appointment itself, no independent record of her occupation, platform, or civic background was found in this pass -- no news coverage of her Council record or her 2026 candidacy specifically turned up in a genuine search of local outlets or the open web.

Strengths

Sitting incumbent (by appointment), confirmed by two official records including the exact date she was appointed.

Trade-offs

No independent record of her occupation, platform, or Council votes was found beyond the fact and date of her appointment.

Keep in mind

An appointed incumbent asking voters to keep a seat she did not win outright is a different position than an elected incumbent -- worth weighing given how thin every candidate record is here.

William Ahmad Ellis

William Ahmad Ellis is a non-incumbent candidate for Red Bluff City Council. He filed no ballot designation with the County -- meaning he either didn't request one or doesn't currently hold a job/status eligible for one under California's ballot-designation rules. No occupation, platform, or civic background for him was found on the City's own website, in local news, or in a general web search this pass.

Strengths

None independently confirmed.

Trade-offs

No occupation, platform, or news coverage was found for his candidacy, and he's the only one of the four candidates with no ballot designation at all.

Keep in mind

A blank ballot designation is common and isn't itself a red flag -- it just means less public information is available to build a real profile on.

Marcella White

Marcella White is a non-incumbent candidate for Red Bluff City Council; she filed the ballot designation "Elementary School Teacher." No further occupation detail, platform, or civic background for her was found on the City's own website, in local news, or in a general web search this pass.

Strengths

A filed occupation (Elementary School Teacher) that at least confirms one concrete fact about her.

Trade-offs

No platform, civic background, or news coverage of her candidacy was found in this pass beyond that single ballot designation.

Keep in mind

A teacher running for city council is common nationally and isn't itself informative about her positions on city issues specifically -- treat the designation as a bare fact, not a platform.

Candidate background for this contest is genuinely thin across all four names, not lopsided: beyond the structural facts of who currently holds a seat and when Pope was appointed -- both drawn from the City's and County's own official documents, not personal biography -- none of the four has an independently verifiable occupation, platform, or civic record in this pass. Red Bluff Daily News covers routine Council business (roads, ordinances, committee assignments) regularly, but no article specific to the 2026 Council candidates as a field was found; a direct site search and Google News RSS queries for each candidate by name returned nothing beyond the two appointment/mayor-selection stories already used above.

Source review: Strong (84/100) · 9 cited sources

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

  • tehama.gov (opens in a new tab)Tehama County Elections Department -- "Offices on Ballot for November 3, 2026" (official pre-filing notice): names "City of Red Bluff - Member of City Council," 4-year term, 3 seats -- no separately elected Red Bluff Mayor seat appears anywhere in the document.
  • tehama.gov (opens in a new tab)Tehama County Elections Department -- "Qualified List of Candidates," Nov. 3, 2026 General Election, printed Aug. 10, 2026 (contest 4580, "City Of Red Bluff Member Of City Council," Vote For 3): names William Ahmad Ellis (no ballot designation), Kris Deiters ("City Council Member"), Marcella White ("Elementary School Teacher"), and Cassandre "Cassie" Pope ("Appointed Incumbent") as the four qualified candidates -- read directly from the extracted PDF text, not a summary.
  • cityofredbluff.org (opens in a new tab)City of Red Bluff -- City Council (current membership roster): names the sitting five-member Council -- Mayor JR Gonzales, Mayor Pro Tem Mark Clement, and Councilmembers Kris Deiters, Pat Hurton, and Cassie Pope -- and states the Council selects a Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem from among its own members each December, confirming both Deiters's and Pope's incumbency and that there is no separately elected Mayor.
  • cityofredbluff.org (opens in a new tab)City of Red Bluff -- Elections page (2026 General Municipal Election): "Three of the five City Council seats are becoming vacant," 4-year terms, filing window July 13 - Aug. 7, 2026, candidate eligibility requirements, and $950/month Council compensation.
  • cityofredbluff.org (opens in a new tab)City of Red Bluff -- FPPC/Campaign Disclosure page: lists officeholders by the year elected ("2022 Kris Deiters Council Member Patrick Hurton Council Member Cody Strock Council Member"), explaining why those three seats are up in 2026, and independently lists "2026 Kris Deiters, Incumbent Cassie Pope, Incumbent William Ellis, Candidate Marcellas White, Candidate" -- a second City document confirming Deiters's and Pope's incumbency.
  • web.archive.org (opens in a new tab)Red Bluff Daily News -- "Red Bluff Council selects Gonzales for mayor, Clement for mayor pro tem" (Heather Taylor, Dec. 4, 2025; read via Wayback Machine after the live URL returned a subscriber paywall): photo caption confirms "Red Bluff City Councilman JR Gonzalez ... was selected as mayor by the Red Bluff City Council" on Dec. 2, 2025.
  • web.archive.org (opens in a new tab)Red Bluff Daily News -- "Cassie Pope is new Red Bluff City Councilmember" (Heather Taylor, Jan. 17, 2026; read via Wayback Machine after the live URL returned a subscriber paywall): photo caption confirms "On Jan. 15, the Red Bluff City Council appointed Cassie Pope to the vacant seat left by Cody Strock's November 2025 resignation."
  • netfile.com (opens in a new tab)A negative access result: Tehama County's own NetFile-hosted public campaign-finance portal, linked from the County's own Elections > Campaign Statements page, is a client-rendered single-page application with no server-rendered filing content reachable by this session's fetch tooling and no live browser session available this pass. Documents an access gap, not any of the four candidates' actual campaign finances.
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia -- Red Bluff, California: incorporation year (March 31, 1876) and 2020 Census population (14,710), used narrowly for these two descriptive facts only.

Last updated September 2, 2026.