# Red Bluff City Council Compare records and positions simply between Marcella White, Cassandre "Cassie" Pope, Kris Deiters, and 1 more for Red Bluff City Council at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person would hold one of three open seats on Red Bluff's City Council. The council has five members in all. The term is four years. They vote on city laws, the budget, and land use. Red Bluff was incorporated in 1876 and has a population of 14,710. It is the Tehama County seat. Red Bluff does not directly elect a Mayor. Each December, the Council picks a Mayor from its own five members. It also picks a Mayor Pro Tem. Those posts serve one-year terms. JR Gonzales currently holds the Mayor title. Mark Clement is Mayor Pro Tem. Neither of their seats is up this cycle. - Jurisdiction: City of Red Bluff - Election: November 3, 2026 California general election - Seats: 3 - Publisher: Vote or Else (https://voteorelse.com) — a free, nonpartisan ballot guide for California voters. No endorsements. - Canonical page: https://voteorelse.com/2026/redbluff-council - 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 2, 2026 - Source-objectivity score: 84 out of 100 (Strong), across 9 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology ## On the ballot - **Marcella White** — Elementary School Teacher - **Cassandre "Cassie" Pope** — Appointed Incumbent · Incumbent - **Kris Deiters** — City Council Member · Incumbent - **William Ahmad Ellis** A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot. 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. They vote on 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 Pope is now running to keep it in their 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 Deiters "Incumbent" in its own 2026 candidate listing). Their 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. They're 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 their 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 their 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 their occupation, platform, or specific Council votes was found in this pass -- their incumbency is confirmed, but nothing else about their 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 -- their opponents have an equally bare public record. ## Cassandre "Cassie" Pope Cassie Pope is a sitting Red Bluff Councilmember seeking to keep the seat they were appointed to. The Council appointed them 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 their occupation, platform, or civic background was found in this pass -- no news coverage of their Council record or their 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 they were appointed. **Trade-offs:** No independent record of their occupation, platform, or Council votes was found beyond the fact and date of their appointment. **Keep in mind:** An appointed incumbent asking voters to keep a seat they 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. They filed no ballot designation with the County -- meaning they either didn't request one or don't currently hold a job/status eligible for one under California's ballot-designation rules. No occupation, platform, or civic background for them 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 their candidacy, and they're 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; they filed the ballot designation "Elementary School Teacher." No further occupation detail, platform, or civic background for them 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 them. **Trade-offs:** No platform, civic background, or news coverage of their 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 their 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. ## Sources 1. [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.](https://www.tehama.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Offices-Up-for-Election-11.3.2026-1.pdf) 2. [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.](https://www.tehama.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/8.10.2026-Qualified-List-of-Candidates.pdf) 3. [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.](https://www.cityofredbluff.org/government/city_council.php) 4. [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.](https://www.cityofredbluff.org/government/elections.php) 5. [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.](https://www.cityofredbluff.org/government/fppc.php) 6. [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.](https://web.archive.org/web/20251217125700/https://www.redbluffdailynews.com/2025/12/04/red-bluff-council-selects-gonzales-for-mayor-clement-for-mayor-pro-tem/) 7. [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."](https://web.archive.org/web/20260118061638/https://www.redbluffdailynews.com/2026/01/17/cassie-pope-is-new-red-bluff-city-councilmember/) 8. [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.](https://netfile.com/public/TEHAMA/campaign) 9. [Wikipedia -- Red Bluff, California: incorporation year (March 31, 1876) and 2020 Census population (14,710), used narrowly for these two descriptive facts only.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bluff,_California) ## The rest of the ballot Red Bluff City Council 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, "Red Bluff City Council — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/redbluff-council (sources last retrieved September 2, 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.