# Santa Rosa City Council, District 2

Mark Stapp is running uncontested for Santa Rosa City Council, District 2. Full ballot at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person would represent one of Santa Rosa's seven City Council districts. They vote on city laws, the budget, and land use. Santa Rosa is Sonoma County's largest city and county seat. It has 178,127 residents. A professional city manager runs day-to-day operations. There is no separately elected Mayor. The seven-member council elects one of its own members as Mayor. The Mayor serves a two-year term and also keeps their own district seat. Council seats are elected by district for staggered 4-year terms. Districts 2, 4, and 6 are up this November. Districts 1, 3, 5, and 7 are not up again until 2028.

- Jurisdiction: City of Santa Rosa
- 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/santa-rosa-council-2
- 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: October 7, 2026
- Source-objectivity score: 82 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

- **Mark Stapp** — City Councilmember · Incumbent

A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot.

Only one candidate qualified for Santa Rosa's District 2 council seat: incumbent Mark Stapp, who is unopposed for another term. This contest is settled and your vote here does not change the outcome.

This is one of Santa Rosa's seven district council seats. Santa Rosa is Sonoma County's largest city and its county seat. Its population was 178,127 in the 2020 Census. The city runs council-manager. Councilmembers set the budget, ordinances, and land-use policy. A professional city manager runs day-to-day work. There is no separately elected Mayor. The seven-member Council picks one of its own to preside as Mayor for two years. That member keeps their own district seat. Council seats run four years and are staggered. Only Districts 2, 4, and 6 are up this November.

With no opponent, the useful question is not who to choose. It is what the officeholder has done and what to watch next. Accountability for this seat over the next four years runs through Council meetings and public records requests. It does not run through the ballot. The city's Notice of Offices and Nominations confirms nomination papers went to Stapp as District 2's sitting incumbent. A candidate statement was filed and posted for this race. So the city printed this as a live, on-ballot contest. It did not cancel the race and appoint him directly. California law allows that for single-filer seats. Santa Rosa did not use it here.

## Mark Stapp

Mark Stapp is Santa Rosa's sitting District 2 councilmember and its current Mayor -- a two-year presiding role the seven-member Council elects one of its own to hold, on top of that member's own district seat. He was on the city's 2022 council ballot (per the Press Democrat's October 2022 endorsement of that race) and is now seeking another 4-year District 2 term. His filed candidate statement highlights the city's affordable and middle-income housing production, more than $150 million in infrastructure investment over the past two years, and priorities of public safety, homelessness, and environmental sustainability, alongside neighborhood projects including the Southeast Greenway and transit connectivity improvements.

**Strengths:** He serves as Mayor as well as holding his District 2 seat. That gives a checkable record on both citywide and district matters. His colleagues elected him to the role.

**Trade-offs:** Running unopposed means his record faces no organized counter-argument this cycle. No independent coverage assessing the housing and infrastructure figures his statement cites was found.

**Keep in mind:** As Mayor, Stapp presides over the full Council, not just District 2. That matters if you weigh his citywide visibility rather than only his district record.

## Review notes

- The Press Democrat Editorial Board -- "PD Endorsement: Mark Stapp, Terry Sanders and Jeff Okrepkie for Santa Rosa City Council" (Oct. 14, 2022): independently corroborates that Stapp and Okrepkie were both on the 2022 Santa Rosa City Council ballot -- consistent with their current 4-year terms expiring this cycle -- and that Sanders also ran that year (the race he later conceded to Fleming). Cited only for this 2022 on-ballot corroboration, not for any 2026 claim. may have more bias because it is an editorial endorsement source compared to other formal government and nonprofit journalism sources.

## Sources

1. [Sonoma County Registrar of Voters -- "Local Candidates Who Have Filed," November 3, 2026 General Election: lists exactly three Santa Rosa "CITY CONTESTS" -- City Council Districts 2, 4, and 6 -- with per-contest candidate name, ballot designation, qualification date, and incumbent flag; no Santa Rosa Mayor contest appears anywhere on the page. Page last updated 8/17/26, unchanged on a live re-check 2026-09-01 after both the regular (Aug. 7) and extended (Aug. 12) nomination deadlines had passed.](https://sonomacounty.gov/administrative-support-and-fiscal-services/registrar-of-voters/elections/november-3-2026-general-election-local-candidates-who-have-filed)
2. [City of Santa Rosa -- official "Notice of Offices and Nominations" (per Elections Code 10224.5), dated July 31, 2026: certifies three 4-year-term City Council seats -- Districts 2, 4, and 6 -- and states City Clerk Dina Manis furnished nomination papers to the incumbents for only District 2 and District 6, not District 4 -- confirming District 4 incumbent Victoria Fleming did not seek reelection.](https://www.srcity.org/DocumentCenter/View/50765/Notice_Offices-and-Nominations_102245_2026_FINAL)
3. [City of Santa Rosa -- own "2026 Candidates" page: independently names the identical three-district, four-candidate field with matching ballot designations, links each candidate's filed candidate statement (Stapp, Sanders, and Okrepkie each filed one; Jones-Carter did not, per the page, because she "did not qualify for public financing") and each candidate's own campaign website.](https://www.srcity.org/4396/2026-Candidates)
4. [Wikipedia -- "Santa Rosa, California": used narrowly for the 2020 Census population (178,127), Sonoma County seat status, the council-manager government structure, and the current Council roster (Mayor Mark Stapp plus six district councilmembers, including Victoria Fleming and Jeff Okrepkie) -- does not cover the 2026 election.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Rosa,_California)
5. [Wikipedia -- "Mayor of Santa Rosa, California": confirms Santa Rosa's Mayor is not a separately elected office -- "the mayor is elected by the council to a single two-year term" -- from among sitting councilmembers.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayor_of_Santa_Rosa,_California)
6. [Santa Rosa's NetFile-hosted public campaign-finance portal (linked from the city's own Campaign Finance Information and Campaign Disclosure Filings pages): the landing page loads without a CAPTCHA, but its candidate/filing search runs entirely through client-side ASP.NET postback controls with no URL-parameter or REST-API path reachable by this session's fetch tooling (no browser extension connected this pass); its own real-time filing RSS feed (max. 15-day/1,000-item window) returned zero Santa Rosa items as of this retrieval -- a documented access limitation, not a claim that no filings exist.](http://nf4.netfile.com/pub2/Default.aspx?aid=CSR)
7. [Mark Stapp -- filed candidate statement for Santa Rosa City Council District 2, 2026, hosted on the city's own site: ballot designation "City Councilmember," describes his current service as "Mayor of Santa Rosa and your District 2 City Councilmember" and his housing, infrastructure, and public-safety priorities.](https://www.srcity.org/4406/55436/Mark-Stapp---District-2)
8. [The Press Democrat Editorial Board -- "PD Endorsement: Mark Stapp, Terry Sanders and Jeff Okrepkie for Santa Rosa City Council" (Oct. 14, 2022): independently corroborates that Stapp and Okrepkie were both on the 2022 Santa Rosa City Council ballot -- consistent with their current 4-year terms expiring this cycle -- and that Sanders also ran that year (the race he later conceded to Fleming). Cited only for this 2022 on-ballot corroboration, not for any 2026 claim.](https://www.pressdemocrat.com/2022/10/14/pd-endorsement-mark-stapp-terry-sanders-and-jeff-okrepkie-for-santa-rosa-city-council/)
9. [League of Women Voters -- Vote411 voter guide, 'City of Santa Rosa City Council Member, District 2' race (statewide All Races list): each candidate's self-submitted ballot designation and campaign contacts, plus answers to the League's questions -- If elected, what are your top 3 priorities?; What background, experience and/or education qualify you for this elected office?; Is there anything else that you would like the voters to know about you? No answers were on file at capture. Capture in data/nov-2026/sources/vote411/santa-rosa-council-2.json.](https://www.vote411.org/plan-your-vote)

## The rest of the ballot

Santa Rosa City Council, District 2 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, "Santa Rosa City Council, District 2 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/santa-rosa-council-2 (sources last retrieved October 7, 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.