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City of Windsor · Statewide General Election

Mayor of Windsor

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 serve as Windsor's directly elected, at-large Mayor: presiding over Town Council meetings, representing the town in intergovernmental relations, and casting one vote alongside four district councilmembers on the budget, ordinances, and land use for this Sonoma County town of 26,344 (2020 Census). Windsor incorporated in 1992 and operates under a council-manager government, with a professional town manager running day-to-day operations while the elected Council sets policy. The Mayor's seat became a separately, at-large elected office starting with the November 2020 election -- before that, the Council selected the Mayor from among its own district members -- and now serves a two-year term, shorter than the four-year terms Windsor's four district Council seats serve.

Two candidates are running for Windsor's open Mayor seat: Tanya Potter, the town's sitting Vice Mayor and District 4 councilmember, against Rick Massell, a retired educator. Whichever candidate gets the most votes on November 3 wins the seat outright -- no runoff.

Windsor's Mayor is directly elected at-large to a two-year term, shorter than the four-year terms the town's four district Council seats serve. This is a relatively new arrangement: the Mayor's seat became a separately elected office starting with the November 2020 election, before which the Council chose the Mayor from among its own district members, the way neighboring Santa Rosa's Council still does. Windsor is a council-manager town of 26,344 (2020 Census), incorporated in 1992, with a professional town manager running day-to-day operations while the elected Mayor and Council set the budget, ordinances, and land-use policy.

The seat is open because sitting Mayor Rosa Reynoza, per the town's own Council directory, isn't seeking reelection. Potter, the town's current Vice Mayor, is running for Mayor rather than for another term on the Council -- her own filed candidate statement opens by noting she has just finished "the past four years as your District 4 Councilmember," which is also why District 4 appears as a separate open-seat contest on this same ballot. The county roster flagged this race's nomination period as extended to August 12, consistent with neither Reynoza nor any other eligible incumbent Mayor filing to run again by the regular August 7 deadline; Massell, whose ballot designation is "Retired Educator," qualified on August 11, near the close of that extended window.

Tanya Potter

Tanya Potter is Windsor's sitting Vice Mayor and District 4 councilmember, seeking to move from the Council to the directly elected Mayor's seat. Her ballot designation is "Councilmember/Police Sergeant": she works as a police sergeant, and her filed candidate statement describes a career in law enforcement that she says has "instilled in me a deep commitment to public service and community protection." Her stated priorities as Mayor are making Windsor "the safest community in Sonoma County" by supporting public-safety agencies and modern, safety-focused planning codes; continuing infrastructure investment in roads, drinking water, and wastewater systems; and closing the Town's structural budget deficit through targeted spending cuts, operational efficiencies, and economic development. No independent news profile beyond her own filed statement was found in this pass.

Strengths

A sitting Vice Mayor and District 4 councilmember, giving her a checkable four-year Council record and a law-enforcement career she frames as central to her public-safety priorities.

Trade-offs

Running for Mayor leaves her District 4 seat open rather than defended, and this pass found no independent coverage assessing her Council record or fiscal-discipline claims.

Keep in mind

Her occupation as a police sergeant is distinct from her Council role -- worth separating her law-enforcement background from her record as an elected official when weighing her public-safety platform.

Rick Massell

Rick Massell's ballot designation is "Retired Educator." He qualified for the ballot on August 11, 2026, near the close of the extended nomination window, and did not file a candidate statement -- the town's own Candidates for Town Council page marks his entry "No candidate statement submitted." No independent news profile, campaign website, or stated platform was found in this pass beyond his name and ballot designation, which are independently confirmed by both the county's roster and the town's own site.

Strengths

This pass could not independently verify strengths beyond his confirmed, county- and town-certified qualification to run.

Trade-offs

Without a filed statement or any independent coverage, voters have far less of his own material to weigh than for Potter -- no stated priorities, no campaign site, no checkable record.

Keep in mind

A retired-educator background suggests a career in schools, but this pass could not confirm specifics (grade level, subject, district, or years of service) from any source -- don't assume detail that isn't independently confirmed.

Source review: Strong (86/100) · 7 cited sources

Official records anchor this contest, with multiple sources checked.

  • sonomacounty.gov (opens in a new tab)Sonoma County Registrar of Voters -- "Local Candidates Who Have Filed," November 3, 2026 General Election: lists exactly three Windsor contests -- Mayor, Town Council District 1, and Town Council District 4 -- with per-contest candidate name, ballot designation, qualification date, and incumbent flag; the Mayor, District 1, and District 4 races were each flagged with a nomination deadline extended to August 12. 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.
  • townofwindsor.ca.gov (opens in a new tab)Town of Windsor -- own "November 3, 2026 General Municipal Election" page: confirms three seats up this cycle -- Mayor (at-large, two-year term), Town Council District 1 (four-year term), and Town Council District 4 (four-year term) -- and links the town's own Candidates for Town Council page, its SouthTech-hosted campaign-finance disclosure portal, and its Election Calendar.
  • townofwindsor.ca.gov (opens in a new tab)Town of Windsor -- own "Candidates for Town Council" page: independently names the identical five-candidate field with matching ballot designations, links each qualified candidate's filed candidate statement (Potter, Fortino Dickson, Kubota, and Rennie each filed one; Massell's entry is marked "No candidate statement submitted"), and separately lists Jessie Poshepny Vallery against District 4 as "Did not file -- no qualification as candidate achieved" -- an attempted but incomplete filing, not a second qualified District 4 candidate.
  • townofwindsor.ca.gov (opens in a new tab)Town of Windsor -- own online staff/Council directory: identifies the current five-member Town Council -- Rosa Reynoza (Mayor), Tanya Potter (Vice Mayor / District 4), Mike Wall (District 1), Sam Salmon (District 2), and JB Leep (District 3) -- the basis for reading all three November 2026 contests as open seats: Reynoza isn't seeking reelection as Mayor, Wall isn't seeking reelection to District 1, and Potter -- District 4's sitting incumbent -- is vacating that seat to run for Mayor instead.
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia -- "Windsor, California": used narrowly for the town's 2020 Census population (26,344), its July 1, 1992 incorporation date, its council-manager government structure, and confirmation that the Mayor became a directly, at-large elected office starting with the November 2020 election (before which the Council selected the Mayor from among its own members) and that district Council elections were introduced that same election -- does not cover the 2026 election.
  • southtechhosting.com (opens in a new tab)Windsor's SouthTech Consulting-hosted "CampaignDocs eRetrieval" public campaign-finance portal (linked from the town's own election page): a different vendor than the NetFile instances documented elsewhere in this dataset, but the same access pattern -- the landing page loads without a CAPTCHA (HTTP 200), but it is an ASP.NET Web Forms application (DevExpress controls, a multi-kilobyte __VIEWSTATE payload) whose filer/candidate search runs entirely through client-side postback controls, with no URL-parameter or REST-API path reachable by this session's fetch tooling (no browser extension connected this pass) -- a documented access limitation, not a claim that no filings exist.
  • townofwindsor.ca.gov (opens in a new tab)Tanya Potter -- filed candidate statement for Windsor Mayor, 2026, hosted on the town's own site: ballot designation "Councilmember/Police Sergeant," opens "It has been an honor to serve the past four years as your District 4 Councilmember," describes her law-enforcement career, and runs on public safety, infrastructure investment, and eliminating the Town's structural budget deficit.

Last updated September 1, 2026.