# Mayor of Windsor

Compare records and positions simply between Tanya Potter or Rick Massell for Mayor of Windsor at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. Windsor's Mayor is directly elected, at-large. The Mayor presides over Town Council meetings and represents the town. The Mayor votes alongside four district council members on the budget and land use. Since 2020, voters have elected the Mayor directly. Before that, the Council chose the Mayor. The Mayor's term is two years, shorter than a district council member's four-year term.

- Jurisdiction: City of Windsor
- 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/windsor-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: 86 out of 100 (Strong), across 7 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology

## On the ballot

- **Tanya Potter** — Councilmember/Police Sergeant
- **Rick Massell** — Retired Educator

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

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. The town's four district Council seats serve four-year terms. This is a relatively new arrangement. The Mayor's seat became a separately elected office with the November 2020 election. Before that, the Council chose the Mayor from among its own district members. Neighboring Santa Rosa's Council still works that way. Windsor is a council-manager town of 26,344 people, per the 2020 Census. It was incorporated in 1992. A professional town manager runs day-to-day operations. The elected Mayor and Council set the budget, ordinances, and land-use policy.

The seat is open because sitting Mayor Rosa Reynoza is not seeking reelection. The town's own Council directory says so. Potter is running for Mayor, not for another Council term. Potter's filed statement says they have just finished "the past four years as your District 4 Councilmember." That is why District 4 is a separate open-seat contest on this ballot. The county roster shows the nomination period extended to August 12. No eligible incumbent Mayor filed again by the regular August 7 deadline. Massell's ballot designation is "Retired Educator." Massell 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. Potter's ballot designation is "Councilmember/Police Sergeant": they work as a police sergeant, and their filed candidate statement describes a career in law enforcement that they say has "instilled in me a deep commitment to public service and community protection." Their 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 their own filed statement was found in this pass.

**Strengths:** Potter is a sitting Vice Mayor and District 4 councilmember, which gives a checkable four-year Council record. They frame their law enforcement career as central to their public safety priorities.

**Trade-offs:** Running for Mayor leaves Potter's District 4 seat open rather than defended. No independent coverage of their Council record was found. The same goes for their fiscal discipline claims.

**Keep in mind:** Potter's job as a police sergeant is separate from their Council role. Weigh their law enforcement background apart from their record as an elected official.

## Rick Massell

Rick Massell's ballot designation is "Retired Educator." Massell 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 their entry "No candidate statement submitted." No independent news profile, campaign website, or stated platform was found in this pass beyond their name and ballot designation, which are independently confirmed by both the county's roster and the town's own site.

**Strengths:** The county and the town both confirm Massell qualified to run. Nothing beyond that could be independently verified.

**Trade-offs:** Massell filed no statement, and no independent coverage was found. Voters have far less of their own material to weigh than Potter's. There are no stated priorities, site, or checkable record.

**Keep in mind:** A retired educator background suggests a career in schools. No source confirmed their grade level, subject, district, or years of service. Do not assume detail that is not confirmed.

## Sources

1. [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.](https://sonomacounty.gov/administrative-support-and-fiscal-services/registrar-of-voters/elections/november-3-2026-general-election-local-candidates-who-have-filed)
2. [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.](https://www.townofwindsor.ca.gov/1481/November-3-2026-General-Municipal-Electi)
3. [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.](https://www.townofwindsor.ca.gov/1484/Candidates-for-Town-Council)
4. [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.](https://www.townofwindsor.ca.gov/directory.aspx?did=8)
5. [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.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor,_California)
6. [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.](https://www.southtechhosting.com/WindsorTown/CampaignDocsWebRetrieval/)
7. [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.](https://www.townofwindsor.ca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/32830/Potter-Tanya-_-Candidate-Statement-WEB)

## The rest of the ballot

Mayor of Windsor 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 Windsor — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/windsor-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.