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City of Gustine · Statewide General Election

Gustine 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 two open at-large City Council seats on Gustine's five-member Council -- the Mayor plus four Council Members, all elected citywide; Gustine has no council districts. Council Members serve four-year terms.

Two candidates are running for Gustine's two open at-large City Council seats: Rich Ford and Sherri Marsigli. With exactly two candidates for two seats, both are effectively elected outright on November 3, 2026.

Council seats carry 4-year terms on Gustine's five-member Council -- the Mayor plus four Council Members, all elected citywide at-large rather than by district -- setting the budget, land use, and municipal ordinances for this Merced County city of 6,110 residents (2020 Census). A directly elected Mayor, not part of this race, serves a separate 2-year term. Two of the four Council seats are up this cycle; the city's own current roster shows the other two Council Members, Blake Giles and Mark Melville, are not on this year's ballot, consistent with staggered terms.

Both Ford and Marsigli are sitting Council Members seeking another term -- Ford's county filing lists his designation as "Incumbent," and Marsigli, elected in November 2022, is completing her first term. With no third candidate in the field, the two seats are not competing against each other -- both qualified candidates fill the two openings barring a successful write-in campaign. Voters still cast a ballot to formally elect them.

Rich Ford

Rich Ford is a sitting Gustine Council Member, confirmed by both the county's candidate list and the city's own website. The county's list gives his printed ballot designation as "Incumbent" rather than an occupation. No independent news profile or biography page for Ford was found this pass -- like Nagy, his individual city-bio page has never been captured by the Wayback Machine, and no dedicated news coverage of him was found in either local outlet's own article archive.

Strengths

Sitting incumbency, confirmed by the city's own site.

Trade-offs

Little beyond his name, incumbency, and ballot designation could be confirmed this pass -- no news profile, campaign site, or captured biography page was found for him.

Keep in mind

With no third candidate in the field, this is not a head-to-head contest between Ford and Marsigli for a single seat -- both qualified candidates are expected to fill the two open seats.

Sherri Marsigli

Sherri Marsigli is a sitting Gustine Council Member, elected in the November 2022 general election. Per the city's own official biography of her, she served twenty-one years on the city's Planning Commission before her Council seat -- appointed in 2001, serving as Vice-Chair for a number of years -- through her Council swear-in in December 2022. She holds a B.A. in Economics from UC San Diego and has worked as a Quality Assurance Manager, Business Owner, and Bookkeeper (matching the "Business Owner" designation on her county filing). The same city biography describes her as a lifelong resident of the Westside whose two sons are "5th generation Westside residents."

Strengths

Twenty-one years of prior Planning Commission service before her first Council term, plus sourced professional and family background from the city's own biography of her.

Trade-offs

This detail comes from the city's own biography, not independent reporting -- no outside news coverage of this race was found, consistent with Gustine's small size and thin local press.

Keep in mind

With no third candidate in the field, this is not a head-to-head contest between Marsigli and Ford for a single seat -- both qualified candidates are expected to fill the two open seats.

Source review: Strong (88/100) · 6 cited sources

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

  • countyofmerced.com (opens in a new tab)Merced County -- own "November 3, 2026 General Election -- All Contests -- Final Qualified Candidate List" (CFMR009 report, printed 8/25/2026): names Gustine's two city contests (Mayor, Councilmember) and every candidate's printed ballot designation and candidate-statement-filed status, read directly from the source PDF's Gustine section.
  • themercedfocus.org (opens in a new tab)The Merced FOCUS -- "Key city races take shape in Merced County. See who made the filing deadline" (Victor A. Patton, Aug. 9, 2026): independently confirms "In Gustine, incumbent Patrick Nagy is running unopposed. Residents will vote for two city council seats, and there are two candidates: incumbent Rich Ford and business owner Sherri Marsigli."
  • cityofgustine.com (opens in a new tab)City of Gustine -- own "City Council" page, via a Wayback Machine snapshot (captured 2026-08-31; the live site returns HTTP 403 to every direct fetch attempted this pass): "The City Council is comprised of five members, elected by the electorate in Gustine: Four City Council Members are elected for four year terms while the Mayor is elected for two year terms." The same-day homepage snapshot names the current roster: Mayor Patrick "Pat" Nagy, and Council Members Blake Giles, Mark Melville, Rich Ford, and Sherri Marsigli.
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia, "Gustine, California": used narrowly for the dated 2020 Census population figure (6,110, up from 5,520 in 2010), the November 11, 1915 incorporation date, and state/federal district placement -- does not cover the 2026 election.
  • cal-access.sos.ca.gov (opens in a new tab)California Secretary of State CAL-ACCESS -- filer searches attempted for all three Gustine candidates (Patrick Nagy, Rich Ford, Sherri Marsigli): every query returned only Cal-Access's own Incapsula bot-detection challenge page, not usable results, the same block documented elsewhere in this dataset -- and Cal-Access's documented scope covers state-level filings only, which excludes local candidates in any case. A NetFile public campaign-finance portal exists for Gustine (agency ID "GUST") but is a client-rendered single-page app that returns only an empty HTML shell to a direct fetch, and no browser tool was available this pass to query it interactively. Documents the absence of a reachable financial-disclosure source, not any candidate's actual finances.
  • cityofgustine.com (opens in a new tab)City of Gustine -- own official biography page for Council Member Sherri Marsigli, via a Wayback Machine snapshot (captured 2025-10-07; the live site returns HTTP 403 to every direct fetch attempted this pass, and no later snapshot exists per the Wayback CDX API): confirms she was elected to Council in November 2022 after twenty-one years on the city's Planning Commission (appointed 2001, Vice-Chair for a number of years), holds a B.A. in Economics from UC San Diego, has worked as a Quality Assurance Manager, Business Owner, and Bookkeeper, and is a lifelong Westside resident.

Last updated September 2, 2026.