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City of Salinas · Statewide General Election

Salinas City Council, District 3

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 represents one of Salinas's six single-member council districts on the 7-member City Council, alongside a directly elected, at-large Mayor. Councilmembers vote on the city budget, land use, and policy for California's largest Monterey County city and its county seat; day-to-day operations run through an appointed city manager. A 4-year term.

Three candidates are running for Salinas City Council District 3: incumbent Margaret C. D'Arrigo and challengers Brent Bagley and Cary Swensen. Whoever gets the most votes wins outright.

District 3, covering south Salinas including Hartnell College's main campus, downtown and Salinas Valley Health, elects one member to a 4-year term on the city's 7-member Council. D'Arrigo holds the seat by winning a November 2024 special election to fill the remainder of Steve McShane's term after his May 2024 resignation; her current term runs only through December 2026, so the seat is back on the ballot for a full term this cycle even though most other council seats elected in 2024 run through 2028.

D'Arrigo, a Hartnell College trustee before joining the council, was part of the council's April 2026 majority that voted 5-2 to begin rescinding Salinas's 2023 rent-control and tenant-protection ordinances -- she made the motion to repeal all four, telling colleagues "investing in real estate has always been a really good investment in this community" (a repeal referendum on those ordinances is separately on the November ballot). Swensen, a local business owner and educator, ran against McShane for this seat in 2022 and was one of two people known to be interested in the 2024 special-election vacancy before D'Arrigo won it; he is now running for the seat again. Bagley, an operations consultant, lists a mailing address in neighboring Seaside on the county's own candidate filing.

Margaret C. D'Arrigo

Margaret C. D'Arrigo is the incumbent, elected to fill the balance of Steve McShane's term in a November 2024 special election after significantly outraising the field -- she reported raising at least $145,267, more than six times the total raised by the next-highest fundraiser in that four-candidate race, fellow District 3 candidate Cary Swensen. Before joining the council she served as a Hartnell College trustee. On the council, she was the lead voice for rescinding Salinas's 2023 rent-stabilization, just-cause eviction and tenant anti-harassment ordinances in April 2026, framing the debate as a business and investment question rather than a landlord-versus-tenant one.

Strengths

A completed partial term in office, plus prior experience as a Hartnell College trustee; the largest fundraising total in the 2024 special election that elected her.

Trade-offs

Her vote and framing on rescinding renter protections put her at odds with tenant advocates; a repeal referendum on those ordinances is separately on the ballot.

Keep in mind

She won a special election to fill an unexpired term, so this is her first time on the ballot for a full 4-year term here.

Cary Swensen

Cary Swensen is a local business owner and educator who has lived in Salinas since 2009, when he moved from Seattle to purchase the Sylvan Learning Center. He ran against then-incumbent Steve McShane for this seat in 2022, and was one of two people the council considered for McShane's District 3 vacancy in 2024 before it opted for a special election, which he lost to D'Arrigo by a wide fundraising margin. His campaign centers on street and sidewalk repair funded by reordering the city's existing capital budget rather than new taxes, affordable housing, and public safety.

Strengths

A specific infrastructure plan -- a "fix-it-first" capital-budget policy, state and federal grants, an "adopt-a-block" repair program; two prior campaigns give him name recognition.

Trade-offs

Two prior losses for this same seat, most recently a 2024 special election lost by a wide fundraising margin; no elected office held to date.

Keep in mind

One of two non-incumbents challenging D'Arrigo, splitting the anti-incumbent vote with Bagley in a plurality-wins race.

Brent Bagley

Brent Bagley describes his occupation on the county's own candidate filing as "Operations Consultant/Parent." He lists a mailing address in neighboring Seaside rather than Salinas on that filing; his campaign website was live but displayed only a placeholder "coming soon" page as of retrieval, and no independent news coverage was found for him this pass.

Strengths

None independently confirmed this pass beyond his listed occupation.

Trade-offs

A parked campaign website with no platform content and no independent news coverage found; a listed mailing address outside Salinas.

Keep in mind

As with Guerra in District 2, a thin public record isn't evidence against a candidate -- it may just reflect a smaller campaign.

Source review: Strong (81/100) · 11 cited sources

Official records anchor this contest, with several source types checked for context; advocacy or endorsement sources are treated as attributed perspective.

Review note: Brent Bagley's own campaign domain (votebagley.org): displayed only a registrar's "Coming Soon" placeholder page with no candidate content as of retrieval -- documents the absence of a campaign-site source for him, not a claim about his platform. and Cary Swensen's own campaign site ("Cary Swensen for Salinas City Council District 3"): his stated platform (a capital-budget "fix-it-first" street-repair policy, pursuing existing state and federal infrastructure grants, an "adopt-a-block" repair partnership, affordable housing, public safety) and biography (Salinas resident since 2009, owner of the local Sylvan Learning Center, Steinbeck Rotary and other civic involvement). may have more bias because they are advocacy voter guides compared to other formal government and nonprofit journalism sources.

  • countyofmonterey.gov (opens in a new tab)Monterey County Elections -- official "Candidate List" page for the November 3, 2026 General Election, reached via a Wayback Machine snapshot captured 2026-08-23 (every direct fetch of the live page returned HTTP 403 this pass). Unlike the office-titles-only DOM this dataset's county-level Monterey shard encountered, this snapshot rendered the full per-candidate roster for every office section: for City of Salinas, four candidates for Mayor (Daniel Muñoz, Dennis Donohue, Hezekiah Gonzalez, Peter Szalai), two for Council District 2 (Jose Guerra, Tony Barrera), three for District 3 (Brent Bagley, Cary Swensen, Margaret C. D'Arrigo), and two for District 5 (Andrew Sandoval, Irma C. Lopez), each with ballot-designation occupation and filed contact information, and none marked withdrawn or disqualified
  • web.archive.org (opens in a new tab)City of Salinas's own official site -- officeholder pages for Districts 1, 4 and 6 (Jose Luis Barajas, Gloria De La Rosa, Aurelio Salazar), reached via Wayback Machine snapshots (captured 2026-08-11): each shows "Term Began: November 2024 / Term Expires: November 2028", confirming none of the three is up in November 2026 -- used to independently verify that exactly four Salinas seats (Mayor, District 2, District 3, District 5) are on the 2026 ballot, not more
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia -- "Salinas, California": used for the 2020 Census population (163,542, the largest city and county seat in Monterey County) and to independently corroborate Dennis Donohue as the sitting Mayor and a council-manager government type; its account of the office beyond that is thin and superseded here by the city's own term-of-office pages
  • cal-access.sos.ca.gov (opens in a new tab)California Secretary of State CAL-ACCESS -- direct filer searches for all eleven 2026 Salinas candidates (Muñoz, Donohue, Gonzalez, Szalai, Guerra, Barrera, Bagley, Swensen, D'Arrigo, Sandoval, Lopez) each returned only a Distil Networks bot-detection challenge page, not usable search results, both via the name-search form and via a direct committee-detail URL built from an FPPC filer number found on a candidate's own site. Cal-Access's own Power Search page states its data covers state-level campaign finance and excludes local government filings in any case, so this documents an absence of a reachable financial-disclosure source for these candidates, not a claim about any of their actual finances
  • web.archive.org (opens in a new tab)City of Salinas's own official site -- Councilmember Margaret D'Arrigo's District 3 officeholder page, reached via a Wayback Machine snapshot (captured 2026-08-11): "Term Began: December 2024 / Term Expires: December 2026", confirming District 3 is up in November 2026 and that D'Arrigo holds the seat by winning a special election to fill Steve McShane's unexpired term rather than a normal 4-year cycle
  • montereycountynow.com (opens in a new tab)Monterey County Weekly (montereycountynow.com) -- "Fourth-term Salinas City Councilmember Steve McShane resigns" (April 2024): reports McShane's District 3 resignation effective May 10, 2024, with roughly two and a half years remaining on a term concluding at the end of 2026 -- background for why District 3 returns to the ballot for a full term in 2026 rather than 2028
  • montereycountynow.com (opens in a new tab)Monterey County Weekly (montereycountynow.com) -- "Appointment or election? Salinas will weigh its options to fill a council vacancy" (Celia Jiménez, April 2024): reports the council's choice between appointing or electing a District 3 successor to McShane, naming Margaret D'Arrigo (a Hartnell College trustee) and Cary Swensen (who ran against McShane in 2022) as the two people known to be interested in the seat
  • montereycountynow.com (opens in a new tab)Monterey County Weekly (montereycountynow.com) -- "Big spending led candidates to victory in Salinas' $1.2 million election" (Sara Rubin, Dec. 2024): certified 2024 fundraising totals for Salinas's Nov. 2024 general election, including Mayor-elect Dennis Donohue ($321,826, against Chris Barrera's $82,629 and Ernesto Gonzalez Garcia's $1,782) and District 3's Margaret D'Arrigo ($145,267, more than six times the next-highest fundraiser in that four-candidate race, Cary Swensen) -- the most recent full-cycle fundraising figures found for both
  • montereycountynow.com (opens in a new tab)Monterey County Weekly (montereycountynow.com) -- "Salinas City Council votes 5-2 in favor of rescinding rent stabilization" (April 2026): on-the-record reporting of the council's vote to begin rescinding the city's 2023 rent-stabilization, just-cause eviction and tenant anti-harassment ordinances, naming Andrew Sandoval and Tony Barrera as the two dissenting votes and quoting Margaret D'Arrigo, Aurelio Salazar, Jose Luis Barajas, Barrera, Sandoval and Mayor Donohue on their positions
  • cary2026.com (opens in a new tab)Cary Swensen's own campaign site ("Cary Swensen for Salinas City Council District 3"): his stated platform (a capital-budget "fix-it-first" street-repair policy, pursuing existing state and federal infrastructure grants, an "adopt-a-block" repair partnership, affordable housing, public safety) and biography (Salinas resident since 2009, owner of the local Sylvan Learning Center, Steinbeck Rotary and other civic involvement)
  • votebagley.org (opens in a new tab)Brent Bagley's own campaign domain (votebagley.org): displayed only a registrar's "Coming Soon" placeholder page with no candidate content as of retrieval -- documents the absence of a campaign-site source for him, not a claim about his platform

Last updated September 1, 2026.