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City of Santa Paula · Statewide General Election

Santa Paula City Council, District 4

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On the ballot

This person would hold one of five district seats on Santa Paula's City Council: city ordinances, the budget, and land use for this Ventura County city of about 30,657 residents. The Council appoints a City Manager (Dan Singer as of this cycle) to run day-to-day operations. A 4-year term. Santa Paula has no separately, directly elected Mayor -- the Council selects one of its own members each December to hold the largely ceremonial title for a one-year term and preside over meetings; Carlos Juarez currently holds it, selected by his colleagues in December 2025, with Jenny Crosswhite as Vice-Mayor. Santa Paula is transitioning from at-large to district elections: Districts 1 (Gabby Ornelas) and 5 (Leslie Cornejo) were first elected by district in November 2024 and aren't up again until 2028. Districts 2, 3, and 4 are up this cycle.

An open seat: incumbent Carlos Juarez, Santa Paula's current Mayor, does not appear as a candidate for any district this cycle despite his term being up, leaving four candidates to compete -- human-resources director Merisa Garcia, analyst Angel Garza, business owner and educator Nancy Grass, and community volunteer John Marquez.

This person would hold one of five district seats on Santa Paula's City Council: city ordinances, the budget, and land use for this Ventura County city of about 30,657 residents. The Council appoints a City Manager (Dan Singer as of this cycle) to run day-to-day operations. A 4-year term. Santa Paula has no separately, directly elected Mayor -- the Council selects one of its own members each December to hold the largely ceremonial title for a one-year term; Carlos Juarez, District 4's current representative, holds it now, selected by his colleagues in December 2025.

Santa Paula is transitioning from at-large to district elections: Districts 1 and 5 were first elected by district in November 2024 and aren't up again until 2028. District 4 is one of three districts up this cycle, alongside Districts 2 and 3. Juarez -- a retired Santa Paula Police Department lieutenant first elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2022 -- does not appear on the county's or the city's own certified candidate list for any 2026 district; no direct statement from him about not seeking re-election was found this session, but his absence from every qualified-candidate list this dataset checked is why this seat is treated as open rather than his.

Merisa M. Garcia

Her ballot designation reads "Human Resources Director." She has organized a campaign committee (FPPC Form 410, filed Aug. 18, 2026).

Strengths

An HR-management background and a formed campaign committee.

Trade-offs

No independent biography or stated platform was found beyond her ballot designation this session.

Keep in mind

All four District 4 candidates have organized campaign committees -- a genuinely contested, evenly-matched-on-paper open-seat race by that measure, though none has yet filed an itemized Form 460 showing how much any of them has actually raised.

Angel Garza

His ballot designation reads "Analyst." He has organized a campaign committee (FPPC Form 410, filed Aug. 5, 2026).

Strengths

An organized campaign committee among the four candidates competing for this open seat.

Trade-offs

No independent biography or stated platform was found beyond his ballot designation this session.

Keep in mind

Filing timing alone doesn't indicate fundraising success or campaign strength -- no itemized statement is on file for him yet.

Nancy L. Grass

Her ballot designation reads "Business Owner/Educator." She has organized a campaign committee (FPPC Form 410, filed Jul. 23, 2026, the earliest committee-formation filing of the four).

Strengths

A combined business-owner and educator background, and the earliest-filed campaign committee among the four District 4 candidates.

Trade-offs

No independent biography or stated platform was found beyond her ballot designation this session.

Keep in mind

She also filed an amended Form 501 (Jul. 23, 2026); this dataset found no explanation for the amendment and does not speculate about it.

John Marquez

His ballot designation reads "Community Volunteer." He has organized a campaign committee (FPPC Form 410, filed Aug. 5, 2026).

Strengths

A community-volunteer background and a formed campaign committee.

Trade-offs

No independent biography or stated platform was found beyond his ballot designation -- and "Community Volunteer" is vaguer than his opponents' occupational designations.

Keep in mind

Vague ballot designations are self-selected by the candidate, not assigned -- it isn't itself a red flag, just less information than the alternative.

Source review: Very strong (91/100) · 9 cited sources

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

  • clerkrecorder.venturacounty.gov (opens in a new tab)Ventura County Clerk-Recorder/Registrar of Voters -- "Contest/Candidate Proof List" (report CFMR001, dated Aug. 18, 2026, on-ballot contests only): confirms Santa Paula's three November 2026 city contests -- City Council District 2 (incumbent Jenny Crosswhite, "Councilmember"; challenger Jenny Yarbrough, "Business Owner/Mother"; a third filer shown but not qualified), District 3 (incumbent Pedro A. Chavez, "Councilmember/Executive Director," unopposed), and District 4 (Merisa M. Garcia, "Human Resources Director"; Angel Garza, "Analyst"; Nancy L. Grass, "Business Owner/Educator"; John Marquez, "Community Volunteer") -- and no District 1 or District 5 contest
  • clerkrecorder.venturacounty.gov (opens in a new tab)Ventura County Clerk-Recorder/Registrar of Voters -- Contest/Candidate Proof List, off-ballot companion document (single-filer and Elections Code Section 10229 contests): carries no District 2, 3, or 4 entry for the City of Santa Paula -- corroborating by absence that none of the three, including District 3's single-candidate race, was cancelled or moved off-ballot; its one Santa Paula-adjacent entry is a non-districted, zero-filer legacy contest code listing Pedro Chavez, Carlos Juarez, and Jenny Crosswhite as the city's current incumbents, consistent with the city's own roster but not itself a live 2026 contest
  • spcity.org (opens in a new tab)City of Santa Paula -- "Election Information" page: independently republishes the same three-district, same-candidate Nov. 2026 roster as the county's own document, states the general municipal election is Nov. 3, 2026, and describes the district-based voting structure
  • spcity.org (opens in a new tab)City of Santa Paula -- "City Council" department page: a 5-member council, historically elected at-large, transitioning to by-district elections beginning with the Nov. 2024 election; the Council selects a Mayor (Carlos Juarez, current) and Vice-Mayor (Jenny Crosswhite, current) from among its own members each December for a one-year term; names the full 5-member roster (Juarez, Crosswhite, Leslie Cornejo/District 5, Pedro Chavez, Gabby Ornelas/District 1) and links each member's bio page; states the Council appoints the City Manager and City Attorney
  • spcity.org (opens in a new tab)City of Santa Paula City Clerk -- "Fair Political Practices Reporting" page: indexes each 2026 candidate's actual filed FPPC forms as scanned PDFs by district -- Forms 501/700 for all seven candidates, Form 410 (campaign-committee formation) for Crosswhite, Yarbrough, Garza, Marquez, Garcia, and Grass but not Chavez, and a Form 497 24-hour contribution report for Yarbrough
  • vcstar.com (opens in a new tab)Ventura County Star -- "Who's running for city council, mayor this November? Here's the lineup" (Cheri Carlson, Aug. 17, 2026): independently lists the identical Santa Paula roster -- District 2 (Crosswhite, Yarbrough), District 3 (Chavez), District 4 (Garcia, Garza, Grass, Marquez) -- corroborating both the county document and the city's own site
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia -- "Santa Paula, California": used in this shard only for its 2020 Census population figure (30,657); its infobox Mayor claim (Pedro Chavez) is stale relative to the city's own current roster page (which names Carlos Juarez, selected Dec. 2025) and is not used
  • santapaulatimes.com (opens in a new tab)Santa Paula Times -- homepage headline referencing "City Manager Dan Singer's contract" discussions (as of Sept. 1, 2026): independent local-press confirmation of the current City Manager's name
  • spcity.org (opens in a new tab)City of Santa Paula -- Mayor Carlos Juarez's official bio page: a retired Santa Paula Police Department lieutenant with over 27 years of service, retiring in 2011; a 1979 Santa Paula High School graduate with a Bachelor's in Organizational Management from the University of La Verne; first elected to Council in 2018 and re-elected in 2022; council term expires December 2026; current Mayor (selected by colleagues December 2025); does not appear as a candidate in either the county's or the city's own 2026 candidate lists despite his term being up this cycle

Last updated September 1, 2026.