Update: Who will be on next year’s Madera City Council? Votes trending toward new mayor
Cece Gallegos is inching closer to becoming the next mayor of the city of Madera.
Gallegos, the District 1 City Councilmember since 2016, immediately jumped ahead of incumbent Mayor Santos Garcia and two other candidates on Election Night. Garcia has only trailed Gallegos by a few percentage points since then.
A Friday afternoon vote count update in Madera County showed Gallegos with 5,223 votes, or 33.35%, and Garcia with 4,921 votes, or 33.31%. Government revenue consultant Wayne Padilla had 2,651 votes, or 17.94%, and Madera Unified School Board President Lucy Salazar had 1,980 votes, or 13.4%. Padilla and Salazar have been in third and fourth place, respectively, since Election Night.
Neither Gallegos nor Garcia could immediately be reached for comment Friday.
Garcia is only trailing Gallegos by 302 votes, but the number of unprocessed ballots in Madera County is dwindling.
On Wednesday, at least 1,710 ballots remained unprocessed county-wide, but it’s not clear how many of those pertained to the city of Madera. The Friday numbers show a total of 333 votes were added to the mayoral race tally since Wednesday. The next vote count update will be posted by 5 p.m. Wednesday.
The winner of this race will preside over a City Council that in recent years has planned significant growth for the town of about 66,000 residents. A large part of the city’s residential expansion is planned for Gallegos’ District 1 in the northwestern region of the city, which is the future site of a master-planned community that could add more than 10,000 homes.
The city is also looking forward to the completion of the North Fork Mono Casino and Resort also in District 1, which is expected to generate job opportunities in Madera. She and Garcia both touted the city’s residential and commercial accomplishments during the last few years and said these projects have been planned responsibly. These efforts could begin to take visible motion in the next few years.
Gallegos’ success in this race comes despite having spent less on her campaign than each of the other three candidates as of late October. She is also coming off an election loss in March, when she unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the Madera County Board of Supervisors. If she wins this mayoral race, the City Council will have to fill her District 1 seat.
Madera City Council seats up for grabs
Friday’s election update shows the District 4 and District 6 incumbents continue to trend toward re-election, though the results are not yet final in any of the three races.
On Friday, District 4 Councilmember Anita Evans had 866 votes, or 62.39%, while her challenger, Derek Robinson, had 522 votes, or 37.61%. Evans unseated Robinson in 2020 with more than 74% of the vote, and she has maintained a strong lead against Robinson in this election since the first count was reported.
Evans told The Fresno Bee on Friday that she is waiting until the last vote has been processed to make any announcement.
“I don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” she said.
Evans is known in Madera as an active community member who has helped organize Black History Month and Juneteenth events. She campaigned on the accomplishment of road upgrades and traffic safety projects in District 4, and also noted the improvement of the Fresno River, a place where homeless people often camp, which she said is much cleaner than it was four years ago.
Robinson is a retired U.S. Army veteran and former juvenile hall counselor. During his campaign, he said the current council is failing Madera’s citizens. He criticized what he said was a misplaced interest in filling the downtown area with cannabis stores. Instead, Robinson said, the city should have paid more attention to upgrading its infrastructure and to Madera Community Hospital. The hospital has been closed for nearly two years but is expected to reopen soon.
In District 6, Friday’s vote count update shows incumbent Councilmember Artemio Villegas continues to hold his lead against challenger John Jasper. The race for District 6 was extremely close in the days after Election Night, with a confident Jasper in the lead but by no more than a few dozen votes. Things changed Nov. 8, when Villegas took a tight lead.
Villegas is a retired farmworker who was elected to the Madera City Council in District 6 in 2020. Jasper is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and law enforcement officer.
On Friday, Villegas had 985 votes, or 52.31%, while Jasper had 898 votes, or 47.69%.
“I feel good,” Villegas told The Bee on Friday. “I was losing at first, but I think I have a good lead now.”
This story was originally published November 15, 2024 at 3:06 PM.
