Election update: Fresno council District 6 race going down to the wire. Here’s who’s ahead
Nick Richardson’s tenuous lead over Roger Bonakdar grew by about 250 votes, now putting him ahead by 849 votes in the closely contested race for the District 6 seat on the Fresno City Council.
In the latest update posted Friday evening by the Fresno County Elections Division, Richardson — a business owner and Marine Corps Reserve officer — has 15,611 votes, or 51.4%, compared to Bonakdar, an attorney, who had amassed 14762 votes, or 48.6%.
In vote totals reported earlier this week, Richardson’s lead was 599 votes.
The Fresno County Clerk/Registrar of Voters reports that there remain about 13,200 ballots to be counted, plus as many as 5,400 votes that need signature issues to be cured by voters by Dec. 1 before they can be counted. Clerk/Registrar James Kus said he expected to provide the next update on Monday afternoon.
Both Bonakdar and Richardson are first-time candidates running to replace term-limited City Councilmember Garry Bredefeld, who is wrapping up his second four-year term.
Because of term limits, Bredefeld was ineligible to run for a third four-year term. Instead, Bredefeld opted to run for the District 2 seat on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors against incumbent Supervisor Steve Brandau. Bredefeld did not endorse a candidate in the race to replace him.
Richardson said he remains cautiously optimistic about the outcome of the race, but is waiting until the final votes put him in a mathematically certain lead for the seat.
“Humility has always been one of the legs holding up the stool of this campaign,” he told The Bee on Friday evening.
But “the trend is positive, and we’re very grateful” he added. “We heard many times that we’d never make it to this point in the race.”
Richardson said that should the lead hold up — “and I don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” he said — his first priority will be to work with Bredefeld and the district staff at City Hall to work on a transition from one councilmember to another.
This story was originally published November 15, 2024 at 6:38 PM.
