Live updates: Fresno City Council, county board races sharpen in latest vote totals
UPDATED Friday, Nov. 22: The likelihood that Marine reserve officer Nick Richardson will join the Fresno City Council in January is increasing as the number of votes left to count throughout Fresno County continues to shrink.
In the latest vote totals reported Friday afternoon, Richardson’s modest lead in the City Council District 6 race increased slightly, giving him a margin of 861 votes over local attorney Roger Bonakdar and putting him over 16,000 votes in total.
Both Richardson and Bonakdar are first-time political candidates.
As of 3:30 p.m. Friday, Richardson had received 16,127 votes or 51.4%, compared to 15,266 or 48.6% for Bonakdar, out of more than 31,000 votes counted. An estimated 5,600 votes remain uncounted from throughout the county, and it’s unknown how many of those are from the northeast Fresno council district and could yet impact the outcome. But mathematically, the trends favor Richardson.
Also uncounted are approximately 4,800 votes with signature issues – either unsigned ballot-return envelopes or signatures that don’t match voter registration records – that voters will need to resolve before those ballots can be processed.
Richardson and Bonakdar were the top two vote-getters in the March primary, setting the stage for their runoff in the Nov. 5 general election. The winning candidate will succeed outgoing District 6 Councilmember Garry Bredefeld, who was ineligible to run again because of term limits.
Bredefeld, however, will remain involved in government as the apparent winner of the District 2 seat on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors representing northeast and northwest Fresno.
Bredefeld, a retired clinical psychologist who served two four-year terms on the Fresno City Council – and a previous term from 1997 to 2001 – ran against incumbent District 2 Supervisor Steve Brandau and, as of Friday afternoon, had amassed a lead of more than 5,300 votes to unseat Brandau.
Brandau, a small-business owner who was seeking a second full four-year term on the county board, had pulled in 34,034 votes or 46.4%, trailing Bredefeld’s 39,372 votes or 53.6%.
Bredefeld was not the only current Fresno City Council member to knock off an incumbent on the county Board of Supervisors. In District 3, which covers central and south Fresno, Councilmember Luis Chavez holds a lead of more than 4,750 votes over incumbent Supervisor Sal Quintero.
Chavez, who is midway through his second full term on the Fresno City Council representing southeast Fresno’s District 5, has 20,098 votes or 56.7% in Friday’s update, compared to 15,341 or 43.3%for Quintero.
Chavez and Quintero are both political figures long familiar to south Fresno voters. Quintero served on the Fresno City Council for two terms from 1994 to 2002. In 2010, when his successor was prevented by term limits from running again, Quintero ran and won a return ticket to the City Council. He ran for the Board of Supervisors in 2016, winning the seat midway through his City Council term.
Chavez who was Quintero’s chief of staff at Fresno City Hall, won the 2016 special election to replace Quintero. He was re-elected to full four-year terms in 2018 and 2022. He previously won a four-year term on the Fresno Unified school board in 2012.
This story was originally published November 18, 2024 at 7:02 PM.
