Tate Hill vaults Daren Miller for second in closely contested Fresno city council race
Tate Hill has moved into second place in a Fresno City Council race with razor-thin margins, a Friday afternoon update from the Fresno County Elections Office shows.
Hill, a businessman, had previously been just nine votes behind middle school counselor Daren Miller for the second and final District 3 runoff spot in November's election. He is now 12 votes ahead, with 608 to Miller's 596.
Former City Councilman Craig Scharton remains in a close third, just 20 votes behind Miller at 576. Real estate broker and contractor Larry Burrus has 475 votes, while retired librarian Kimberly Tapscott-Monson had 337 votes. Real estate and property management professional Sean Sanchez had 215.
State Center Community College District board member Miguel Arias still holds a comfortable lead over the pack with 1,184 votes.
City Councilman Luis Chavez has picked up a slightly larger lead on challenger Paula Yang, a TV anchor and advocate for the Hmong community. There are now 234 votes between them, up from 169.
Attorney Brian Whelan also increased his lead over Nelson Esparza, a member of the Fresno County Board of Education. The margin grew from 10 votes to 48. Veva Islas, founder of Cultiva La Salud, is still a distant third.
About 14,000 absentee and 7,300 provisional ballots remain to be counted in Fresno County. The remaining absentee ballots should be counted by Wednesday.
Results are unofficial until the election is certified, and county elections offices have until July 5 to do that.
U.S. Congress
In the local races for the U.S. House of Representatives, incumbents Jim Costa, D-Fresno, and David Valadao, R-Hanford, opened up slightly larger leads on challengers Elizabeth Heng and TJ Cox.
Democrat Andrew Janz inched closed to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, by a few fractions of a percentage point, but he's still nearly 23,000 votes behind.
State Assembly
In District 26, the only contested local assembly race, the narrow margins between first and third opened up slightly. Incumbent Devin Mathis still sits in first with 11,308 votes, with Democrat Jose Sigala in second with 10,990.
Visalia Mayor Warren Gubler, who was endorsed by the Tulare County Republican Party to knock out Mathis and outraised the field by quite a bit, appears to be out of the runoff race with 10,705.
County offices
The race for Fresno County Auditor-Controller/Treasurer appears headed to a runoff, with incumbent Oscar Garcia securing 49 percent to David Keyes' 44 percent. If Garcia climbs to 50 percent plus one vote, he would win the office outright.
Fresno County Clerk Brandi Orth and Fresno County Supervisor Brian Pacheco beat their opponents by wide margins and will not be headed to a runoff.
The Laton Unified School District's attempt to pass a general obligation bond also appears to have just fallen short with 54.25 percent of the vote. It needed 55 percent to pass and appeared to have that amount on election night.
This story was originally published June 8, 2018 at 4:29 PM with the headline "Tate Hill vaults Daren Miller for second in closely contested Fresno city council race."