Dyer holds lead for Fresno mayor, but uncounted ballots could send race to a runoff
Former Fresno police chief Jerry Dyer took several thousand more steps toward becoming the city’s next mayor, but his lead over prosecutor Andrew Janz shrank by a couple of percentage points since Tuesday night.
Updated results released Friday for the March 3 primary election showed Dyer with 43,537 votes, or about 52.2%, while Janz received 32,772 votes, or 39.3%. Five other candidates collectively pulled in less than 9% of votes that had been counted as of Friday afternoon.
While Dyer continues to have a sizable lead over Janz of more than 10,700 votes – a slight change from the 10,522-vote advantage tallied on Tuesday night – there are still about 33,000 votes countywide left to count, said Brandi Orth, Fresno County’s elections chief. How many of those are from within the city of Fresno isn’t known, but there are potentially enough to keep Dyer from achieving the threshold of 50% plus one vote that he would need to avoid a November runoff against Janz and succeed Lee Brand as Fresno’s mayor.
The next update from the Fresno County elections office is not expected until Wednesday afternoon, March 11.
About 471,000 ballots were mailed to registered voters throughout Fresno County. More than 113,000 were returned by mail or at drop-off boxes in time to be included in Tuesday night’s preliminary results. But any mail-in ballots postmarked by Tuesday and received by elections officials on Friday can still be counted.
The volume of uncounted ballots could still conceivably tilt some of the county’s closer races, but others appear to have decisive margins after Friday’s updated count.
Former Fresno County District Attorney Elizabeth Egan, for example, had a lead of 25 percentage points over senior deputy district attorney Douglas Treisman in their contest for Fresno County Superior Court judge. As of Friday, Egan had 91,206 votes, while Treisman received 54,833 votes.
Still close: Fresno council, school bonds
Among the remaining nail-biters, however, are a Fresno City Council race and three major local school bond measures representing more than $940 million in proposed school improvements in the Fresno-Clovis area.
On Election Night, the contenders to succeed Paul Caprioglio to represent east-central Fresno’s District 4 on the City Council were separated by fewer than 340 votes. Tyler Maxwell, currently a staffer for District 7 Councilman Nelson Esparza, now leads Nathan Alonzo, a corporate communications director, 4,980 votes to 4,.484, a margin of 5.2%.
While the City Council race will go to the candidate that pulls in at least 50% plus one vote, school bonds in the Clovis, Central and Fresno unified school districts require at least 55% approval to pass. And two of those are currently falling short of that benchmark.
Voters in the Clovis Unified School District were being asked to approve Measure A, a $408 million bond measure that would be used to upgrade 48 existing schools throughout the district, which includes Clovis and much of northeast Fresno. It would also provide money for a new educational center and a new school to account for the projected growth in eastern Clovis.
As of Friday afternoon, however, Measure A was not where it needed to be to pass, with 27,092 “no” votes against 26,476 “yes” votes. If the current trend holds at 50.6% against the bond, it would represent the first defeat of a Clovis Unified bond measure in at least 24 years. Voters in the district approved four consecutive school bonds – which are repaid through assessments on property taxes in the district – in 1996, 2001, 2004 and 2012.
For the Central Unified School District, encompassing parts of northwest and rural Fresno, Measure C was leading in the vote count, but still shy of the 55% threshold. The $120 million bond measure had 6,675 “yes” votes, or 54.2%, to 5,640 “no” votes, or 45.8%.
Measure M, a $325 million bond measure proposed by the Fresno Unified School District, was holding an advantage of 59.5% of “yes” votes to 40.5% “no,” more than enough to pass if the trends hold. The measure earned 32,705 votes as of Friday afternoon, over 22,267 votes against it.
Congress: Top two to November
There were no significant changes in the Valley’s congressional district primaries, in which the top two vote-getters advance to November’s general election regardless of political party.
In the 16th Congressional District that includes Merced County and parts of Fresno and Madera counties, Fresno City Councilwoman Esmeralda Soria came up short in her Democratic primary challenge to incumbent Jim Costa, D-Fresno, who will face off in November against challenger Kevin Cookingham, a Republican from Madera.
Incumbent congressman TJ Cox, D-Fresno, will head to November’s general election for a rematch against David Valadao, the Hanford Republican who he successfully challenged and defeated by a narrow margin in 2018. Valadao handily leads Cox and two other candidates by a substantial margin in the primary counting thus far.
In California’s 22nd Congressional District, which includes parts of Tulare and Fresno counties, incumbent Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, outpolled the other four candidates combined in the primary voting, but in the top-two format will face off against the second-place vote-getter, Democrat Phil Arballo of Fresno.
