Election update: Brandon Vang leads Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas in Fresno City Council race
The pending District 5 Fresno City Council race in was not much clearer after an update Thursday as the gap between the top two vote-getters shrunk.
The latest tally since Election Night found Brandon Vang with 2,277 votes (50.14%) outpacing Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas, whose 1,588 votes gave her 34.97% of the ballots cast.
The gap between the top two candidates shrunk by less than 1% from Election Night’s tally.
The Fresno County Registrar of Voters update landed late Thursday afternoon, showing 4,583 ballots had been counted.
But another 140 ballots left unsigned were still pending, plus about 30 provisional and other ballots, and any potential ballots that were postmarked that have not yet reached the registrar.
If any candidate were to receive 50% plus one vote in the special election, they win the District 5 seat outright. If no candidate meets that bar, the top two vote-getters would head to a run-off election.
The special election to fill the seat was necessary after the last official to hold it, Luis Chavez, won a seat on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors.
Vang would be the first ever Fresno City Council member of Hmong descent. He’s been a trustee of the Sanger Unified School District since 2016, and is a stay-at-home dad.
His campaign manager Pedro Ramirez said Thursday that Vang was waiting for the final count before declaring victory. “We’re still in the lead but we’re not out of the woods yet,” he said.
Jonasson Rosas has been a Fresno Unified School Board trustee since 2016. A deputy general manager for Westlands Water District, Jonasson Rosas is also married to former District 5 representative Chavez.
Her campaign manager, Jason Carns, said Jonasson Rosas was in a similar holding pattern as her opponent.
“We are optimistic as the count gets closer. Some ballots are still in mail and will count as long as they are postmarked as of Tuesday,” he wrote in a text message. “We will await the final results for further comment.”
Two other candidates with their names on the ballot have not gained enough support to head to a run-off. Jose Leon Barraza tallied 559 votes and Paul Condon got 196. Write-in candidate Nickolas Wildstar received 10 votes.
There were 36,076 residents in District 5 who were registered to vote, the registrar’s office said. With the votes counted through Thursday, voter turnout appeared to reach about 12.7%.
An ad attacking Vang stirred controversy in the race the week before the election.
A campaign mailer accused Vang of statutory rape and shared confidential court records to establish paternity and child support, though the mailer left out the alleged victim was Vang’s wife of 30 years. Vang denied the accusations in the ad and called them “completely false and deeply hurtful.”
Vang, 52, is five years older than his wife, who would have been 15 when their oldest of five children was born in 1993. May Lee, 47, an OB-GYN nurse, said she was “very, very angry” at the attack on her family.
Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz issued a fine of $1,000 against the group behind the mailer, a “dark money” coalition called Fresno Future Forward, for violating city and state campaign finance laws. All of Vang’s opponents on the ballot denied being involved with the group behind the mailer.
This story was originally published March 20, 2025 at 5:25 PM.
