Incumbent leads in Madera County District 3 supervisor’s race after Election Day

Election Day results out of Madera County’s Board of Supervisors District 3 contest show incumbent Robert Poythress leading by a few hundred votes over Madera City Councilmember Cecelia Gallegos.

The numbers from the Madera County Clerk-Recorder as of 10:30 p.m. Tuesday showed Poythress held 1,564 votes, or 58.16%. Gallegos held 1,125 votes, or 41.84%. There were a total of 2,689 votes counted at that time in District 3, where records show 14,679 people registered to vote.

Provisional and late mail-in ballots are yet to be counted. An announcement by the Clerk-Recorder said the next update to the results will take place Friday by 5 p.m.

A win in this election would hand Poythress a third four-year term on the Board of Supervisors. On Tuesday night, he told The Fresno Bee he feels “pretty good about this margin.” Poythress said the way District 3 elections have played out in the past indicate his lead will likely remain steady.

”I would not expect the percentages to change very much from here on out,” he said.

A loss for Gallegos would end her election winning streak. She has been elected to serve as Madera’s District 1 city councilmember three times.

Gallegos has not responded to the Bee’s request for comment Tuesday night.

The county’s District 3 encompasses most of the city of Madera: Almost all of the city east of Highway 99 and a sliver of the city to the west of the highway. The race in this district played out in the wake of the closure of Madera Community Hospital, the only hospital for adults in the county.

Gallegos did not pull punches during her campaign about the county’s handling of the hospital’s closure. She criticized votes by Poythress last summer to allocate public dollars to help reopen the facility, calling it “bad management.” Gallegos also accused Poythress of not looking out for the interests of District 3 residents and the city of Madera.

As District 3’s supervisor, Gallegos said she would push the county to take a district hospital initiative to Madera County voters in an attempt to create a back-up plan for a future hospital failure. The proposal for a district hospital is one Poythress said the county has not ruled out.

He has shot back at Gallegos with examples of what the county has accomplished in the city, such as work on homelessness, and with confident assertions that Madera hospital will open this summer. If the county had not allocated funds for the hospital, it would not be on the road to a reopening, he previously told The Bee.

The winner of the race will also have to navigate the priorities of a growing population in Madera County as developers’ interest in the region increases and more homes are built. He or she will also have to deal with groundwater sustainability in the county as state-mandated regulations loom.

Poythress said Tuesday night that he is ready to advance water policy in order to achieve that sustainability.

He’s played a large role in traffic projects on Highway 99 during his tenure on the board, and is looking to continue to work on the widening of the highway through Madera County. A win for him in this election, he said, would be a “win for continued stability in the county organization.”

“I believe that we can expect our sense of unity, our sense of teamship, that is throughout the county to continue,” he said. “I can continue to advocate for our county in the transportation world, not here locally, but also in Sacramento because of the positions that I hold.”

Poythress also serves as the board president of the California Associations of Councils of Governments. The incumbent was raised in a farming family in Madera and worked in banking for 39 years.

He has served on the Board of Supervisors in District 3 since 2017, but first ran for public office in 2004, when he was elected to the Madera City Council. He also previously served as mayor of Madera.

Gallegos’ campaign for a seat on the Board of Supervisors is happening midway through her second full term on the City Council. She previously said she is willing to step away from her job as a teacher in the Madera Unified School District, where she has worked for more than 30 years, in order to dedicate all of her time to serving county residents.