Patterson mayoral race tight. but Campo pulling away

Council incumbents appear on way to wins

By Tim Moran
tmoran@modbee.com

E-Mail

Comments (0)

Text Size:

tool goes here

PATTERSON — Mayor Becky Campo held a 430-vote lead over challenger Luis Molina on Tuesday night in a hard-fought election that pitted two Democratic Latino candidates against each other.

City Council incumbents Annette Smith and Dominic Farinha appeared headed to easy victories over challengers Jeff Realini and Victor Slonksnis.

The election was set in a small but rapidly growing city hard hit by the real estate foreclosure epidemic. One of the biggest issues involves property not even in the city: the PCCP West Park LLC business and industrial park proposed on 4,800 acres southeast of Patterson.

Unknown - Becky Campo, Patterson mayor

West Park includes a rail link to the Port of Oakland, which would send as many as six trains a day through Patterson.

The City Council has strongly opposed the development, contending the trains would cut parts of the city off from emergency services and create air pollution and traffic problems for the West Side.

The City Council voted to sue Stanislaus County over the development, contending the county did not follow California Environmental Quality Act guidelines in voting to proceed with the West Park developer, Gerry Kamilos. The lawsuit is pending.

The Campo-Molina race was marred by vandalism of campaign signs and personal attacks, dividing the Latino community. The Latino Commu-nity Roundtable canceled a candidate forum because of the negative tone of the race.

Campo led Molina in early returns 691 to 596. At that time of the evening, neither candidate wanted to predict a winner based on those numbers.

"Right now I don't feel comfortable yet," Campo said. "Just because I'm ahead doesn't mean I've won — it could go either way," she said. Campo added congratulations to Smith and Farinha, who were celebrating at a restaurant in Patterson.

Molina said he was pleased to be down by just 95 votes. "We are very encouraged," he said. "I think it's attainable. I wish we had all the numbers."

Farinha grabs most votes

Farinha led all council candidates with 2,363 votes, followed by Smith at 2,184, Realini at 937 and Slonksnis at 525.

Smith, who was appointed to the council and had lost two previous attempts to win public office, was elated with the evening's early returns.

"This is the first time I've won, and the first time I felt I needed to win. I worked the campaign like never before," Smith said.

Realini wasn't willing to concede based on the early numbers. "I'm keeping my fingers crossed," he said. "It's still inconclusive. I'll see what happens when we get a few more ballots counted."

Slonksnis did not return a phone call, and Farinha could not be reached.

Bee staff writer Tim Moran can be reached at tmoran@modbee.com or 578-2349.