The "early voting" begins in a month for the June 3 mayor's race in Fresno and it appears the 11-candidate pack is conceding the top spot to Councilman Henry T. Perea. The main focus now for the remaining candidates is to finish second to get into the November runoff election.
The candidates may not realize it, but the next 30 days is the most crucial part of a campaign that has gone on for a year. The candidates and their handlers must understand that the first voters will begin casting their ballots by mail in the early voting system a month before the primary. It's time for the serious candidates to begin making their political moves. This race is way too crowded for them to think they still have a lot of time to get their message out to voters.
In a blink, the election will be over and they will still be huddling with their campaign consultants, plotting when to strike. Those are the candidates who will be giving concession speeches on election night, telling supporters that they could have won if they only had 30 more days. Well, this is their 30 days. Don't waste them.
The 11 candidates wanting to succeed Mayor Alan Autry better be aggressively pursuing the early voters because they could determine the results in an election that will have a very low turnout.
So who is going to make it to the runoff? Bee columnist Bill McEwen and I break down the race in this podcast. Listen in on the fastest 23 minutes in local politics. You can't get this in-depth analysis anywhere else.
Perea may finish first, but I believe the race for the top spot will be a lot closer than most people think. I'm also predicting that Councilman Jerry Duncan and Ashley Swearengin, Fresno's jobs guru, will be in a tight race for the second spot. It will be so close, in fact, that we will not know who will be in the runoff for a week or 10 days after the election. That's because it takes elections officials forever to count absentee ballots because of a last-century method of verifying their authenticity.
Don't get me started about how archaic our absentee ballot counting system is.
Here are my predictions of how the rest of the mayoral field will finish:
Deputy Mayor Jeff Eben will be fourth, but he could sneak into the battle for second because it will be very close; former Councilman Tom Boyajian will run fifth, and current Councilman Mike Dages will be sixth. You pick'em for the rest of the spots. No one much cares.
My main reason for thinking that Duncan and Swearengin will be slugging it out for second is the nature of the vote. It will be heavily weighted toward the north end of the city where Duncan is well known. Swearengin, who is barely known outside the Fresno State/business community circle, will get her message out with a well-financed campaign that pushes the theme of her being the outsider. But she better start spending now. She has the most work to do.
What I'm struggling with in my analysis is whether Eben, who has a base in the city's north end where the Clovis schools overlap, will have the money to finish strong. His supporters are passionate, but we don't know right now if there are enough of them for him to vault from fourth to second.
That's why it appears right now that Duncan and Swearengin will be fighting it out for second. But Eben has a quality about him that could surprise the experts. He already has a television ad up, which shows he understands that this is the period in which the campaign will be won or lost.
The Mayor's race is "careening to a finish" already? I hardly know much about the positions of most of the candidates. There hasn't been a lot of coverage in the media (other than the "horserace" type), and I've been unable to attend any of the scattered forums. Any chance we can see some substantive coverage of the candidates and issues before the race careens to a finish?
I agree I haven't heard what any of them stand for. It seems like more of a popularity contest like in middle school. It is actually a mute issue for me since I don't live in Fresno.
There IS a progressive on the ballot, I'm stoked.
It sure would be nice to see some substantive coverage.
I find it so funny when the media thinks they can say who won something that "THE RESIDENTS OF FRESNO" have not even voted on.
Heres another one then, since you are so great at predictions what is the next winning lotto numbers?
I think you have as much ability to predict those as you do with the mayors race.
Perea will NOT win, there are too many people against him for that to happen.
I live in District 6, and Jerry Duncan has always been effective in getting things done in our neighborhood. Anytime our family has difficulty with code enforcement, or one of the city departments, we email Mr. Duncan and the problem is magically fixed. Also, I like the fact that Mr. Duncan traveled to Iraq to support our troops.