Bid to Recall Arvin Mayor Falls Short
After counting final absentee ballots, Kern County elections officials on Thursday announced that Arvin’s combative mayor, Juan Olivares, survived a contentious recall election.
The final tally was 662 votes in favor of the recall and 743 votes opposed. That means Olivares widened his margin of victory from 17 to 81 votes since the preliminary results were released Tuesday.
Elections officials counted the last 149 ballots Thursday. Many were absentees. Some contained irregularities.
Olivares, a former farm worker, was elected mayor in 2000 and since then has stirred political hostilities in the southern San Joaquin Valley farm town of 10,000. Several city officials have been indicted by the Kern County Grand Jury on charges of fraud, and Dist. Atty. Ed Jagels said the grand jury is not yet through investigating allegations of corruption in town.
Olivares’ chief opponent in the recall, Joet Stoner, 25, a substitute teacher, said Olivares has stirred up racial animosities in town by threatening to drive whites away.
Olivares denies that but says the previous city government was hostile to minorities’ needs.
Once dominated by white farm and business interests, Arvin is now more than 95% Latino.
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