The initial voting results are in and the unofficial figures show incumbent Ignacio Velazquez will keep his title as the City of Hollister’s mayor for another two years.
The latest round of results were released at 12:27 a.m. Wednesday morning showed all the precincts reporting with Velazquez taking 66.06 percent of the vote compared with Snow’s 33.43 percent.
“It’s a good feeling,” Velazquez said. “We can keep doing more of what we’ve been working on.”
Velazquez’s challenger was Keith Snow, a former engineering foreman who took home 36 percent of the votes in the initially reported results.
“My initial reaction was that’s who they want. That’s who they chose,” Snow said. “I want to make a difference. I want to be involved in the city.”
There are still at least 4,000 absentee ballots waiting to be counted, he told the Free Lance Wednesday afternoon.
“My thing going for mayor is to have things right in our city and to make sure things are done right and on the agenda,” Snow said.
Snow and Velazquez have faced off once before in the 2012 race, when Velazquez swept nearly 40 percent of the vote in a four-man race that also included former Free Lance columnist Marty Richman and former Councilman Doug Emerson.
That 2012 race was the first in which Hollister voters got to choose their own leader instead of letting council members arbitrarily rotate into the role. The mayor is now elected every two years, while members of city council continue to serve four-year terms.
Velazquez emphasized that balancing the budget, solving local homelessness issues and addressing the foul odors coming from one of the wastewater ponds – used by the local cannery – were top priorities for the coming term.
“Number one is we’ve got to get that budget in order,” Velazquez said.
As the initial results were reported, Velazquez celebrated his favorable lead at a private party held at his restaurant, The Vault, located on the corner of Fifth and San Benito streets.
For the latest election results, go to SBCVote.us.
