Election Results in Madera County

Madera - It looks as if Madera County District Attorney Ernie LiCalsi is cruising down Easy Street after his landslide victory over challenger Franz Criego. This despite LiCalsi's California Bar Association ethics violation and loss of a $600K lawsuit over the extortion of a $500 car deductible from a farm worker. Madera County Clerk Rebecca Martinez loaded her volunteer staff with many of LiCalsi's supporters including long time LiCalsi campaign manager Harold Nabors running the computers that counted the ballots.

The DA race was one of the nastiest campaigns in recent Madera County history. Once the challenger pointed out to voters LiCalsi's ethics violation and overturned cases for judicial misconduct, the district attorney fired back with accusation of criminal charges against Criego and other legal problems that were never substantiated. According to Criego, despite independent verification of many of his claims about the DA, the local newspaper refused to run several of his paid advertisements and leaked ad schedules to the district attorney.

LiCalsi has said he would run for Judge John Degroot's seat in two years when the long time judge retires. It has been LiCalsi's goal to become a judge but the embattled DA was passed over for a judgeship last year because of his ethics problems. His assistant DA Eric Wyatt was appointed to the bench.

In other county races incumbent District One Supervisor Frank Bigelow slaughtered opponent Santos Medrano. Medrano received several key endorsements from law enforcement and unions but could only manage 585 votes to Bigelow's 2218. Perennial candidate Hal Gant managed a second place in the Madera County Supervisors race with 1460 votes.

Supervisor Vern Moss also easily kept his district two seat on the Madera County Board of Supervisors. His challenger this year was former district four supervisor John Silva who recently moved to the Chowchilla area. Moss maintained a lead all night beating Silva 1598 to 1037.

Up in the mountain areas of Madera County, Supervisor Gary Gilbert decided against running for re-election. This opened up the race to five candidates. While Tom Wheeler was the top vote getter, he failed to achieve over 50% of the vote to win the seat out right. Wheeler will face Tony Ward in a November run off.

From Madera Online. Original article can be found at http://www.maderaonline.com/news/news-2.html