Los Banos mayor continues to trail two challengers in reelection bid, early results show

Challenger Mike Amabile continued to lead Refugio LLamas and incumbent Paul Llanez who was seeking reelection as mayor of Los Banos.

Amabile is currently in the lead with 2,420 or 43.71% of the 5,537 votes counted. Llamas trails with 1,901 or 34.33% of the vote. Llanez has 1,179 or 21.29% as of the latest election results released just before 9 a.m. Wednesday.

Llanez, 45, a former law enforcement officer and shareholder in Knowledge Saves Lives Inc. is seeking a second term as the city’s mayor. Llanez said he feels there is a lot more work that needs to be done in the city including work to the city’s infrastructure after decades of neglect. Llanez, who was elected the position in 2022, plans to improve the city’s education and economic outlook by creating partnerships educational institutions such as Merced College and the University of California, Merced.

There’s so many opportunities for us to create partnerships, again we want a not just better community but better the future of our community,” said Llanez. “So I think we have a lot of partnerships we can create and move forward on but there’s only so much you can do in a two year span.”

Amabile, 70, a former mayor said he believes the city needs a fresh start and that it is currently lacking accountability and transparency with the current city council.

“What’s going on is there’s not a lot of communication with the public and there are decisions being made at the city level and people just don’t understand why they’re being made,” said Amabile. “There’s not a clear understanding by the people or communication by the council. So I really think Los Banos needs a fresh start.”

Llamas, 58, a former city council member who’s term ended in 2021, said the things he is most concerned with are what he sees a lack of economic development, run away home building and the current quality of the city’s water.

“We don’t have economic development, we don’t have manufacturing we don’t have anything else but housing,” Llamas said. That leads to a boom to bust cycle which is not good for the city in the long run, according to Llamas.

This story was originally published November 5, 2024 at 8:55 PM.