It appears that all of the incumbents vying for reelection in Lathrop will secure another term.

After a close finish on election night that separated the top three vote getters by only a dozen votes, the San Joaquin Registrar of Voters released updated results that show that councilmen Paul Akinjo and Omar Ornelas have pulled away from the pack. 

Slightly. 

Akinjo – who was appointed two years ago to serve out the remaining two years on councilman Sonny Dhaliwal’s 2010 council term after he was elected mayor – currently sits comfortably in the lead with 916 votes (21.33 percent) while Ornelas overtook Connie Lum-Perez, to whom he trailed by just nine votes, took a 24 vote lead. 

Ornelas was appointed to the council in 2010 as the next leading vote getter after current Lathrop-Manteca Fire District Chief Gene Neely announced prior to the election that he wouldn’t be seeking the term regardless of the outcome.

The official certification of the election won’t take place until 30 days after it has ended.

And if everything holds, Akinjo and Onrelas will be joined – at least for the next two years – by at one more familiar face. 

Dhaliwal is currently crushing mayoral challenger Rosalinda Valencia with nearly 71 percent vote – a lead that he has held since the first returns came in on election night and have only widened as more ballots are counted and rechecked. Out of just over 2,500 votes cast for mayor, Dhaliwal has secured just under 1,800 of them in a contest that became increasingly bitter as it wore on with allegations of corruption and wrongdoing flying not only at the lectern, but on widely-distributed campaign fliers and community signs as well.

Unlike other communities which stagger the majority of their council seats every four years, Lathrop splits its in half with its mayoral position being elected every two years.