Meet Your Portuguese-American Elected Officials in California: Richard Fagundes
Supervisor Richard Fagundes was born on December 10, 1941, raised and still lives on the original family farm in Hanford, Calif. He attended Kings River and Hanford High School. In 1962, he married his wife Shirley and they have 7 children.
Richard Fagundes has been very active in a variety of Portuguese-American associations, such as: the Lemoore Trinity Association for 18 years, St. Anthony of Pismo Committee, Tulare Festa Committee, Pacific Tractor Pullers Association and Hanford Fraternal Hall Festa Committee. He is very proud of his Portuguese roots.
Supervisor Fagundes enjoys Barbecuing and Welding. He has over 20 years’ experience of the family dairy and has managed and supervised large scale diversified farming operations ranging from 300 to over 2000 acres of Alfalfa, Cotton and Pistachios.
He represents district five in Kings county, the only county in California with a majority of supervisors from Portuguese ancestry. The district he represents is composed of 127 square miles and has 26,87 constituents.
The Hanford Sentinel has coined him as the quiet supervisor: “a quiet representative who rarely speaks during the supervisors’ weekly public meetings and prefers to do his work out of the limelight.” ---adding: when it comes to general county issues, he thinks of himself as working for the entire county.