I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The mayoral race bumped along in fits and starts for months, but it sure got crazy there at the end, didn’t it?
For most of us, the first real sign that three-time incumbent Mayor Marty Chavez was in serious trouble came on Sept. 27, when the Albuquerque Journal published a poll showing Republican state Rep. Richard “R.J.” Berry with 31 percent of the vote, Chavez at 26 percent and former Democratic state legislator Richard Romero at 24 percent.
Say what you want about the diminishing influence of newspapers – I know I sure do – but that Research and Polling Inc. poll commissioned by the city’s remaining daily paper was the single most-discussed newspaper event I’ve seen in some time.
The poll revealed that voters were truly unhappy with the incumbent – unhappy enough to throw considerable amounts of support behind his challengers. The poll was validation that he had a shot – a good one – at winning outright or at least qualifying for a spot in a run-off.
And the race accelerated from there. If you lived in the city, you probably got at least one robocall from Democratic stalwarts Howard Dean, Bill Clinton and even New Mexico Secretary of State Mary Hererra (!) on behalf of Chavez.
As the election drew near, Chavez also sanctioned some wildly negative ads questioning Berry’s business integrity and acumen, as well as the accuracy of some of Berry’s ads.
Berry pressed back with some shots about Chavez presiding over an era of rising crime in the city and it was pretty hairy right up until Tuesday.
In the final analysis, Berry shocked everyone by crushing the 40 percent threshold he needed to win outright, ending up with almost 44 percent of the vote and becoming Albuquerque’s first elected Republican mayor in more than 20 years.
As I write this, it’s been exactly 24 hours since Berry won, and in that short time I have heard endless versions of what happened in this election and what it really says about Albuquerque.
This is some of what I’ve been hearing:
The Democrats were tragically divided by having two candidates in a three-way race against a Republican. These folks say the city should have had a Democratic runoff first, with the winner facing the Republican. The big problem with that – the mayor’s race is officially non-partisan.
The Democratic candidates were out-organized by the Republicans. All indications are that the Republicans did not play around in this contest, which they saw as an important cog in an overall attempt to regain power in New Mexico. There was some talk of questionable calls of support coming from Republicans and whispers of some serious Republican money involved in the race. We’ll see if anything comes of that in any post-election examinations.
Voters did what they traditionally do in hard economic times and voted for the Republican who promised to “run the city like a business.” As a singular explanation, that seems a little over-simplistic. Albuquerque hasn’t been hit as hard as other cities by the downturn, and Chavez has not been particularly vulnerable to charges of overspending.
Chavez, the powerful incumbent, lost because the publically-financed election barred him from spending significant amounts of money on his campaign and benefitting from his extensive record and superior name recognition. Well, he was the mayor, and we did see an awful lot of him, even without a bunch of ads. Did we see too much? Maybe that was the problem.
High negatives for Chavez finally caught up with him as he imprudently asked voters for a fourth term. There’s been an awful lot of that kind of talk. People felt they knew Chavez – some even thought he did a good job running the city – but they just didn’t like him. They didn’t like the fact that he seemed to be surrounded by entrenched department heads who were loyal to him, not their public jobs. And they didn’t like the idea of electing a mayor-for-life.
Democratic unhappiness with President Obama somehow alienated the independents and moderates who voted for Obama, causing them to help turn ABQ red again just a few short months after it went blue for Obama. Well, I will be very interested to see the final figures on who voted for Obama and how that translated into the mayoral election. But mostly, I think this is just wishful thinking by Republicans. It’s a little soon to see such a Titanic shift by Obama voters!
It was a classic Ralph Nader in 2000 situation, with progressive Democrat Richard Romero siphoning votes off Chavez and destroying the chance for either Democrat to prevail against the single Republican. Well, it is interesting to note that 55 percent of those who voted in this (again, non-partisan) election voted for a Democrat. But a lot of people rationalize that if Chavez – the incumbent – couldn’t thoroughly wallop both candidates, he did not deserve to win. And he didn’t. Win, that is.
So we’ve elected a new mayor. And while he’s currently an elected official, Berry is untried in this crucial spot and there is certainly much we don’t know about how he will actually run the city.
Will Berry take a page from his past and be the moderate Republican who was willing to compromise with political opponents on the floor of the Roundhouse?
Or will Berry hew a harder Republican line and follow up on controversial statements he made during the election to crack down on immigrants and eliminate Albuquerque’s status as a “sanctuary city?”
Ultimately, Tuesday’s shocking election left us with a candidate who won decisively – but it leaves lots of questions about exactly how and why it happened and what kind of mayor Berry will be.
