IN ‘AN EXCITING SPACE’
Former Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales considers his legacy, ponders his future
The day after Alan Webber was sworn in as Santa Fe’s first full-time mayor, former Mayor Javier Gonzales posted on his Instagram account a photo of himself behind the wheel of a boat along with the caption “Finally! Time to go Fishin.’ ”
Gonzales didn’t really go fishing. The photo was from a recent trip to Lake Powell in Utah.
“It’s a metaphor,” he said in an interview a day later. “I’m going fishing. I’m going to go out there to see what I catch and where things go.” While Gonzales, 51, said he really does want to spend more time at the dry end of a fishing line, in reality, his first day in four years not as mayor wasn’t much different than any other day.
“It was pretty much a normal day. I had the opportunity to take my daughter to school in the morning, which I always do, picked her up and took the dogs for a walk,” he said.
In between, he spent some time reading, writing and helping his brothers with the family business at radio station KSWV, which is his lifeboat — at least until he catches on somewhere else.
“I’m blessed to have the family that I have and to at least start by coming back into the family business and helping for a little bit, which will give me the time that I need to determine ultimately where I end up,” he said. “It may very well be with this business or it might be doing some other type of work.”
But will Gonzales — who began his political career
serving two four-year terms as a county commissioner, was later elected as the state’s Democratic Party chair, won a threeway race for mayor in 2014 and, for a brief time at least, was a candidate for lieutenant governor before dropping out last month — run for office again?
“I’m not going to say there’s no way I won’t run for office again, but I’ve got half my career left,” he said. “I love serving and I’m hopeful that in the next half of my career I’m able to make an impact in improving people’s lives. I actually believe I can do that outside political office and will look forward to doing some of that. But I’m also excited about the whole idea of entrepreneurship — the idea of joining a family business that has been part of our family for years, working alongside my brothers.”
If he does run again, he said it won’t be anytime soon. He’d rather wait until his youngest daughter, 13-year-old Cadence, is out of high school and off to college. His oldest daughter, Cameron, 19, is a college freshman. A single father raising two kids, Gonzales said he has an obligation to see to it they are capable of flying on their own before they leave the nest.
“There are some financial realities that will keep me focused on the private sector for a while,” he said. “Unless I hit the lottery, the option of not paying (for their college education) does not exist.”
Political attack
Gonzales backed out of the race for lieutenant governor just days before allegations that he sexually assaulted a family member more than 30 years ago came to light. He said then he was dropping out because his heart wasn’t in it.
The allegations, which he denies, have been around for a while, he said, and arose during divorce proceedings.
Gonzales’ former wife, Conseulo Carrillo, filed for divorce in 2010. Gonzales won custody of the children.
“These reports are slanderous and hurtful to me and my family, and they are entirely without merit or truth,” he said in a statement last month, calling the allegations a political attack. “This is only meant to do one thing, drag me through the mud without due process.”
Openly gay since 2013, Gonzales said the allegations against him did not factor into his decision to drop his bid for lieutenant governor.
“Clearly, everything I’ve had to hear out there or has been claimed is something that I’ve had to deal with for a period of time,” he said, adding that his priority is being a good father. “The most important thing for me is to make sure my girls are safe and they are able to fully reach their potential.”
Gonzales said his daughters are aware of the situation and he’s tried to turn it into a teaching moment.
“You cannot let other people — no matter how ugly their words get, no matter what they say — define who you are as an individual and what you can be as an individual,” he said. “There will always be people who will want to play a role in harming you. You don’t have to be in politics for that to happen.”
Mayor’s legacy
Asked about what his legacy as mayor will be, Gonzales said that’s for others to decide. But he’s proud of what he was able to accomplish during what he says was the beginning of a transition period for city government.
He talked about his efforts to bring more accountability and transparency to City Hall, overcoming a $15 million budget deficit partly resulting from past financial practices, which he says have since been shored up, and making a run at addressing such issues as poverty, climate change and early childhood education.
“Those are all areas that I feel we’ve made great progress, but there’s obviously so much more work that needs to be done,” he said.
Certainly, the so-called “soda tax” election will be part of his legacy. Gonzales proposed a tax on the distributors of sugar-sweetened beverages to fund early childhood education efforts in the city that was soundly defeated in a special election last May.
Gonzales has no regrets about the proposal, which he said would help close the gap between lower income families who can’t afford to pay for pre-K programs and those who can.
“I would have rather failed in acting to do something — to actually make a change — than to sit on the sidelines, shrug my shoulders and say it was outside of our purview. We’re talking about 1,000 kids, and more now, that will start kindergarten behind some of their peers who had access to early childhood education,” he said.
But he says the election became about something else, and he takes responsibility for that.
“Here’s what we would have done different: We would have hit the pause button on the timing of the election and focused more on spending time in the community that was going to benefit the most from it,” he said. “Santa Fe has an abundance of policy exerts and people who just get it, and know it, and we had that around us. And I believe the policy that was developed in conjunction with the community college was one of the best in the country. But the spot that was missing was the time that we needed to spend in the communities that would be most impacted by this tax — and would have benefited the most — and work with them to offer a solution, and that might have brought us down a different path.”
But at the time Gonzales didn’t want to hit the pause button.
“I really felt that we couldn’t wait — that there were going to be another 1,000 kids that were going to be left behind, and the longer we wait, the larger the divide is going to be,” he said.
Equality gap
The election drew national attention, with more than $4 million total spent on campaigns for and against the tax. Former New York City mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg helped finance the pro-tax, early childhood education effort, while the American Beverage Association and CocaCola poured in money to defeat it, saying there was a “better way for Santa Fe” to find financing.
The election was contentious and magnified a different kind of divide in the community, he said.
“An argument against it was don’t let Bloomberg come in and tell us what to do, don’t let east side Santa Feans tell local Santa Feans how to live our life. We’ll drink a Coke if we want to drink a Coke,” he said.
That made people angry, he said.
“They’re angry because there’s a belief that there’s a certain class of people that get to govern what life looks like for them,” he said. “That is the challenge we have today — not only here, but across the country — is this anger that exists is largely led by a distrust in government, in an equality gap that is pushing people further and further behind. And we’ve got to find a way to convert that anger into positive energy and action that begins to close the gap.”
Gonzales expressed some bitterness over the defeat of the tax on sugary drinks, saying that while the soda industry and others who were against the tax argued there was a better way to fund early childhood education programs, they haven’t offered any solutions since then. They were a no-show during this year’s state legislative session when funding early childhood programs was discussed.
“I hoped that we would have seen more participation by the soda industry to say, ‘We had this conversation, early childhood education is important, so now use your resources to fund it,’ but they didn’t,” he said.
Another one of Gonzales’ proposals, the Verde Fund — an initiative to address both poverty and climate change in the community — was successful in getting City Council approval, but its fate is uncertain.
The council in 2016 approved $300,000 in excess Land Use funds to be directed toward such efforts, which Gonzales points out was then leveraged into more than $1 million with funding and services from other sources, to address those issues. But there is no recurring source of funding to keep it going.
“I’ve not talked to the mayor (Webber) about supporting it. I think it stands on its own. But clearly it’ll be his decision on the budget to keep the program moving or not. I hope he does,” he said.
‘Critical investments’
Part of Gonzales’ legacy will be his willingness to take on national and global issues, such as climate change, poverty and immigration at the local level. Those weren’t the kinds of problems the city would have been interested in 50 years ago when his dad was mayor, he said. But they are now.
“At the time of my dad, it was probably OK to be part-time because you weren’t dealing with some of the same issues that we’re dealing with today, but there is just a very big mandate and requirement that we as the public have on our mayors, and should have, because we’re not getting it out of Washington and we’re not getting it at the Roundhouse,” he said.
“Politics have been elevated to the national level, which means at the local level we’re really able to bring people together and focus on common-sense solutions.
“Leadership is more than just being an administrator,” he continued. “As a leader you have to not only be realistic, but you have to be aspirational, to have a sense of optimism about the future of our community, and to be honest about where we need to focus and where we’re falling short.”
Gonzales said one thing he probably won’t be remembered for is all the work that has been done behind the scenes to correct internal problems within the city. He pointed to the financial fixes that have taken place over the past few years that will smooth the path for the new mayor — steps such as upgrades in technology, internal controls and the move to a performancebased financial system.
“So one of the legacy issues that probably won’t be seen, but has been a critical one, is preparing for the strong mayor form of government by making these critical investments, introducing new concepts and ideas for how to manage our budget and how we prioritize what our city needs,” he said.
No longer mayor, Gonzales doesn’t have to worry about those things anymore. But that’s not to say he won’t. He’s still eager to make a difference in this world, just not as mayor of Santa Fe.
Asked if he felt a sense of relief not being mayor anymore, Gonzales said he wouldn’t use that word.
“What it is is a sense of excitement looking forward, and looking to the future and being able to be in a mindset that is proud of the contributions I was able to make and also know full well that I’m not done yet in terms of my career, and where I want to be able to influence and help improve the lives of people; that’s an exciting space,” he said.
“I’ve said a number of times that every person has the opportunity to act and participate in a way that improves our community, and you don’t have to be in elective office to own that incredible opportunity. I’m anxious to figure out again where I can prioritize my time to have an impact and continue to use my experiences, my presence as a citizen of Santa Fe to improve the lives of people who live here.”