A taco for your vote?
Backers of sugary-drink tax cancel food giveaway at early voting location amid bribery allegations
In Chicago, the old Democratic machine used to hand out bottles of muscatel for votes.
In Santa Fe, supporters of Mayor Javier Gonzales’ proposed sugary-drink tax planned to offer voters tacos until a rival group raised allegations of bribery.
Pre-K for Santa Fe, a political action committee that favors the proposed tax, said it would hand out free tacos to people wearing the first 400 “I voted” stickers on the first day of early voting Wednesday at the Genoveva Chavez Community Center.
The group posted the offer on Facebook with a photo of what appears to be a Hispanic woman holding a preschool-age child on her lap.
Opponents of the tax struck back on social media.
“Someone please tell me how free taco bribes for votes is legal?” Loveless Johnson III, a spokesman for Smart Progress New Mexico, which opposes the proposed tax, wrote on Facebook.
The taco offer did not ask people to vote for or against the tax. But on Tuesday, about an hour after The New Mexican wrote about the taco giveaway on its website, Sandra Wechsler, campaign manager for Pre-K for
Santa Fe, quashed the idea.
Wechsler said the group would continue to hold an early voting event with the mayor, minus the free tacos.
“This is a special election so we really want to encourage people to go out and vote and make your voice heard,” she said in a statement. “It was not about how a person votes, just that people vote. Providing food is standard at events like this. However, out of an abundance of caution, we are canceling the food truck we had scheduled to be there. Instead families will be invited to come early to vote with the mayor.”
Before the political committee decided to withdraw its offer, a spokesman for Better Way for Santa Fe & Pre-K, a PAC opposing the mayor’s proposed tax, said free tacos were unlikely to persuade voters to support the soda tax.
“We don’t think people will go for a massive new tax on hundreds of beverages that they’ll pay the rest of the lives in return for a free taco,” David Huynh said in an email.
Paul Gessing, president of the Rio Grande Foundation, an Albuquerque-based free-market think tank opposing the proposed tax, criticized the taco giveaway on Twitter.
“How free are those tacos after a multi-million [dollar] tax hike goes into effect?” tweeted Gessing, who tagged the mayor in the tweet.
The tacos-for-votes offer came less than two weeks after Pre-K for Santa Fe held an event involving food outside City Hall at the beginning of in-person absentee voting.
Food vendor “Served Santa Fe Street Food will be onsite with delicious food outside City Hall, and then we’ll head upstairs to be the first to vote FOR Pre-K for Santa Fe!” the group wrote in an email to its supporters.
The event triggered allegations of electioneering.
After the event, Assistant City Attorney Zach Shandler said the City Attorney’s Office had looked into the matter.
“The food truck paid for a parking permit from the City Parking Division for the right to park in two spaces,” Shandler wrote in an email. “The food truck was sufficiently away (100 feet) from the polling location and did not have signs that were visible at the polling location (City Clerk’s Office) and thus did not constitute electioneering under the Municipal Election Section 3-8-77(A).”
The tax supported by the mayor would be 2 cents per ounce on sugary beverages, including soda, iced tea, juice boxes and powdered drinks. It would pay for an expansion of early childhood education in Santa Fe.