By bowing out, Gonzales creates a whole new race
With no progressive standard-bearer in way, Trujillo may face easier path to mayor’s seat
Santa Fe seemed headed into a clear-cut race for its first full-time mayor.
Observers expected Mayor Javier Gonzales to run for a second term on the progressive ideals that helped get him elected in 2014, and City Councilor Ron Trujillo already had launched a campaign pledging a “back to basics” approach to city government to compensate for what he said were neglected city services.
Tearing the race wide open, Gonzales bowed out last week, announcing he would not run for re-election in March 2018.
The mayor’s move could be a big boost for Trujillo. Though the election is six months away and he is the only prominent candidate in the field, observers expect the race to get crowded in the next few weeks. The names of about a half-dozen prospective candidates are swirling among politicos.
In this reshaped contest, in which the winner needs only to get more votes than the next rival — rather than build a coalition of supporters to unseat a well-known incumbent backed by a deep-pocketed machine — Trujillo’s head start and appeal to divisions among Santa Fe’s electorate could make him the man to beat.
“It could be a benefit,” Trujillo said Saturday of the mayor’s decision. “It depends on who gets in the race. I think what’s going to end up deciding this election is voter turnout.”
One big question that will hang over the race as other candidates jump in is where the various members of the somewhat unlikely coalition that elected Gonzales will throw their support.
The son of a former mayor, Gonzales drew on his family’s deep roots in Santa Fe politics. Gonzales also served on the Santa Fe County Commission and was chairman of the state Democratic Party, and he won support from progressives as well as more affluent pockets of the city. An opponent described campaigning against him as running against a machine rather than a single candidate.
Where these voters turn in next year’s mayoral race is unclear.
“It is likely to split up that base, especially given some of the people who are talking about running,” said Karen Heldmeyer, a former city councilor.
Zozobra organizer Ray Sandoval, businessman Alan Webber and Councilor Joseph Maestas all said they are mulling runs for mayor and could end up splitting those progressive voters. Public Regulation Commissioner Valerie Espinoza is mulling a run, too.
And even if a progressive standard-bearer emerges in the race, he or she may not be able to count on the support of the other segments of Santa Fe society that got Gonzales elected.
If Trujillo can build a base and keep it, a bigger field of candidates can help him, said Stephen Clermont of Third Eye Strategies, a research firm in Virginia that has done polling in past Santa Fe mayoral races, including for a political action committee that supported Gonzales in 2014.
“If you can win with 25 or 30 percent of the vote, it definitely benefits someone who can find an audience and win and not have to build a coalition,” Clermont said. “You can focus on one segment of the city and try to turn them out.”
Since a sugary-beverage tax proposed by Gonzales was widely rejected in a special election earlier this year that fiercely divided the community, Trujillo has emerged as a leading critic of the mayor. He has positioned himself as an advocate for focusing city government — not on lofty progressive goals, such as funding preschool programs with a so-called soda tax, but on basic services, such as parks and roads. And no other prospective candidate seems likely to take up that mantle.
A group formerly known as Santa Fe Power also has taken on the mayor since the soda-tax election and is a seemingly natural ally for Trujillo. But he has sought to distance himself from the group after others aligned with it stirred controversy with racist remarks.
The divides exposed by the soda tax could play an important role in the coming election, Clermont said. “I think there are a lot of internal tensions that campaigns will be tempted to exploit.”
Appealing to the same sentiment that defeated the soda tax, Trujillo is likely to find support among relatively conservative voters.
But he faces some challenges in the race.
Mayoral elections do not turn out as many voters in Trujillo’s district as in other parts of the city. His City Council District 4 has ranked third out of the city’s four districts for the number of ballots cast in both of the last two mayoral races.
And if a personally wealthy candidate like Webber were to enter the race, they could bring the sort of resources that Trujillo might struggle to match. Trujillo said he will pursue public financing.
Clermont expects this race to be more expensive than past contests.
The next mayor will be the first to receive a full-time salary, which will amount to $110,000 a year. Santa Fe voters can expect that to draw candidates who are ready to spend.
“You’ll see a lot more money spent on consultants than in the past,” Clermont said.
Though, Gonzales’ surprise announcement leaves prospective candidates with relatively little time for polling or other traditional preparations.
Heldmeyer expects several candidates to launch campaigns in the next couple of weeks but believes some eventually will drop out and lend their support to others, consolidating the field.
If a half-dozen or more candidates do end up on the ballot, the race may lend new urgency to calls for changing the city’s election system.
Voters passed a resolution in 2008 requiring city officials to implement what is known as ranked-choice voting by the 2010 municipal election, or whenever the technology becomes available. The city has not yet followed through, saying the technology is not ready for the upcoming election, and that it hasn’t had time to educate voters about the process.
Proponents argue that the system would ensure Santa Fe gets a mayor with a mandate. Under ranked-choice voting, sometimes called “instant runoff,” voters would rank candidates. If a candidate receives more than half the votes, he or she would win the race. If no candidate wins a majority of votes, the candidate with the least number of votes would be eliminated from the race. Votes from everyone who selected that candidate as their first choice would then go to the voters’ second-choice candidates, and the ballots would be counted again, with the process repeated until someone has a majority.
Proponents, who say the voting system would prevent vote splitting and “spoiler” candidacies, filed a lawsuit in the state Supreme Court late last month asking justices to force the city to implement the practice.
The city’s elections have been shaken by last-minute legal issues in the past. A lawsuit spurred snap redistricting in 2002, for example.
At the very least, a crowded mayoral contest may spur calls for establishing some other sort of runoff process for the city’s elections, in which — as in Albuquerque — the top two candidates face off in a second round of voting if no candidate gets a majority in the initial round.
Regardless, come Monday, the mayoral election is a whole new race.
“Had the mayor decided to run, he would have been the odds-on favorite,” said former mayor Sam Pick. “But now a dark horse could run.”