School board member joins mayor’s race
Santa Fe school board member and onetime city administrative employee Kate Noble declared her candidacy for mayor Monday, making her the fifth candidate in the race and the fourth to jump in since Mayor Javier Gonzales announced earlier this month he wouldn’t seek a second four-year term in the March municipal election.
“This is an opportunity to do more good,” Noble, 41, said about her decision to run for mayor just seven months after she was elected to the school board. “If there were an extraordinary cohort of knowledgeable people who knew how to actively implement policy at the city, I might not feel the strength of this call.”
Noble joins three city councilors — Peter Ives, Joseph Maestas and Ron Trujillo — and school crossing guard Harvey Van Sickle, who is on the board of the nonprofit group Keep Santa Fe Beautiful, in the race for mayor, which could get more crowded.
Entrepreneur and former gubernatorial candidate Alan Webber, who is considering a mayoral bid, said Monday he plans to announce his decision Tuesday. State Public Regulation Commission member Valerie Espinoza, who is also considering running for mayor, did not return messages seeking comment Monday.
Noble, former acting housing and economic development director for the city of Santa Fe, said she plans to stay on the school board while campaigning for mayor but would step down if elected. She ran unopposed and was elected to the school board in February.
“I think when opportunities arise that you’re passionate about, you have to listen to your heart and your gut, and I thought long and hard about it because I could see all those questions and I could see all those issues” she said. “Truly, in the end, I want to spend my life doing more good for more people, and so I’m going to make an effort to do that.”
The job of mayor will become full-time after the March 6 election, paying $110,000 a year. That’s up from $29,500 for what has been a part-time, primarily policy-making position. The full-time mayor will have additional powers, including the unilateral authority to remove the city manager, city attorney and city clerk.
Noble, a former producer, reporter and anchor for World Business Report, the flagship news program on BBC World TV, said her journalism experience would serve her well as the city’s chief executive officer.
“Journalism is the best training ever because it teaches you to ask good questions and listen, and those are skills that a lot of people are lacking and are actually really important in leadership,” she said. “It’s also great training in processing a lot of information quickly and figuring out a narrative that people can relate to.”
Noble is the youngest person in the race and, so far, the only woman.
Noble said she plans to run a privately financed campaign, saying it’s not only too late to try to qualify for public financing but “the money in this race is going to be too big.”
Noble, a Santa Fe native who graduated from Santa Fe High School with honors in 1993, worked in the city’s housing and economic development office for nine years before taking a job as community development director for yellCast, a local tech startup. She is married to Bryce Tappan, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. They have a young son.
Noble has described herself as an “entrepreneurial devotee” who helped pioneer the networking project MIX Santa Fe. As mayor, she said the economy, job creation and tackling the city’s housing crisis would be among her priorities.
“We have to find a way to tax second-home owners so that they’re paying a fair share,” she said. “But we also have to — Santa Fe is an expensive place to build and develop — so we have to look at incentives for the right kind of development. We have a lot of developable land in the city even under the current zoning as it exists. … How we look at the systems of housing, jobs and transportation as integrated systems is really, really important.”
School Superintendent Veronica García and board members said they were surprised to hear Noble was running for mayor.
“Our superintendent and the school board have always worked together for the good of public education in the city of Santa Fe,” board President Lorraine Price said. “Whoever becomes mayor, I hope that person will continue that collaboration.”
Board member Steven Carrillo said he would be “very disappointed” to lose Noble but that she “would make a fine mayor.”
“There’s no doubt it would throw us [the board] a huge curveball,” he said. “But in looking out for the best interests of the city, all of our children, I think that the board is solid enough that we could overcome this brief hurdle.”
The board of education is currently working to find a replacement for board member Linda Trujillo, who is resigning her position on the five-member board in December to commit fully to her duties as a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives.
Noble had been hinting about a mayoral run on Facebook, leading to growing speculation over the weekend that she was going to jump into the race.
“What if someone told you it is your turn?” she asked in a Facebook post Sept. 14.
“You got my vote Kate Noble,” said a posting by Johnny Bransford.
On Sept. 17, Noble wrote, “What do you want the next Santa Fe Mayor to work on? What would you make a priority for this community?”
In her Facebook post, she used the hashtags #civics and #shapeyourcity.
Staff writer Robert Nott contributed to this report.