Field narrows to five in race for Santa Fe mayor
Councilor Trujillo collects most qualifying signatures with 1,224; Webber earns 776
Five candidates on Friday officially qualified for the ballot in the 2018 election to succeed Javier Gonzales as mayor and become the city of Santa Fe’s first full-time chief executive.
Whether all will remain in the race until the finish line March 6 remains to be seen, though these mayoral hopefuls cleared a final procedural hurdle when the city clerk verified they had collected nominating signatures from at least one half of one percent of the total registered voters in the city.
This election cycle, the magic number for mayoral candidates was 267 signatures.
The candidates for mayor are: Peter Ives, 63, a two-term city councilor and attorney; Joseph Maestas, 57, a first-term city councilor, former mayor of Española and civil engineer; Kate Noble, 41, a former acting city housing and economic development director elected to the school board in February; Ron Trujillo, 48, a three-term city councilor who works in the state Department of Transportation Fleet Management Bureau; and Alan Webber, 69, an entrepreneur and writer perhaps best known as the co-founder of Fast Company magazine.
Harvey Van Sickle, 66, an at-large
board member of the nonprofit Keep Santa Fe Beautiful, collected only 232 verified voter signatures and did not qualify.
Ives’ council term runs until 2020; he does not have to vacate his council seat to run for mayor. Maestas and Trujillo, meanwhile, will leave their seats to bid for the mayor’s job.
Santa Fe’s elections are officially nonpartisan, but each of the 2018 mayoral candidates is a registered Democrat.
A field of five would be the largest crop of mayoral candidates in Santa Fe since 2006, though two candidates in that race won by David Coss drew less than 1 percent of the vote. Six individuals received votes in the 1998 mayoral election won by Larry Delgado.
A wide open and unwieldy field in which no one candidate might win a majority has concerned some observers who say the city’s first full-time mayor, with enhanced authority over top administrative personnel and a more-than-tripled salary, ought to have a clear mandate.
This has particularly rankled advocates of a ranked-choice voting system who say the preferential selection/round-by-round elimination format approved by city voters in 2008 would ensure a winner receives a majority of the vote.
Although ranking-choice voting has not yet been implemented, a group of local voters has initiated legal action, hoping to force the city to use it in March.
In the last 10 mayoral elections in Santa Fe, dating back to 1978, six were won with a plurality rather than a majority.
Two of the elections won with more than 50 percent of the vote were taken by Coss, in 2006 and 2010.
Before that, the city hadn’t elected a mayor with majority support since 1986, when Sam Pick lapped a five-way field and racked up 70 percent of the vote.
With five candidates seeking an open seat, observers and voters are eager for any sort of measure of the field.
The verified signature totals could suggest the shape of each candidate’s support, or at least the legwork each put in to qualify for the ballot, at this early stage.
Trujillo, the earliest announced candidate, collected 1,224 certified signatures in the two-month nominating window. Webber, who announced his run almost halfway through the nominating period, was next with 776. Down the ballot, three of four City Council races will be contested.
And with three open seats meaning at least three new councilors, the eight-member body promises to show a different face after Election Day.
Incumbent Councilor Signe Lindell and challenger Marie Campos qualified in north-side District 1. Joe Arellano, Nate Downey and Carol Romero-Wirth qualified in southeast-side District 2. Roman “Tiger” Abeyta is the sole candidate in southwest-side District 3. Eric J. Holmes, Greg Scargall and JoAnne Vigil Coppler qualified in south-central District 4.
A field of five would be the largest crop of mayoral candidates in Santa Fe since 2006, though two candidates in that race won by David Coss drew less than 1 percent of the vote. Six individuals received votes in the 1998 mayoral election won by Larry Delgado.