It’s back to the future in mayoral election
Santa Fe resident Richard Block is a traditionalist every campaign season. He could have voted already in the city mayoral election. Instead, he will cast his ballot Tuesday, the designated election day.
“I never vote early,” Block said. “I have voted on election days since I voted for Adlai Stevenson, although I worked on the Estes Kefauver campaign — ‘Estes is Bestes.’ ”
Block grew up in the South when elections were more spirited, or at least more spiritfilled.
“My mother was the Kentucky state secretary of the League of Women Voters for many years,” he said. “I was a worker. In those days, we handed out half-pint bottles of bourbon along with our fliers.”
Carefully following campaigns since the 1950s also has made Block a voter who’s wary of political corruption.
“What if — after the early voter has voted — it is revealed by election day that the candidate she/he voted for has just been arrested for stealing a pile of money?” Block asked. “By then it is not possible to change the vote.” He has a point. I voted early in the 2016 general election, punching the ticket of a candidate for the state Court of Appeals who seemed especially well-qualified.
Then my hard-charging young colleague, Andrew Oxford, dug up a jawdropping story about a newly formed political action committee mailing deceptive advertisements to assist that very candidate.
Oxford’s reporting made a difference. The candidate I voted for lost the election, and I had a severe attack of guilt. Even so, I still vote early. My fears are different from Block’s. What if I wait to vote, only to be sideswiped by a city bus or a kidney stone?
Block’s reminiscing about the way elections used to be sent me deep into the archives. I wondered what else has changed, especially in Santa Fe.
The details are surprising.
At the height of the Great Depression in 1932, voters elected David Chávez as mayor of Santa Fe. City elections were partisan then. Chávez revived an underdog party, becoming the city’s first Democratic mayor since 1912.
In Chávez’s time, not just anybody could enter the mayoral election by passing out petitions and collecting signatures. Convention delegates of the major political parties assembled to choose the candidates.
Chávez had an edge. He was the county Democratic Party chairman, giving him clout in slating candidates for mayor and the City Council.
He had a powerful family, too. His brother, Dennis Chávez, was New Mexico’s only congressman in 1932 and later served as a U.S. senator for 31 years.
Even after David Chávez’s breakthrough, Republicans remained a force in city politics.
In 1942, after 10 years of Democratic control, Republican Manuel Lujan Sr. won election as Santa Fe’s mayor. He served three two-year terms, as the GOP regained strength in the city.
Republicans captured all four City Council seats that were contested in the 1952 election. But Democrat H. Paul Huss won the mayor’s race in a stunning upset.
Voters re-elected Huss in 1954, and they also gave Democrats a majority on the council. Like Midwestern towns, Santa Fe in that period often called its council members aldermen.
And it was in 1954 that Santa Fe changed its form of government. The City Council authorized a new system in which a city manager would run the daily operations, supposedly taking direction from the part-time councilors and mayor.
In an editorial, The New Mexican called this a fine idea.
“The city is ripe for the form of improvement in administrative services which is promised by a city manager,” it said.
City managers would come and go, often at a rapid clip. Some would war with the council and the mayor. A few then ran for city office.
In Tuesday’s election, the winning candidate will acquire more authority than any mayor since the early 1950s.
The new mayor will be a fulltime city employee with direct supervisory powers over the city manager, city attorney and city clerk.
How it will work is anybody’s guess.
Perhaps the only sure bet in this election is that nobody will pass out half-pints of whiskey to win over voters. It’s back to the future after that. Santa Fe, for good or bad, is about to have a mayor who wields enormous power.