Look for small field, big bucks in mayoral election
If Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber has done nothing else, he’s saved taxpayers a bundle on the cost of this year’s city election.
With Webber running for a second term, it’s almost a certainty the field of mayoral candidates will be small. Few people will bother challenging a wealthy incumbent mayor with a sizable base of supporters.
Had Webber not run, perhaps a dozen people would have entered the mayoral race. Santa Fe’s city government offers candidates the option of public financing. The cost of accommodating those who wanted the public option could have been steep.
Each qualifying mayoral candidate could receive as much as $90,000 in public money, contingent on raising $30,000 privately.
But with Webber running again, public financing for mayoral candidates won’t amount to much. The reality is he probably can’t be beaten by an opponent who has no more than $120,000 to spend on a campaign.
Webber privately financed his successful mayoral campaign in March 2018. As the nationally known founder of Fast Company magazine, he collected more than $315,000 in campaign donations. That was far more than any other candidate.
Webber might top a half-million dollars this year. Anyone serious about defeating him will need to be competitive in raising money from private sources.
A related factor should keep the mayoral field from ballooning.
A challenger who isn’t well-known would face an uphill slog in fundraising, especially during a pandemic.
The requisites of money and visibility mean Webber might face as few as one or two opponents.
City Councilor JoAnne Vigil Coppler looks like the most obvious threat to Webber’s reelection chances. She isn’t commenting yet on whether she will run.
Vigil Coppler’s chances of winning would be best in a one-on-one race. The bigger the field, the better for Webber.
His base will get to the polls. Those who want a change could split what’s
left of the vote between multiple challengers.
A two-person mayoral race also would take away the strange variables that are possible in Santa Fe’s system of ranked-choice voting.
If three or more people run for mayor, voters rank the candidates in order of preference.
The election concludes on the first ballot if one candidate receives a majority of firstplace votes.
But if no one breaks the threshold of 50 percent, a new counting system begins.
The last-place candidate is eliminated. But ballots for the loser are redistributed to the second-choice candidates. This process continues until a contending candidate gets enough secondary votes to obtain a majority.
In the last mayoral election, Webber received about 39 percent of the first-place votes in a five-way race. After three other candidates were eliminated, he won the election through a combination of his first- and second-place votes.
The city’s official statistics showed him taking 66 percent of the vote. But that amount included second-place votes added to his initial tally.
Contrary to hometown mythology, Webber didn’t gain any advantage from ranked-choice voting in 2018, the first year the system was used in Santa Fe.
He also would have been elected under the old plurality method of choosing the mayor.
Ranked choice voting makes for less spirited and more homogeneous campaigns.
Candidates courting a rival’s backers become timid for fear of losing second-place votes.
In a fundamental way, ranked-choice voting is a system as flawed as the Electoral College in presidential politics.
Twice this century, a president has been elected after losing the popular vote. In ranked choice voting, the possibility exists that a candidate can win after someone else receives the most first-place votes.
Santa Fe first used ranked-choice voting when there was no incumbent in the mayor’s race. The dynamic might be different this time with Webber running for reelection.
There will be another striking difference this year.
Webber was the only candidate in 2018 without a connection to City Hall. His four opponents either were city councilors or had worked for the city. Now Webber is the insider.
That doesn’t change the fact that he’s an aggressive and skilled campaigner.
Before becoming mayor, Webber ran for governor. He entered the race in late fall, giving himself only seven months before the Democratic primary election. Webber finished second in that five-way race.
The mayoral election is shaping up differently. The field of candidates should be small, but big bucks will be more important than ever.