Santa Fe County

Santa Fe school board member Rudy Garcia held a comfortable lead for the Santa Fe County Commission’s District 3 seat over former commissioner Mike Anaya in late returns Tuesday night.

Garcia, a Democrat who has said he will continue to serve on the school board if he won the commission seat, had 62 percent of the vote. Anaya was elected to the District 3 seat for two terms as a Democrat in the past, but ran this year as an independent.

Both men have faced controversy. Reports by the Journal revealed that Garcia had a long arrest record, including four DWI charges and two convictions, and didn’t disclose his rap sheet to the school board before the board appointed him to a vacant seat last year.

Anaya, when he was a county commissioner and president of the state Association of Counties in 2009, was accused of sexual harassment by an association employee and the accuser received an undisclosed settlement.

Other election results for the Santa Fe area and northern New Mexico were:

A huge majority of Santa Fe city voters, about 80 percent, were supporting a measure to amend the city charter to change the date of municipal elections, as part of an effort under a new state law to consolidate smaller, nonpartisan elections — like those for city councils, school boards and community college boards — on a single November date in oddnumbered years instead of holding them on various separate dates.

More than three quarters of votes cast by 10 p.m. were supporting continuation in future years of a one-eighth of 1 percent gross receipts tax that supports the North Central Regional Transit District’s regional bus service and the Rail Runner Express commuter train by removing a 2024 sunset clause. Voters in Santa Fe, Rio Arriba, Los Alamos and Taos counties cast ballots.