Poll results should have mayor smiling
Arecent poll commissioned by the Santa Fe Association of Realtors was touted as showing “tensions” among voters in the city.
But if I were Mayor Javier Gonzales or an incumbent city councilor seeking re-election next year, I’d be celebrating the poll results.
Granted, Gonzales has not yet announced his intentions regarding a re-election race. But when he read the poll results, he had to have grinned. The conventional wisdom has been that his political career had been seriously wounded when voters overwhelmingly rejected his call for a tax on sugary drinks to pay for early childhood education programs. But this poll indicates that the sugar-tax fiasco did not seem to spark any major groundswell of public opinion to dump the mayor.
As reported by my colleague Tripp Stelnicki last week, the poll, conducted by the Ohio-based American Strategies from Aug. 7 through Aug. 10, found:
A small majority, 51 percent, called Gonzales’ work good (38 percent) or excellent (13 percent). But another 29 percent said his job performance was “fair.” Only 20 percent gave the incumbent a “poor” rating.
As for the City Council, 38 percent of those surveyed rated its job performance as good (35 percent) or excellent (3 percent), while 41 percent gave it a “fair” rating. Only 18 percent called the council’s job performance “poor.”
The poll involved live interviews with 400 likely voters. There is a margin of error of 4.9 percent.
It’s interesting that the poll was conducted during a week in which an anti-Gonzales group called Santa Fe Power was in the news just about every day because high-profile people associated with the group had spread overtly racist material over social media — and one Santa Fe Power guy showed up to a City Council meeting packing a gun, saying he just wanted to keep the city government “on their toes.”
I suspect those incidents didn’t have enough time to register a significant impact on the poll, but I suppose it’s possible these antics might have boosted Gonzales’ numbers a little. (Santa Fe Power has wisely laid low in recent weeks.)
The numbers certainly don’t show Gonzales or any of the councilors are invincible.
Still, I know a certain orange-colored commander in chief and leader of the free world who would kill for a 51 percent approval rating. And Gonzales’ numbers are much better than the most recent ones I’ve seen for Gov. Susana Martinez. In July, the Morning Consult company showed her with 44 percent approving, 45 percent disapproving.
As for the City Council, a 38 percent approval may seem mediocre, but it’s downright dynamic when you compare that with Congress. The current Real Clear Politics average shows a 15.5 percent approval rating for the legislative branch in Washington, D.C. A whopping 73 percent disapprove.
Two City Council incumbents are seeking re-election next year — Signe Lindell in District 1 and Joseph Maestas in District 2. Both can take heart in the fact that their districts show the majority of voters think Santa Fe is on the right track (though those numbers are very close in Maestas’ district). Lindell has one challenger so far, Doug Nava, while Maestas currently is unopposed.
Before anyone starts ordering Champagne for his or her victory party, there are a bunch of caveats here, the main one being there are six months before the municipal election. A lot can happen between now and then. Issues can rise or scandals can break. And, I suspect, a large chunk of the people polled are not paying attention to the intricacies of City Hall.
Plus, there are signs of potential trouble in the numbers themselves. Those “right track, wrong track” results probably should give incumbents pause. A tiny plurality, 45 percent of those polled, said the city is on the “right track,” while 44 percent said “wrong track.”
Just four years ago, 51 percent believed the city was on the right track, while 36 percent said Santa Fe was on the wrong track. If that trend accelerates before March, any comfort from this poll among incumbents will be a distant memory.
Contact Steve Terrell at 505-986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com. Read his blog at www.santafenewmexican.com/roundhouse_roundup.