Guest Commentary
Isaac “Ike” Benton is a former Albuquerque City Councilor.
Elections for our next mayor are underway and a runoff election between the top 2 candidates is assured. Our current election system is marred, as I will explain below, but we must make the best of it. I urge Albuquerqueans to vote for Alex Uballez in the “first round” to ensure a robust debate with incumbent mayor Tim Keller in the runoff election.
As a long-time Albuquerquean, I’ve experienced many municipal elections. Changes to our city’s system over time added the possibility of runoff elections, first requiring a 40% plurality and then a 50% majority in order to avoid one and win outright. Since our elections are “non-partisan” and usually feature several candidates, this eliminated the possibility of mayors being elected outright with around 30 percent (as did Jim Baca in 1997) or 40 percent (R.J. Berry in 2009).
As a political “progressive” and City Councilor, on two occasions I sponsored amendments to the city Charter to adopt provide for ranked-choice voting (RCV or “instant-runoff”) in city elections. RCV allows voters to choose their top choices in order, shortening our election season and greatly saving public dollars on runoff elections. Our runoffs also have had historically low voter turnout. Unfortunately, we failed to muster the votes on Council to advance these Charter amendments to a public vote.
There is another flaw in our elections: under the US Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” and subsequent decisions, Albuquerque’s original system of government-financed local elections was weakened and now increasingly favors incumbents sponsored by big money interests.
Our public financing system and lack of ranked-choice elections clearly favors incumbents. They know the system and have experience, volunteers, and name recognition. My campaigns benefitted from this. The mayor’s campaign clearly does, as he is the only publicly-financed candidate. He is also the beneficiary of private contributions to a political action committee that supports him.
Tim Keller is seeking an unprecedented third consecutive term. This is despite having only a 29 percent plurality of support in the Journal poll, a spotty record of working with the Council, and difficulty with effectively administering the second-largest governmental entity in New Mexico. With the exception of Alex Uballez, the assortment of challengers is well to the right of the incumbent. The highest-polling and most conservative of them are leading in the poll for runner-up status.
The requirement of 50 percent to avoid a runoff means that based on polling, a runoff is assured. The only way for ALL voters – even those who may be otherwise inclined to vote for Keller, or those on the right – to hear a thorough and serious debate on the incumbent ’s leadership is to vote for Alex Uballez now, in the first round of voting. Then, decide as you wish in the runoff.