Redistricting, mostly, and some Native issues

In this morning’s paper, I wrote about a lawsuit the Navajo Nation has brought against the Gallup-McKinley school district, alleging the district unfairly packed American Indian voters into three board districts and minimized their voting power in two others, even though they are 70 percent of the district’s voting population.

It’s not unusual to see tensions in school districts that are partly on reservation land. Earlier this year, this decision by the Gallup-McKinley district to consolidate some schools on the Navajo Nation prompted grumblings that the schools had been unfairly targeted for closure because they serve American Indian children. And in the Central Consolidated school district, which serves a different section of the Navajo Nation, there are ongoing efforts to split the district, largely along reservation lines.

Even in districts that don’t touch the Navajo Nation, redistricting can be an acrimonious process. I closely followed the Albuquerque Public Schools redistricting process, which was mostly characterized by folks from the West Side of Albuquerque agitating for more representation on their side of the river. Ultimately, they got District 5, a new district that is fully on the West Side of the river, in the West Mesa High School area.

Several folks from the APS world have grumbled to me in recent days that after all that fighting for a new West Side district, only one candidate is running for the spot in the upcoming February election. Publicly, school board member David Peercy said this during a board meeting last week:

“I am also surprised by District 5, who put up a whole lot of effort to tell us that they needed a district over there, and they needed support and they needed representation, and yet they really didn’t put up very much representation to actually put a race together. I would challenge them to step up and do the work.”

His point is taken, sort of. It is certainly true that of four board districts that are up for grabs, District 5 is the only one that is uncontested. But the one candidate who’s running is this guy. On filing day, well-known “Breaking Bad” actor Steven Michael Quezada had already put together a press release and gathered endorsements from local lawmakers and others. There was initially another candidate who filed, named Cynthia Chavers, but she withdrew shortly after she filed. I’ve also heard scuttle that other prominent locals were considering a run in District 5, but didn’t actually file. Which adds up to nothing except my supposition that there might have been more candidates in District 5, if they hadn’t been scared off by the prospect of running against a celebrity with buckets of name recognition, endorsements, and a track record of service in his hometown.

Anyway, one more redistricting-related item, on this rather scattered Boxing Day post. Here’s the new APS board map, if you’d like to see which district you live in, and thus which race to pay the closest attention to (I know you’ll be watching all four races with interest).