Write-in candidate racked up unusual vote total Nov. 4

Write-in candidates typically get scant attention and few votes in any election.

But a candidate for Albuquerque City Council managed to convince more than 1,700 voters in District 7 to write his name on a blank line of the Nov. 4 ballot in his effort to unseat Councilor Tammy Fiebelkorn.

Jaemes Shanley, 73, received 1,746 votes, or 12%, of the votes cast in the District 7 contest. He was defeated handily by Fiebelkorn, 55, who received 88% of the 14,029 votes cast.

Write-in candidates typically garner only a handful of votes from family members and friends, said Brian Sanderoff, president of Albuquerque-based Research & Polling Inc. For example, in the 2021 Albuquerque mayoral race, write-in candidate Patrick Sais received 34 votes, or 0.03%, of the 119,762 votes cast. Tim Keller won that year with 56% of the vote.

“Write-in candidates typically fare poorly,” Sanderoff said. For a write-in candidate to obtain 1,746 votes, there had to have been “an organized effort and a motivated electorate.”

Shanley said he entered the contest too late to get his name on the ballot with the intention of protecting residential areas such as his own Mark Twain neighborhood, located north of Expo New Mexico between Lomas NE and Interstate 40.

In particular, Shanley said he was motivated by a resolution Fiebelkorn sponsored in June that would have allowed two-story townhouses and duplexes in neighborhoods now zoned for single-family homes. The city’s Land Use, Planning and Zoning Committee voted 4-1 to defeat the resolution in August.

Measures intended to increase density in single-family neighborhoods would spur investment in residential property, Shanley contends. The high price of rental housing is driven by speculative “private-equity” investors who charge market rates for rental units that many people can’t afford, he said.

“It’s not a shortage of units — it’s price and cost,” he said. “There’s also a stubborn unwillingness to recognize that the cost of housing derives primarily from the speculative inflation of land value.”

“Residential property is a prime target” for investors, he said. “When you start messing around with zoning and housing density, you don’t create affordable housing. You facilitate the targeting of residential real estate by real estate investors.”

Fiebelkorn responded that she is dedicated to improving housing affordability through zoning reform to increase the supply of affordable housing throughout the city. That could include duplexes in residential areas, she said.

“We don’t have any more space for infill,” she said. “There’s a shortage of housing in every price point. And so adding in accessory dwelling units, which has always been my proposal, and allowing duplexes is a way to provide various price points for housing.”

Fiebelkorn also said that Shanley received substantial financial support from real estate interests who oppose her advocacy for the rights of tenants. Measures she has sponsored include new requirements for cooling in rental units and additional planning staff dedicated to the concerns of tenants.

“It’s very unusual for a write-in candidate to have the support of big-money PACs (political action committees),” said Fiebelkorn, who qualified for public campaign financing and received $57,251 in city funding for her campaign.

Shanley received $20,186 in campaign contributions, city records show. His two largest contributors were the Apartment Association of New Mexico and the Real Estate Community PAC (RECPAC), which each contributed $2,000.

“I’m an effective councilor that has been able to get the first tenant protections passed in decades in our city,” she said. “That has, of course, upset people who are landlords and realtors.”