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A hard-fought local election is coming to a close. Early voting has ended and Election Day is Tuesday.
Regardless of who wins the mayoral race, or if no one meets the 50% threshold and a runoff will be needed, the most interesting thing for me on Election Night will be the tea leaves that appear as the votes trickle in. What am I going to be focusing on?
First and foremost: Which candidate had the most success with undecided voters, and what does that say about political shifts happening in the Duke City?
Let’s go back a month. In late September, a Journal poll done by Albuquerque-based Research and Polling Inc. found that 29% of likely voters planned to vote for incumbent Mayor Tim Keller, a Democrat; 16% were going to vote for Darren White, a Republican; and Alex Uballez, a liberal Democrat, and Louie Sanchez, a more moderate or conservative Democrat, had 6% each. Meanwhile, 37% of likely voters were undecided.
On Election Night, the first batch of voting results that will be released will be early and absentee voters. I’m going to assume that much of those results will reflect the poll results, as voters who had made up their minds a month ago have had lots of chances to vote, and voters who were undecided may have been holding off on picking their candidate until after the debates. So the results that come in later in the night could show which candidate was most effective at the various debates and roundtables in the last month.
Will those results show that Albuquerque is staying a progressive Democrat city, or are we shifting to the right?
In the years before Keller took office the first time, Albuquerque had a Republican mayor and Albuquerque police shootings and subsequent legal settlements dominated the local news, and occasional protests against the police filled streets.
That vote was taken less than a year into the first Trump administration, when thousands of Albuquerque residents were gathering in large protests against Trump. Albuquerque was in the early stages of a decade-long police reform effort that was not going well. (The federal judge overseeing the effort issued a blistering critique of the former police and mayoral administrations’ handling of the effort during the final hearing before Keller took office.)
Albuquerque was excited to vote for a progressive Democrat who promised reform. When Keller was elected for the first time in 2017, he was the top vote-getter in a crowded election with no incumbent, and then he dominated the runoff, winning over 62% of the vote.
Albuquerque stayed left throughout Trump’s first term and the COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately hurt the state’s tribes and pueblos. There was racial unrest throughout the country and in Albuquerque, where statues of conquistadors were toppled.
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Keller won his second term with 56% of the vote.
This time feels different. Keller’s approval rating has dipped to 42%, and the top concerns among voters, by far, are crime and an increasing homeless population, according to polling. Turnout has been sluggish — less than 10% of eligible voters had cast a ballot by Oct. 27.
Keller met with the Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board on Thursday, and we mainly focused on the campaign and the challenges he’s faced during his term — the rise of fentanyl, rising rent prices and the COVID-19 pandemic, for example. He said that he’s actually done a good job of addressing issues that affected people on both sides of the aisle. The U.S. Department of Justice reform effort came to an end under Keller; complaints about how Keller handled the pandemic aren’t top of mind, and he said he’s increasing affordable housing to try to keep people in their homes instead of on the streets.
He also offered us some insight into an exciting project the city has to look forward to if he’s elected. He said he wants to keep the State Fair in Albuquerque while also making upgrades to the corners of the property to add mixed-use development to create economic development and entertainment opportunities to a struggling nook of the city.
A race that I’m watching on election night isn’t so much about who gets to be mayor (I believe the odds are very much in Keller’s favor) but between White and Uballez. Whichever one of them earns more of those undecided voters could signal the city’s political posture.
If Uballez significantly outperforms where he was polling a month ago, then Albuquerque has remained decidedly liberal. If White makes a late push, then it would appear to me that Albuquerque is moving back to the right and could be in play for Republicans and moderates in the near future.
I think we’ll learn a lot about our city on election night — even if we don’t know who is going to run it.
