Our Recent Eection

These are turbulent times.

Tuesday’s election reflected that. In the mayoral race, City Councilor Kassandra Gandara, who seemed like an incumbent, had a narrow initial lead, but ultimately lost after five rounds of ranked-choice vote-counting. That majority, narrowly beating an earnest, well-meaning, and experienced candidate, speaks to widespread discontent here.

Sussing out the sources of that discontent, and addressing them, is the challenge facing us all, local officials and aged Sunday columnists alike. Obviously the economy, the unsettling times, homelessness, partisanship, and petty crime were factors. Maybe some questionable police shootings, and the contradictory need to train and support police officers while reining them in, played some role. I’m sorry to see Gandara go. I like her and thought her intentions good for the city, although I question the ethics and legality of a sort of Las Cruces “executive committee” about which councilors not on it know little or nothing. I wish Mayor-Elect Eric Enriquez the best.

I voted for Councilor Johana Bencomo, listing Gabriel Duran second, and welcome her re-election,. I wonder how long-ago mayor Bill Mattiace will affect the council. Tessa Abeyta has worked hard and done some good; but Mattiace’s long-standing popularity (and perhaps a reaction against an all-woman council) prevailed, by 50 votes.

I’m glad the Las Cruces School Board will stay sane. Nationally and locally, education is under attack by folks who would whitewash U.S. history and who think it’s a waste of time trying to make kids who are different in any way feel comfortable and motivated to learn. How, and how much, the controversy over an unused library book affected the election I can’t say.

Standardized tests have long rated our state education low. That’s fact. I don’t know the answer. Neither do any candidates. Our best hope is to elect people who not only know education and care about kids, but are open to evidence-based changes and improvements. Most kids are “different” somehow, particularly here. School prayer or saying slaves didn’t have it so bad won’t help.

Nationally, it was a fairly good election for progressives. Voters enshrined women’s reproductive rights in Ohio’s Constitution. Virginia’s state senate stayed Democratic, and the house of delegates flipped Democratic. Despite Mr. Biden’s political weakness.

Conventional wisdom says that women’s reproductive rights are the banner that will lead Democrats, including President Biden, to 2024 success. I have mixed feelings.

Women’s choice has been a key issue for me since I was 21. I welcomed Roe v. Wade. I welcome now the intense focus on repairing the damage done by the present version of the U.S. Supreme Court. Republican heartlessness and intransigence on the issue is badly out-of-step with how most people feel, and Democrats should stress that.

But many citizens feel real and deep discontents. Despite Biden’s relative success with the economy, people are stretched thin. Our system hasn’t changed. Corporate greed and power still keep the system skewed toward the rich, while Republicans have long won elections by telling voters it’s all the fault of the poor. That’s exacerbated by two wars, a dangerously changing climate, a homelessness epidemic, and a recent pandemic. Democrats must articulate persuasive thoughts on those subjects. Blind support for Netanyahu’s Israel will prove a heavy weight for Democrats.

Folks still dismiss the rage fueling Trump Mania as racist resentment. (Some is.) Democrats and journalists must recognize that citizens feel more justified forms of anger that Republicans help misdirect.

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 [The above column appeared Sunday, 12 November, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, as well as on the KRWG website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]

[The mayoral election tends to answer conservatives’ knee-jerk criticism of ranked-choice voting. Yeah, it’s new, and I guess that’s scary for some; but it worked, giving voters a more complete voice without the expense of a special runoff election; and it doesn’t necessarily help for progressives. Here, Gandara might have been declared the winner, with the most first-round votes but less than 50% of the votes; but votes from other candidates’ supporters kept him in it, until he got 70% of Isabella Solis’s supporters and jumped into the lead. I hope folks remember this. People ask me whether ranked-choice voting is a good thing: I reply that it is, if you strongly value democracy. How Mr. Enriquez conducts himself during the next four years will decide how I feel about the individual result this year, but I remain in favor of the principle.]

[A conservative friend points out why no one at LCPS should be dancing in the streets or resting on their laurels. The progressive “slate,” had there been one, would have been Board Chair Teresa Tenorio, appointee Patrick Nolan, and former Chair Ed Frank, trying to unseat incumbent board member Carol Cooper. Tenorio won reelection in district 4 by 3% of the vote over Julia Ruiz; but since 27% of the votes went to a second challenger, Edward Howell, conservatives quite reasonably feel Ruiz would have prevailed in a two-person race. Patrick Nolan won in District 1 with 57% of the vote. However, Ed Frank beat Cooper by about 30 votes, subject to recount. (So two of the three won close with under 50% of the total.]

[Just after sending the column in, I read on-line this object lesson in applying rightwing ideas to education. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appointed political cronies to destroy Florida’s small public honors college. It was a fairly progressive environment, with kids whose brains entitled them to be there but whose personal habits and beliefs weren’t always what Ron might have wanted. So he fired the President and the Board, installing political cronies, including one who’d organized bogus attacks on “critical race theory.” They wanted to get rid of free-thinkers, and did: hundred immediately transferred elsewhere, 35 of them to a single small western Massachusetts liberal arts college. Then they changed standards, recruiting a lot of great athletes with lower test scores. It’s a joke from here, but a personal tragedy for some of those kids, and shows that with enough power you can turn a college rightwing. But why would you want to? Why chase all the top students? What level of stupidity and insecurity does it take to be Ron DeSantis?]

[Not saying each school board member is perfect (though I tend to think highly of them); but we dodged a bullet by rejecting candidates favored by our conservative friends here.]