Voters give Nechero lift to City Hall
Butler and Mendoza to face runoff election on March 29

City Councilor Bill Nechero gives a thumbs up to passers by from his campaign spot across the street from the Nothside fire station polling place Tuesday evening. (Photo by John A. Bowersmith/Independent)

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — All the ballots in Tuesday's two city council races have been counted and added up, but that doesn't mean the election is over.

District 1 Councilman Bill Nechero can rest easy, having handily secured himself a second four-year term in the council's southside seat over opponents Denise Gallegos and Cecil Garcia with 60 percent of the vote, twice the share of his nearest challenger. However, the council's District 3 seat, representing the city's southside residents, is still up for grabs.

None of the three candidates in the southside race secured enough votes, which would have taken 40 percent of the total, to win the seat outright Tuesday evening. That sets up a runoff election between incumbent Pat Butler and challenger Harry Mendoza on March 29. District 2 Councilwoman Mary Ann Armijo was narrowly knocked out of the running.

With less than three percentage points separating the first and third place finishers in the southside race, it looked as though all three candidates had a chance to end up in the runoff until the totals from the final polling station came in shortly after 9 p.m. As it turned out, Mendoza walked away in the lead with 34.2 percent of the vote. Butler was close behind with 33.8 percent, and Armijo just missed the runoff with 31.9 percent.

It was an odd and as the mayor and other councilors conceded unfortunate set of circumstances that pushed Armijo into the race to begin with.

Taking up the overdue work that past administrations failed to take care of, the city council set about redrawing its district boundaries last summer. Those boundaries determine which councilmanresidents get to elect and hold accountable. They need to be redrawn regularly to keep the populations in each district reasonably equal. City officials acknowledge the districts should have been redrawn a decade ago, but hadn't been looked at in more than two.

When all the redistricting options had been proposed and vetted, and the dust finally settled, the Mossman neighborhood of District 2 was taken over by District 3. Armijo, a Mossman resident, suddenly found herself living in Butler's district.

Since Butler was up for election in 2005, Armijo, whose term ends in 2007, had a difficult decision to make: challenge Butler for the District 3 seat now, or serve out her term in District 2, wait on the sidelines for two years, and run for the District 3 seat in 2009.

Armijo went with the first option, and said Tuesday she didn't regret the decision.

"I still did good, I'm happy, and I'm still proud," she said.

Armijo said she'll probably run again in 2009, and believes her efforts this year will help her if she does. As close as the race was, Armijo had a limited base of support in her new district and went up against two candidates with long political histories on the south side.

Now that she's canvassed the district for the past month and made a respectable showing, "more people will know who I am when I run again," she said.

For now, southside voters will have to decide between Butler and Mendoza, who far outspent both his opponents in hopes of avoiding a runoff. But it wasn't to be.

Although voters will have to make up their own minds March 29, Armijo could still influence the outcome depending on which of the two men she decides to endorse. She wouldn't commit Tuesday evening, but said she'd announce her choice no later than Thursday.

Nechero, meanwhile, will be preparing to be sworn in for a second term March 7.

— To contact reporter Zsombor Peter, call 863-6811 ext. 217.