Butler decides to run for sixth term

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — In each of the five past city council elections for the southside district, Pat Butler has stood up, faced all challengers, and won.

But in the last couple of elections, he has had to face questions from reporters about whether someone who has been on the council eight, 12 and 16 years, still wants to be on the council.

“I still have the passion,” he said last week as he was interviewed at Butler’s Office Supply, a company he and his brother have operated in Gallup for decades.

There were some who counted him out four years ago when he faced challenges from Mary Ann Armijo and then Harry Mendoza, but in the end he defeated both of them, thanks to some hard-core support among the people on the southside.

So as he prepares for another race — yes, he is running again — he says that he has remained true to the principals that he ran on back in the early ’90s.

He has remained for all of the past 16 years, the most independent of the people on the council, not afraid to be the lone dissenter if he felt the need or among the majority if he felt that the administration was working in the best interests of the citizens of Gallup.

Partly because they were political rivals and partly because of a difference in political philosophy, Butler had problems adjusting to the Mendoza style of government.
“I admit that there was a time in the first year that Harry was mayor that I wavered on the idea of running again,” he said.

He said he especially did not like Mendoza’s decision to purge several city officials, including City Manager Eric Honeyfield, when he came on. Butler said Mendoza would have been wise to have kept Honeyfield on board because of his expertise in running the city government.

“Honeyfield would have given Harry a great legacy,” Butler said.

He also pointed out that he has seen these kinds of purges twice before and they never seem to turn out well.

While he realizes it is the right of a mayor to have his own people in place, he said he also felt that it was important for the other members of the council to take into consideration what effect this would have on city programs before doing what the mayor wanted.

Now that the two have faced off — at times — and worked together — at times — on the council, Butler said his view of the mayor has softened.

“I respect Harry,” he said, adding that while he doesn’t agree with everything Mendoza is proposing for the city, he feels that his voice on the council is sorely needed because of the lack of opposition that others on the council have shown on several major issues.

“I still feel that there are things that I want to see done,” he said.

One of these is the creation of a Native American museum and cultural center that Mendoza and other on the council decided last week to make one of their top priorities for the upcoming legislative session.

But Butler wants the center to go beyond just a museum for Native Americans and spotlight all of the various cultures that have made Gallup what it is today — the Hispanics, who make up about a third of the city’s population — as well as the various other ethnic groups from the Irish, the Italians and the Slavs who have come here over the past century and brought a little bit of their own culture to Gallup.

Another area he feels the city needs to be is improving Gallup’s infrastructure and the continuing attempts to upgrade the water treatment plant.