ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — While there’s not a presidential or gubernatorial race on the ballot this year, there are plenty of races to decide your city’s future. One of the most consequential is the race to be Albuquerque’s next mayor.
There are six candidates: incumbent Tim Keller, former Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White, former U.S. Attorney for New Mexico Alex Uballez, former Sandoval County Deputy Manager Mayling Armijo, former fire chief Eddie Varela and current Albuquerque city councilor Louie Sanchez.
Some of the biggest topics all the candidates say they want to tackle are crime and homelessness.
White, Sanchez and Varela believe cracking down on criminals and adding more boots to the ground is the solution.
“If you ignore the small crimes it breeds — the bigger, more violent crimes. We’re going to have officers out doing traffic stops. It’s something you don’t even see anymore,” White said.
“We need to make sure that we’re enforcing the laws at the lowest levels, the laws that are in the books, and making sure that we’re growing our police department,” Sanchez said.
“I’m gonna set an emergency curfew for 18 year olds and under we have a situation where we have 12, 13, 14, year olds murdering people…and we’re gonna hold parents responsible as well,” Varela said.
During KOB 4’s interviews, Sanchez, White and Armijo all mentioned replacing Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina.
Both Keller and Uballez believe having police focus on more serious, violent crime is the answer to keeping crime down. And they, along with Armijo, want to look at community policing and behavioral health initiatives.
“I want us to go back to community policing, neighborhood liaisons, beat patrols. And you know, in my first week in office, we’re going to have, I’m going to order APD to give me a plan on how to reduce call times,” Armijo said.
“The speed cameras, the gunshot detection, the license plate readers, and then you partner that with civilians taking calls, so that apd is freed up to actually fight violent crime,” Keller said.
“A lot of people fall into criminal justice because of poverty, addiction or mental illness. These are not things that a criminal justice sentence deters. We have to find alternative remedies,” Uballez said.
When it comes to homelessness, Keller touts the still in progress Gateway system but Sanchez, who has questioned the multi-million dollar project for years as a city councilor, argues it’s not enough.
“You have to have a place where people can get help, and you have to have a mechanism for them to get addiction treatment to get off the street. That is what the gateway system is,” Keller said.
“Crime and homelessness, and both are tied together, and i think that’s the biggest issue that we need to deal with. Currently, the fentanyl use in our city has just gone unchecked,” Sanchez said.
White, Armijo and Varela believe it’s time to take a much tougher approach to people facing homelessness who don’t want to receive the help offered.
“You have a choice. It’s right now. We’re not going to give you time to think about it. Either get in that van and go take us up on the services, or you will be cited, and if they don’t move, they will be arrested,” White said.
“Here’s rehab or jail. Like, what are your options? And I get that the court system with the revolving door is an issue for us, but at some point a judge is going to have to have to say, ‘this is not the quality of life that any city wants,'” Armijo said.
“We will actually give them citations, and those citations will go to the judge. The homeless people will not show up, and we’re going to get bench warrants for them, for their arrest, for failure to show up,” Varela said.
But Uballez argues arresting our way out of the issue doesn’t work.
“They get released tomorrow. They are back on the streets, and we’ve all spent a ton of money doing something that puts someone back exactly where they were before we have to actually treat the problems,” Uballez said.
There’s also a chance we may not have a clear winner after Tuesday’s election.
Analysts predict we will have a runoff election because there are six candidates in the race. If a candidate does not get at least 50% of the vote, we will have to have a runoff election within 45 days of the results getting certified.
That would be between the two candidates who get the most votes overall.
Which is what the city saw in 2018 Keller was first elected mayor. Ultimately he beat current city councilor Dan Lewis in that runoff election.
