Chavez - Campaign Kryptonite

The results are in and, well nothing much has changed except it's now harder to recall councilors and the voters decided to allow the city to steal poor folk's equity... but we digress. Last night saw all of the incumbents win, and win big including district 9's councilor Don Harris, who we predicted would lose narrowly (we're still trying to get the feathers our of our teeth). Apparently, his single themed message - keep me, the one you elected rather than letting the mayor choose my replacement - resonated with district 9 voters.

While every election has its share of losers (or those who are winning challenged), last night's biggest loser wasn't even on the ballot, the Almighty Mayor himself. Every candidate that Mayor Chavez was linked to either directly (Katherine Martinez) or indirectly (Paulette de'Pascal, Joan Griffin) was soundly rejected by the voters.

Some of it was the quality of the candidates recruited by the 11th floor. Someone who is in the midst of a messy divorce and faces allegations of embezzlement shouldn't be running in the first place... that's what you call a fatally flawed candidate. The others were articulate and credible candidates whose only real flaw was that they were tied to the mayor.

Let's be real here, it's haaaard to unseat an incumbent even with the best of candidates. However, we've never seen this type of drag on a campaign before; a campaign where the candidate is either publicly endorsed or linked to a high ranking public official. This negative effect was most notable in the District 6 race where Republican Kevin Wilson defeated the Martycrat Joan Griffin.

We had seen surprising strength from Mr. Wilson in our Eye Poll two weeks ago but weren't sure how that would translate to the election. We're also convinced that late revelations about mayoral ties to the recall group New Mexicans for Democracy influenced yesterday's vote.

This is a new state of affairs for the Almighty Mayor whose behind the scenes wink and nod endorsements, and indirect involvement council campaigns have typically helped a candidate. It's an open secret that Mayor Chavez backed both Tina Cummins (against Don Harris) and Sally Mayer in the 2005 election cycle.

We believe that the Almighty's involvement initially kept Councilor Harris from getting to 40% of the vote forcing his 2005 runoff election with then Councilor Cummins. Now the Napoleon of the 11th floor finds himself in a relationship with the council that's colder than a Russian Winter with the recent defection of Councilor Mayer. It's amazing how in just two short years Marty has gone from campaign savior to campaign Kryptonite.