NM Municipal Election Results

The good news: Democrat David Coss, endorsed by the Santa Fe DFA Meetup group and many other progressive and liberal organizations, will be the next mayor of Santa Fe. Here are the election results for Santa Fe. According to an article in the Santa Fe New Mexican:

Coss, 51, is the first mayor in Santa Fe’s history with a labor union background. He was an officer in the Communication Workers of America when he worked for the state Environment Department. As Public Works director and then city manager under Mayor Debbie Jaramillo in the mid-1990s, Coss helped negotiate the first union contract between the city and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Now the bad news: Republican Kevin Jackson, founding member of the evangelical New Mexico Family Council, ousted incumbent Jim Owen in the Rio Rancho mayoral race. Of course, Owen was very conservative as well, so I guess it's a wash out there on the West Mesa, one right-wingnut replaced by another. I pity the Democrats who live out that way. An Albuquerque Tribune article provides this info on Jackson:

Jackson, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, is active in social groups such as the local Boys and Girls Club. He also founded the New Mexico Family Council, a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving "family values."

His wife, Kathy, is a member of the Rio Rancho school board, which grabbed headlines last fall when it approved a policy allowing classroom discussions on alternative ideas about the origins of life, such as intelligent design, which questions Darwin's theory of evolution.

KOAT-TV provides the results of other municipal elections around the state. And local blog New Mexico Matters has a collection of articles from many areas of the state in its Election Roundup.

I'm not familiar enough with these races to provide any commentary but if anyone else out there knows about them, feel free to leave a comment.