SANTA FE, NM (AP) – Three candidates for the office of Santa Fe Mayor are scheduled to participate in an online forum hosted by Hispanic business leaders.
First-term Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber is seeking a second term after leading New Mexico’s fastest growing metropolitan area through the pandemic and state health hotlines that all but shut down the crucial hospitality and tourism industries to have.
The round table discussion on Monday was moved from a hotel to a remote online format in response to concerns about the coronavirus.
Webber, who won the election as the first candidate for public office in 2018, is best known as a publishing entrepreneur and founder of Fast Times Magazine.
He is the first mayor of Sant Fe to work under a new, strong, full-salary mayor system, and his tenure has been marked by simmering cultural conflicts over monuments and tributes to Santa Fe’s Spanish colonial history and 19th century armed conflict.
Challenger Joanne Vigil Coppler, a Democrat elected to Santa Fe City Council in 2018, is running for seasoned public administration who previously served as Santa Fe Human Resources Director after previous stints in the state courts, state government and Los Alamos County.
Webber has accused local brother organizations of waging a secret campaign on behalf of Vigil Coppler as they condemn the mayor’s handling of conflicts over statues and monuments of New Mexico’s Spanish colonial past and Union Civil War forces fighting indigenous tribes.
A city ethics committee last week rejected a complaint from Webber’s campaign that the groups should be subject to campaign funding disclosure.
Republican Alexis Martinez Johnson is also running for mayor on an anti-abortion platform after an unsuccessful candidacy for Congress in 2020, as the limited government insisted.
During Webber’s tenure, Santa Fe set up an annual reenactment of the return of Spanish settlers 12 years after the Pueblo Indian revolt of 1680.
But some conflicts over history in Santa Fe have escalated amid a national discussion of public markings paying tribute to historical figures related to racism, slavery, and genocide.
Indigenous leaders and some younger Latino activists say figures from the region’s Spanish colonial days should not be celebrated for overseeing the enslavement of indigenous people and trying to ban their cultural practices.
Comments are closed.