Copyright © 2021
As Manuel Gonzales campaigns for Albuquerque mayor, more voters say they disapprove than approve of his current job as Bernalillo County Sheriff.
In his second tenure as the county’s chief law enforcement officer, Gonzales has a 34% job admission rate and a 43% rejection rate, a new Journal poll shows. Another 15% of voters have mixed feelings.
Candidate for mayoral and current Bernalillo County Sheriff Manuel Gonzales at his campaign headquarters. Sheriff Gonzales is far more popular with Republicans than Democrats. Adolphe Pierre-Louis / Journal
Gonzales first won the sheriff’s job in 2014 and then scored a 10-point win on his 2018 re-election bid.
How voters judge the sheriff’s current job performance depends heavily on their political party.
Although Gonzales was elected a Democrat and remains registered in the party, he has little support in this.
Only 19% of Democrats approve of the way he does his job, compared to 59% who oppose it.
It does better with independents – 44% agree compared with 28% who disagree – but it does best with Republicans. 54% agree, 23% disagree.
Brian Sanderoff, president of Research and Polling Inc., said the numbers were not surprising given Gonzales’ policies and stated philosophy.
“I’m sure there are a lot of Republicans who don’t know he’s a Democrat and they may not care,” said Sanderoff, whose Albuquerque company ran the Journal Poll. “He presents himself from a more moderate to conservative perspective.”
Sanderoff said he believed many Liberals were still upset about Gonzales’ high profile trip to Washington, DC in 2020 to meet with then-President Donald Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr. The visit, coupled with a federal crime-fighting operation targeting certain cities, including Albuquerque, was severely reprimanded by some Democrats.
“That’s the kind of thing that liberals might upset but are applauded by conservatives,” Sanderoff said.
People from his own party could also see Gonzales unfavorably for not providing his deputies with body cameras until state law required it, Sanderoff said.
“He’s handled the sheriff’s office in a special way that conservatives may be more supportive of and liberals are more critical of,” said Sanderoff.
Consent broke in other areas too, including gender. 40 percent of men rate his performance positively, but only 29 percent of women.
Meanwhile, older voters are particularly dissatisfied with the sheriff: 51% of those over 65 express their disapproval – significantly more than any other age group.
The Journal poll is based on a scientific, city-wide sample of 536 likely regular local election voters, including those who voted in the 2017 and / or 2019 local elections, and a small sample of newly registered voters expected to vote in 2021.
The survey was conducted from October 15 to October 21. The sample of voters has an error rate of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points. The margin of error grows for subsamples.
All interviews were conducted by live professional interviewers, with multiple callbacks to households who did not initially answer the phone.
Both mobile phone numbers (82%) and landline connections (18%) were used.
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