Voters on Tuesday ousted two incumbents from the Chama School Board and one from Pojoaque’s Board, re-elected Board presidents for another term in Mesa Vista and Dulce and passed a two-mil levy in the Jemez Mountain School District.
Results and figures for the five school board elections in Rio Arriba County were provided by the County Clerk’s Office, and Santa Fe County Chief Deputy Clerk Denise Lamb provided figures for the Pojoaque election. All results are unofficial until after canvassing Friday.
In Española, 212 voters out of 8,575 registered and eligible to vote in this election cast ballots for two unopposed candidates. Board Vice President Floyd Archuleta received 70 votes to keep his seat, to which he was appointed in early 2007 after former Board member Joe Guillen left the Board to become director of the New Mexico School Boards Association. Coco Archuleta received 142 votes to replace Board President Joe Romero, who did not run for re-election.
Despite their lack of opposition, both candidates hovered outside the District’s sole polling place, at the Rio Arriba County Clerk’s Española office.
“It’s not bad, for an unopposed race,” Coco Archuleta said of the 80 voters who had cast ballots by noon. “If we get 100, I’m happy. Someone who comes to vote for this election, they’ll probably come out and vote for a bond or a mill levy, that’s more important.”
Politicians from the Ojo Caliente side of the Mesa Vista School District will now have a 4-1 majority on the Board after voters re-elected Board President Joe Gurulé to a second term and elected Marvyn Jaramillo to replace outgoing Board member Braen Alire Terrazas.
Gurulé defeated his opponent Edna Campos, of El Rito, 305 votes to 259. Gurulé received only two-fifths of all votes in El Rito, but beat Campos soundly in almost every other precinct in the District. Jaramillo won his election, against Joseph Henry Lopez, of Vallecitos, 301 votes to 229. Roughly a third of Mesa Vista’s 1,596 registered voters cast ballots on Tuesday.
Gurulé and Jaramillo campaigned together and will join Board Vice President Fernando Gurulé and Secretary Janet Martinez to form an overwhelming majority over Board member Steve Archuleta, the only remaining Board member from El Rito and Superintendent Robert Archuleta’s only strong ally on the Board.
Voters, as well as candidates and their supporters, panicked when several precincts ran out of ballots or came close to it late in the day.
By 4:30 p.m., the Vallecitos Fire Station polling place was down to two blank ballots left, forcing a poll worker to drive to the Ojo Caliente precinct to retrieve a dozen blank ballots, precinct officials said.
Fernando Gurulé called the SUN around 6:15 p.m. to report the La Madera precinct had run out of ballots. Minutes later, Bill Page, of La Madera, called to say his precinct had run out of ballots just as he showed up to vote at 6:20 p.m. Page said poll workers there told him the El Rito precinct was also close to running out.
“It’s interesting (they ran out of ballots),” Page said. “Because there’s a fight here. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it.”
Deputy County Clerk Fred Vigil denied any precincts ran out of ballots. La Madera precinct worker Carlos Ortega said his precinct was out of ballots for a 10-minute time period, but confirmed all voters, including Page, were able to vote after Vigil brought in more ballots from neighboring precincts.
“The problem is we didn’t have enough ballots to begin with,” Ortega said. “We were supposed to have 70, but we only got 60. It was Mr. Vigil’s doing that everyone was able to vote.”
Candidates from Chama took both contested seats in the election, one of them by a landslide, the other by a margin almost too close to call. Both ousted two-term incumbents.
Thomas Ray Rivas trounced Board President Art Espinoza 453 votes to 244.
In a race split evenly three ways, former village of Chama councilor Billy Joe Samora squeaked by current Board member Gary Salazar 244 votes to 237. Salazar in turn came out only 15 votes ahead of opponent Higinia Cordova’s 222 votes.
Vigil said Samora’s seven-vote margin would ordinarily be too close to call until after canvassing, when provisional votes are counted. But only one provisional vote was cast in the Chama district, likely meaning a safe victory for Samora, Vigil said. Salazar did not return calls for comment
Of the District’s 2,307 registered voters, only 276 cast ballots.
Pojoaque School Board President Lilliemae Ortiz lost the seat she has held since 1997 to Sharon Dogruel, an educator from Nambé. Dogruel received 522 votes and Ortiz received 457. Jon Paul Romero defeated Claudine Armenta 582 votes to 382 in the race for a seat left open by Paula Roybal Sanchez, who did not run for re-election.
About 9 percent of the District’s 6,345 voters cast ballots in the election.
Two incumbents retained their seats in the Jemez Mountain School Board election. Board member Mark Valdez, who ran unopposed, kept his seat with 174 votes. About a quarter of the District’s 1,106 registered voters participated in the election.
And Board member Billy Cordova foiled in a 186 to 100 vote opponent Bernadette Serrano’s attempt to reclaim her seat. Serrano was on the Board from 2001 until she was ousted by Cordova in 2005.
Jemez Mountain voters passed a two-mil levy with a 174-100 vote, which will allow the District to continue collecting until 2014 a property tax of $2 for every $1,000 of a property’s assessed value. The levy will bring in about $779,000 a year for the District, Superintendent Adan Delgado said.
The District will likely apply the funds toward maintenance projects throughout its schools, such as installing a new fire suppression system in the Lindrith Area Charter School’s kitchen.
Dulce Board President David Montoya easily kept his seat with 88 votes against write-in candidate Keva Vicenti, who received 38. Robert Charles Cooke took the three-way race for outgoing Secretary Steve Cata’s seat with 67 votes. Meron Sandoval received 13 votes and Merlin Tafoya Sr. received 43.
Of the District’s 1,349 voters, 137 cast ballots.