The Jemez Mountain Electric Cooperative’s board races are heating up, with challengers emphasizing locally-produced solar energy.
Elections for districts 4, 5 and 6 will be held on three different dates starting this week through July 1.
District 4
Incumbent Trustee David R. Salazar is running unopposed. First elected in 1969, Salazar, 76, is the Board’s longest-serving trustee.
“I’ve been serving for 40 years without a break,” Salazar said.
Salazar is the patriarch of the powerful Block-Salazar clan, a force in northern Democratic politics. He is employed by Rio Arriba County as the Oñate Center director.
District 5
In District 5, where two seats are up for grabs, Rio Arriba County Commission Chairman Elias Coriz and Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo’s Tsay Corporation Chief Executive Officer Ron Lovato have teamed up to challenge incumbent allies Leroy Ortiz and Robert Martinez, respectively.
Renewable energy is a buzzword for both camps, but they differ on how best to obtain it over the long term. Coriz and Lovato want the Co-op to encourage local rooftop solar energy production, while incumbent Ortiz thinks the renewable energy delivered from other states and counties is just fine — so long as it’s cheap.
“We already get alternative energy from Tri-State,” Leroy Ortiz said, citing a 30 mega-watt, half-million panel solar farm planned for construction in Colfax County. “It doesn’t really matter where it’s generated, so long as we get it at the lowest cost for our members.”
Coriz said he doesn’t want Co-op members to depend on Tri-State alone for renewable energy. Some members want to produce their own solar energy using roof-top solar panels, he said.
“Right now, we can’t know for sure whether the power coming off the grid from Tri-State is renewable or not,” Coriz said. “If we had distributed solar on people’s rooftops, they could sell the Co-op the electricity they don’t need, and we’d know it’s local, sustainable green energy.”
Coriz and Ortiz are both from Chimayó. Ortiz has served two terms on the Co-op Board and lost to Coriz in the 2002 County Commission election.
Ortiz’s fellow District 5 incumbent Robert Martinez has been a trustee since 1986. Martinez refused to comment on the election.
Coriz previously sat on the Española School Board and now owns a security company, ProSec, that holds a contract worth about $422,000 per year with the Española School District. He is a second-term County commissioner and cannot seek re-election due to term limits.
District 5 encompasses an area east of the Rio Grande from Chimayó and Truchas to Dixon and Embudo. District 5’s third seat, held by Levi Valdez, is not up for election this year.
District 6
Kenny Borrego, an electrician certified in fiber optics, is going up against Leroy Lopez for District 6’s trustee seat. The seat is being vacated by Borrego’s aunt, Marie Pacheco — who, in turn, took over the seat in 1994 from her husband, Tony Pacheco.
Four years ago, Lopez ran against Marie Pacheco and lost by just eight votes. Now that Pacheco has decided not to run for re-election, Lopez is trying again against her nephew.
“Leroy Lopez fought me four years ago and he’s still fighting,” Pacheco said. “He wants the position.”
Lopez did not return several phone calls for comment.
Borrego, 49, owns three businesses: Superior Industries, Superior Electronic, Inc. and Classic Motor Company, Inc., all on North Riverside Drive in Española.
“I’m interested in trying to get along with other co-ops like Kit Carson, getting on board with their programs,” Borrego said Tuesday. “They’re trying to work with Jemez on broadband. Broadband infrastructure is a hot item right there.”
Kit Carson is stringing fiber optic communications lines alongside their electrical lines, Borrego said.
“Rural areas are interested in solar systems (at their homes) if they can sell back to the Co-op,” Borrego added. “It’s called distributive generation.”
Borrego’s political history includes an unsuccessful campaign against then-Santa Fe County Commissioner Marcos Trujillo in 1994, he said Tuesday.
“I barely lost,” Borrego said. “It was like 30 votes.”
Pacheco, who was voted Board Treasurer in 2008, said she supports her nephew for the July 1 election.
“I told him I’m too old to knock on doors,” Pacheco said, laughing. “I’d use the telephone for him, and that’s it.”
Trustees serve four-year terms. According to the Co-op’s bylaws, Co-op districts 4 (Española) and 6 (Pojoaque) each elect two trustees, and District 5 has three Trustees.
When more than Co-op one seat is up for election in a given district, each Co-op member votes for each seat in that district, regardless of where in the district the member lives, General Manager Ernesto Gonzales said. In District 5, for example, each Co-op member will vote for either Ortiz or Coriz, and for either Martinez or Lovato.