Albuquerque will choose a new mayor in a runoff election on December 9 after no single candidate received more than 50% of the vote in November’s election. KUNM’s Daniel Montano spoke with incumbent Mayor Tim Keller about the runoff election. So far he has raised nearly $378,000 for his campaign.
KUNM: What are you doing to keep voters engaged and interested in coming back to the polls for a second time? How is it different and what's new compared to the first race?
MAYOR TIM KELLER: Well, the first thing is, just from a campaign perspective, we are calling thousands and thousands of voters to remind them that there's a runoff. And we're also knocking on doors. We’ll, I'm sure, pass 1,000 doors by the time this is over, and we're also trying to make sure that whether it's things like social media and so forth, we're just making sure that people are aware that they have a very clear choice in this election. And I think that's what's different about the runoff. To your question, it’s that this is actually bigger than a particular candidate. What we represent is a massive directional choice between, should we move forward continuing programs that we know are having real progress and real results, or should we move backwards and go back to an era where, frankly, Darren White was in charge of our police department and law enforcement that was dangerous and chaotic, and so reminding people that there's a very stark choice also is very motivating. It's a good reason why people should make sure and come out and vote
KUNM: During the initial election, was there anything that your opponents said or did, or any positions that they held that you respect or would like to incorporate going forward?
KELLER: I think I learned from all our opponents, and there were certain things, you know, even Varela had a couple of good ideas in there, just about infrastructure, and certainly some ideas that other candidates brought with respect to what we can do with things like community benefits agreements and what we can do. Even Mayling was talking about some economic development ideas that were pretty good. So there's always things, actually, even with respect to the state fair, Darren and I agree. So I always look for good ideas, and I'm happy to incorporate them into the campaign.
KUNM: What will it be like for Burqueños, living with a third term Keller administration versus a first term Keller administration? What's new and how have you evolved?
KELLER: Well, I think they get the benefit of deep experience number one, in a sense that whether it is hiring folks, whether it's knowing pitfalls to avoid. All of those things, of course, you won't see because we have strong experienced leadership, being that we've been around for a few terms. I think the other thing is, they can bank on, frankly, strength to push back and stand up for our city against what is happening with respect to DC and Donald Trump, so they can have confidence that they have a strong mayor who is going to do everything we can to defend our city, to help protect our families, no matter where they're from or who they are, and make sure that we do what's right for Albuquerque number one, and push back against those efforts that are designed to try and tear us apart or try and scare us or try and divide us.
KUNM: And as a quick follow up to that, partnerships are often cited as important in just about anything in state, local and federal government, right? And I'd like to hear from you about how you plan to work with partners going forward, particularly federal partners when it comes to law enforcement, and then here at the local level, with the City Council, and other local politicians.
KELLER: You know, I think partnership is something that is so important, because our challenges are so big. For any government or anyone to say that they have all the answers, or one fix for everything is just… you know, it's either naive or it's pandering to voters, because everyone wants to say, like, I want to say, “Yes, I can fix everything, and I can do it by myself,” but that is not true, and I think that's also the benefit of having a mayor who's been experienced and in many ways humbled by to the extent that these are big problems and you have to work with other people and collaborate. So we're going to look for a refresh with city council to try and come up with an agenda that literally helps people every day, and hopefully move past a lot of the internal fights about who's in charge of what, and with respect to the federal government, you know, we always try and work with the federal government, whether, especially it's for funding, so we're never going to give up on trying to get more funding. But also, with respect to law enforcement, our focus is really two things: Guns. We want to work with the feds as best we can to remove as many guns as we can on the street and get felons who are legally possessing guns off the street. That has been an area where we need much more partnership and much more help from the feds. And the second thing is narcotics, right? We know that things like fentanyl trafficking and the dealing that takes every step of law enforcement, and so we will absolutely work with them on those issues.
KUNM: Along those same lines actually, how would a third Keller administration be different for Burqueños from a Darren white administration?
KELLER: Well, I think there's a very stark contrast here on what you would look at. The White administration represents two things. One is the throwback to policies that we've seen before that were totally ineffective and in many ways illegal. And what I mean by that is the DOJ. When they came in, identified the beginning of Darren White's job in charge of APD back when he was at the city, as the beginning of all of the wrongful uses of force, all of the violence that was happening that was not constitutional policing in our police department, and that was fundamentally cited as his term. He said, “we're going to unshackle the police.” That is his approach to law enforcement, and it's something that, literally, the Department of Justice said is wrong, and that I've spent 10 years fixing. Well, for me, it's only been eight, but it took 10 years for us to really remedy that. Now the second thing is, even with respect to the homeless, you know, we're trying hard to find paths out of homelessness, and literally, the actual way to do that, like transport off the street, and a bed to go to at night, and then services and transitional housing after that, and addiction treatment. He has said repeatedly that he will take the gloves off, and then he says it's simple, “we'll just arrest people.” And he uses that term when it comes to immigrants, and he uses that term when it comes to homeless. And so that kind of chaos is what that administration would represent.
KUNM: Last time I checked, the Metropolitan Detenction Center is typically hovering pretty close to capacity. So what do you think of other ways to fight crime? What other methods do you have to try to bring public safety in line without simply arresting lots of people?
KELLER: So just to build on your question a moment, it certainly is true, whether you agree with it or not. There's also a pragmatism about the ideas that Darren is putting forth, which is, there aren't enough beds in jail. There aren't enough beds even in shelters, you know, for the amount of people who are unhoused. And so his answer, not only, I think, you know, it doesn't lead to an end game, because folks would just come out anyway, and it just makes the problem even more worse and more dangerous, but it's also not even doable. It's literally just a slogan. It's not a solution. So what we are trying to do is something very different, in a sense that we do know we have a criminal justice system that needs help, but we also have a system that desperately needs more resources. The more treatment and recovery from addiction beds and services we have, the more effective we can be in the criminal justice system to send people to those facilities instead of jail, and the more we have those, we can also try and get people voluntarily there to prevent and mitigate their either future drug use or the violence that can be associated with future drug use. And so for us, we have to have a layered approach that really is about, yes, you have to enforce the law when people are doing illegal drugs, but you also have to have ways to help prevent that from happening in the first place, and you have to have ways that people can actually deal with their addiction, so that they're not driving the demand for more violent crime and more drugs. So it's a complicated answer, because it's a tough question that every city in America is struggling with, and what Darren is offering is the opposite. He's offering a slogan that both won't work and is likely illegal and I would argue, immoral.
KUNM: When it comes to providing those sorts of supports that you're talking about, as you said, we've made a lot of progress. The Gateway system has opened up, which has cost the city quite a bit of money. What would it take both fiscally and logistically, to have all the resources that we would need as a city?
KELLER: Well, the tough thing is, I want to be able to say that if we had a magic wand, we could just fund all of this, and everything would be great. And I think the challenge is, you know, we don't have a magic wand, and that's why we need every level of government to do everything they can, from the state to the county and the city. So to your point about the city, you know, we have a Gateway system that first didn't exist when I came into office. I mean, we literally took care of zero people every night. Zero, 24/7, year round. None as a city. And most big cities have built a system. And so we have built this system, and it now takes care of 1,000 people, roughly every night, but we know there are thousands more on our street. So it's about expanding our system, and it literally is initially about bed counts, because we just literally have to have somewhere for someone to go at night, you know, but we have to look at what's after that. And I think this is more core to your question. This is also about housing. And so we know we have a 20,000-housingunit shortage, and we now have built about 2500 units, and we have another double that in the queue, so we'll basically be able to take a chunk out of that problem. But that's why you see, and will see in the future administration, us working on all the different reforms that we have to to facilitate housing, because we have to have houses for people to go, but also we have to lower rent prices so that people aren't driven into homelessness in the first place?
KUNM: Yeah. Well, hopefully with new housing, that'll help with those rent prices, right?
KELLER: You got it exactly. I mean, that is, housing is one of the few supply-and-demand things where economics just are what they are, and so we got to increase the supply. That's the answer to a lot of these issues.
KUNM: And that being the case, there is quite a lot that the state recently, in the last legislative session, did. There's a lot that's happening right now in the city that's currently bubbling, that’s simmering — hasn't quite been cooked yet. The fairgrounds is a good example. What is in your mind the clearest and quickest way to get as much quality affordable housing as possible within the city?
KELLER: Well, and I appreciate that you mentioned there is a lot like in the works, and that's good, you know. The downside is it's taking a long time, you know. But when we say what a lot is, also speak from the city perspective. We think the fastest, most effective way to get to more housing, just for the city, is actually to focus on converting hotel and office buildings into housing. So there's famous ones, like the Wells Fargo building downtown. We're working very hard, and we have state funding to help with this, which is great to convert that into hundreds of affordable housing units and mixed use housing units. And it's the same thing on the giant skyscraper at San Mateo and Central. We're trying to convert that into housing. So these are hundreds of units at a time. We're also building the Uptown Connect Mixed-use Housing Project, which is going to be right where, like Nusenda Credit Union is in the middle of Uptown, near Coronado [Mall]. Those three projects alone would almost add 1,000 new housing units. So the city needs to take these big projects on that really require public-private partnership, and then we have to enable the private sector to do that work on their own. That's why we're doing a lot of zoning changes to facilitate housing. And then we also have to do just small scale, gentle development all up and down our transit corridors. And that's things like townhomes and, you know, cottages, things like that, different forms of housing that are denser, but they're also gentle. They're not, you know, giant skyscrapers, right?
KUNM: I just wanted to give you a chance to highlight anything else that you think is important to say in regards to this campaign and this election.
KELLER: I think some of this election is about, really, confidence in our city, and at the end of the day, I believe that voters will see that they're confident, at least in the past that I have been working with them on as mayor. They might be frustrated, but they're confident in the direction. And I think Darren White, my opponent, represents the opposite. It's somehow, I think, a note about “you don't have confidence in the city itself and in our community.” I mean, he's running a campaign sort of shaming Albuquerque, and I think that's wrong, and I don't think people have confidence in that. And I think it's also related to even the city workforce. I think the city workforce, through the unions that have endorsed me and so forth, they have confidence in my leadership. You see, Darren White, he’s got a no-confidence-vote from his own police department, both at the city and when he was in charge of the state. So to me, it's about, what do you have confidence in going forward? And I think, you know, knock on wood, I think folks will see that there's more confidence in what I'm wanting to do with the city than there is in the lack of confidence people had in his leadership.
KUNM: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. It's always a pleasure.
KELLER: You got it. Yeah, appreciate you too, thanks for covering!
KUNM is still working to schedule an interview with Darren White, which will run on air and online as soon as possible.
Support for this coverage comes from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
