Council votes for runoff
Clear majority needed despite past elections, candidates told

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Try and try as they might, the City Council would not budge.

Capturing 39.99 percent of the votes cast Tuesday, mayoral hopeful Harry Mendoza was less than a vote away from the 40 percent he needed to avoid a runoff against he closest competitor, Ralph Richards. From the mathematics of rounding off fractions to the municipal elections of 1999, Mendoza and his supporters have tried convincing the city to call it a victory.

But close, the City Council decided, just wasn't enough. During a special session Friday morning, it voted 3-2 to set the runoff for March 27. Councilors Frank Gonzales and Bill Nechero dissented.

City Clerk Patricia Holland said several people, including Mendoza himself, have asked her if the city was allowed to round off the percentage. City Attorney George Kozeliski answered the question Friday.

'No rounding'
After the election's canvassing board spent all of Thursday recounting ballots to come up with the final numbers, Kozeliski said, he spent another three hours with the help of his son, a licensed attorney in Colorado scouring the Internet for any sign that a city could round off its election results.

"In all 50 states," he said, "there's nothing on rounding."

To figure out exactly what 40 percent of the vote is, he explained, the city must take the total number of votes cast in the race 3,518 and multiply it by 0.4. That's 1,407.2 votes to avoid a runoff. Practically, Kozeliski said, that's 1,408. Mendoza finished with 1,407.

But Mendoza still wasn't convinced. The way he figured it, the council could just as easily have decided to round down. The law was open to interpretation, he said, and the council just happened to interpret it otherwise.

Mendoza wasn't surprised to the council's decision, though.

"From this council," he said, "I wasn't expecting anything else."

"I guess they have a lot of money to waste," he said.

Holland hasn't added up all the costs just yet, but she figures the general election cost the city up to $20,000. The runoff, she said, will likely cost about half that.

Mendoza backers
At least Gonzales and Nechero were on Mendoza's side.

Considering how close Mendoza came to an outright victory, and how far behind Richards finished Mendoza's votes nearly doubled his Gonzales, an admitted Mendoza supporter, couldn't justify the expense of a runoff.

"Numbers are numbers, but a majority is a majority," he said. "Let's put it that way."

Patty Herrera, another Mendoza supporter, even tried swaying the council by bringing up the municipal elections of 1999, when John Pea won the mayor's race with only 37.8 percent of the vote. There was no runoff, she said, because the city attorney at the time, Steve Seeger, decided that the provision in the city charter that called for one would not stand up to federal law.

"I know," she said, "because I was the runner-up."

If the city couldn't justify a runoff then, she told the council, it couldn't justify one now.

Kozeliski stepped in to clarify. Even though it's been in the charter since 1989, he said, the runoff provision was indeed unenforceable. The Supreme Court even said so. But when New Mexico voters amended the state's constitution in 2004 to allow municipalities to decide whether or not they wanted runoffs for themselves, he said, that all changed. That's why Gallup held its first runoff two years ago legally.

But Herrera believes the city set a precedent in 1999. And if the council wouldn't respect it, she said, Richards should.

"If Ralph has the city's best interests at heart," she said, "he should concede this election."

At that point Mayor Bob Rosebrough cut her off.

Richards, for his part, has no intention of giving up now.

"We'll be moving forward and we'll be having a runoff March 27," he said emphatically just after the council set the date.

Reluctantly accepting the council's decision, Mendoza is looking ahead as well. He's hoping his majority in the general election holds up in the runoff.

"The numbers are there," he said. "If we can get the people out ... we should win."

Richards is hoping otherwise.