Rondon pushing ahead
Navajo woman says mayor's race was just the beginning

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — For Gallup voters hoping to make history this year by placing the first American Indian in the mayor's seat, March 6 ended in disappointment. But for Anna Rondon, the only American Indian in the race, her defeat was only the beginning.

"It's the beginning of a continuing campaign to get the Navajo vote out," she said Wednesday.

She faced a crowded field to be sure. No fewer than seven people filed for the mayor's race this year. Some were experienced campaigners. Ralph Richards had already run for the County Commission once, unsuccessfully. Mary Ann Armijo had been on the City Council for four years and recently chaired the local Democratic Party committee. Harry Mendoza had served several terms on both the County Commission and the City Council already. For a shot at victory, the novice candidate was hoping for a strong showing at the polls from her fellow American Indians.

Unfortunately for Rondon and her team, it didn't happen. Among the seven candidates, she finished fifth with 141 votes, a modest 4 percent of the total votes cast in the race.

Rondon knew it wouldn't be easy. Although American Indians account for fully one third of Gallup's 22,000 residents, they're not thought to vote in city elections in nearly as high numbers as their white and Hispanic neighbors. There are no reliable figures, but judging very roughly from the last names on the county's voter rolls, Rondon figures they make up only 17 percent of Gallup's registered voters.

Local Navajos have several ideas as to why.

Some, like Rondon, believe it's a lack of voter education. Many Navajos who live in Gallup, she said, are under the mistaken impression that they can't vote in both city and tribal elections, so they don't bother to register.

Others think it's simply because they don't want to register. Many Navajos are still very much attached to their traditional lands, and because nearly all that land sits outside of Gallup city limits, what happens inside the city doesn't much concern them.

For the same reasons, some say, many of the Navajos who live in Gallup don't spend much time here.

Gloria Begay thinks that might explain why she didn't find many of them at home while going door to door helping drum up support for Rondon's campaign. She's the interim president of the Committee for Native American Progress, a new local group trying to get more American Indians involved in local politics, and has had trouble just getting people to attend the group's meetings regularly.

"It just doesn't seem like a stable group of people who live in the city," Begay said.

Still others account for the lack of engagement on inter-generational trauma, the theory that the traumatic events experienced by one generation the Long Walk, for instance get passed on to the next in an oppressive chain.

All that might help explain why no American Indian has ever served on the City Council let alone as mayor. And why only two Rondon and Don Hubbard, who ran for mayor in 1995 have even tried.

Begay believes money, and the name recognition it can buy, probably factored into Rondon's showing at the polls as well. Although she spent thousands less than all the candidates who finished ahead of her, though, Rondon disagrees. She said she'd rather spend any money she raises on social causes than self-promotion.

"I'm not a run-of-the-mill politician maybe that's why I didn't win," she said with a laugh.

If it wasn't for a lack of money, then, it wasn't for a lack of effort either. Rondon and her team knocked on many doors, registering voters and encouraging them to go to the polls. As a member of the Gallup Committee for a Minimum Wage Increase, which petitioned voters to place a minimum wage initiative on the March 6 ballot, Rondon said she helped register some 1,500 people. She figures roughly 300 of them were American Indian.

So they've made progress. And for Rondon, it doesn't end here. She hopes to work with the Native American Voter Alliance, a group out of Albuquerque working to register American Indians for the 2008 presidential election, when it comes through Gallup in the next month or so. She also hopes to collaborate with a new American Indian voter coordinator she said the state recently set up within the Secretary of State's Office.

As for her own political future, Rondon isn't saying much, though she did hint at a possible run for an unspecified state office in the not-too-distant future.

Whatever she decides, Rondon hopes and believes her campaign has inspired at least a few other American Indians in Gallup to test the local political waters.

"I think it opened doors in their minds to start thinking seriously about throwing their own hat in next time," he said.

If it has, Gallup might not have to wait another 12 years for the next American Indian candidate to come along.