Photo by AMagill/flickr.com

Officials in Las Cruces have begun exploring possible changes to the city’s election ordinance in an effort to address issues that have come to light in recent years.

Shortly after last year’s municipal election in November, Councilor Miguel Silva asked city staff to begin researching possible changes.

“Our rules are so lax that a person who has a campaign fund can close it out and pocket the money if he wants to,” Silva told NMPolitics.net. “Our rules need to be tighter, and we need more frequent reporting.

Silva was referring to a recent report that former Mayor Bill Mattiace, after deciding against running for mayor last year, donated $10,000 from his campaign account to help pay for the funeral of his sister-in-law’s husband.

Silva said the city attorney and clerk have started looking at other ordinances to come up with ideas for reform.

City Manager Robert Garza said the timeline for reporting, and the size and disclosure of contributions, need to be addressed.

“We have a lot of room to grow our policy and certainly need it,” he said.

I’ve been among those calling for reform. Several issues, including the Mattiace donation, have shown the need. Among them:

• The city doesn’t require that election ads include a disclosure of who is paying for them.
• The city doesn’t outlaw the spending of campaign funds on anything – including personal expenses.
• In 2009, a Las Cruces political action committee failed to report to the city clerk that it had raised money by telling people the funds were for the Las Cruces municipal election, but the clerk found that the PAC violated no city ordinance. Lots of people expressed confusion about the wording in the ordinance that sets reporting requirements for PACs.
• Also in 2009, residents of City Council District 6 received phone calls many described as a push poll. Who paid for those calls remains a mystery.

Silva said he wants the City Council to act now, noting that some councilors are up for re-election next year. He said changing the rules in the middle of an election would be difficult.

“If we don’t do it before the next municipal election, if we don’t do it this year, we’re not going to do it because it’s going to be too close to the next election,” he said.

Heath Haussamen

Former Las Cruces Mayor Bill Mattiace’s donation of campaign funds to help pay for a funeral demonstrates the need for campaign finance and other ethics reform in city government. It’s time for action.

Former Las Cruces Mayor Bill Mattiace says donating $10,000 from his campaign account to help pay for the funeral of his sister-in-law’s husband was “the right thing to do.”

While I certainly understand his desire to help a family member, particularly in a difficult time, Mattiace was wrong to use campaign funds to help his sister-in-law.

Such donations should be illegal, even though they’re not currently, because of the slippery slope they represent.

If you can use campaign funds to pay for funerals, why not also for living expenses? Or your child’s college tuition? Or a new car? Or a trip to Vegas?

Allowing campaign funds to be spent for those purposes is practically inviting bribery. When a public official gets into financial trouble, there will be a temptation to trade an official act in exchange for a personal bailout. Sure I’ll vote for your proposal. Just contribute $2,500 to my campaign…

That’s why what Mattiace did is wrong. That’s why it should be illegal.

Money raised for a campaign should only be spent for campaign purposes, and perhaps, as long as it’s strictly regulated, on expenses directly related to city officials’ job duties.

Reform is long overdue

The fact remains that such spending of campaign funds is not illegal in Las Cruces. Thus, the blame lies with city officials (including, I suppose, Mattiace in his former capacity as mayor) for allowing such spending.

I’ve been trying to start a discussion in Las Cruces about ethics reform since 2009, when I first wrote an article about the need for revisions to the city’s elections code and other ordinances that relate to ethics. At the time, Mayor Ken Miyagishima told me he supported reform and shared with me his own ideas for improvement. Several councilors also told me reform was an important topic to discuss.

But by last year’s election season, city officials had taken no steps toward such reform.

In August, I authored a commentary complaining about the lack of action. Here’s what I wrote:

“Las Cruces should focus on reform. The city doesn’t even require that election ads include a disclosure of who is paying for them. That’s a basic campaign transparency issue required at the state and federal levels, and it’s something this website requires from candidates regardless of whether the jurisdictions in which they’re running require it.

“Ethics reform is long overdue in Las Cruces. Let’s hope the mayor, councilors, and candidates running in the November election make it a priority.”

In their own words

After I wrote that commentary, I asked the candidates about ethics reform. Here’s what those who won last year’s races said (click on the links to read their full statements):

• Mayor Miyagishima: “While I fully support election reform, it would have been very difficult for a new mayor and council to immediately set out to change election rules in the City Charter, because the charge would have been that we were making those changes to benefit ourselves. Municipal election reform is so important that it can’t be seen as a partisan issue, and any changes need to have widespread support.”
• District 1 Councilor Miguel Silva: “The City does not have strong ethics policies and enforcement in place now, and I would like to see them strengthened.”
• District 2 Councilor Gregory Z. Smith (who is new to the council): “I emphatically believe we need ethics reform, but we need to make sure that any reforms we put in place actually have the intended result. We do not want to provide loopholes for those who will seek ways around the system, nor do we want to have unintended consequences that encourage corruption or penalize honesty.”
• District 4 Councilor Nathan Small: “…I support formation of a Citizen Campaign Commission. This Commission should contain balanced political and geographical representation from across the City, and be charged with producing reform recommendations for City elections. From addressing the potential influence of special interests and opaque sources of money to the current absentee ballot request process (out of step with state processes) there is significant work for such a committee. Forming the committee after the upcoming election would give it time to gather public input and pursue reforms free from the pressures of an impending local election, and also allow significant time for formal consideration and passage of campaign reforms.”

Time for action

Miyagishima is in his second term. Whatever concern he had during his first about appearances should no longer apply. As Mattiace’s funeral donation demonstrates, the time for grand statements in support of reform without action has passed.

I believe the council and mayor can tackle reform on their own, but Small’s idea to form a commission would also be a productive step. It’s time for action.

Haussamen bio │ Commentary page │ Feed

Bill Mattiace

Former Las Cruces Mayor Bill Mattiace donated $10,000 from his campaign account to help pay for the funeral of his sister-in-law’s husband, the Las Cruces Sun-News is reporting.

There’s apparently nothing in city or state law that makes the donation illegal, even though it had nothing to do with any campaign or election.

Mattiace lost his re-election battle in 2007, but considered another run last year. Instead, he became executive director of the New Mexico Border Authority. More about the donation, from the Sun-News:

“Mattiace, who maintained a campaign fund as he considered a possible run for mayor in 2011 before listening to family wishes and giving up those plans, gave most of the money in that fund to his sister-in-law to pay for her husband’s funeral expenses.

“In Mattiace’s final campaign finance report, filed with City Clerk Esther Martinez on Nov. 7, he listed a $10,000 contribution to the estate of Nick Nicolitz as a ‘donation to funeral expenses.’ Nicolitz, the brother of Mattiace’s wife, Wanda, died in October after an extended illness.

“Nicolitz had lived most of his life in Las Cruces, after his family immigrated to the U.S. in March 1957 from Holland.

“‘I just felt it was the right thing to do,’ Mattiace said.”

Such donations shouldn’t be allowed, according to Viki Harrison, executive director of Common Cause New Mexico. Here’s what she was quoted by the Sun-News as saying:

“Our democracy will fail if wealthy interests are able to buy favor with elected officials. For this reason, campaign contributions should be strictly limited, and at the very least they should never be used to pay for personal or family expenses. City law should be amended to require that unused contributions either be returned to the original donor or transferred to the city’s general fund.”

View Mattiace’s Nov. 7 finance report here. Read the Sun-News article here.

An area being developed on Las Cruces' north end. (Photo by Nick Voges)

We can all agree that “dust ordinance” is a silly name; that aside, don’t believe the hype. This ordinance isn’t “overly restrictive” or “punitive.” Protecting Las Crucens’ health and property is exactly the type of thing the city council should be working on.

We can all agree that it’s a silly name for an ordinance; especially since the “Wind Erosion Control Ordinance,” or the “dust” ordinance, as it is popularly called, would do so much to protect the health and the homes of many Las Crucens.

Unfortunately, as a result of the bad naming, coupled with the focused efforts of a few narrow business interests, the ordinance invites misinformed comments like this one from a Las Cruces marketing assistant, as quoted in a recent article by Steve Ramirez in the Las Cruces Sun News: “If you’re going to live in Las Cruces, or move here from somewhere else when you retire, it’s a no-brainer that you’re going to live in the desert, where there’s wind and dust a lot of the time. Yeah, it can get pretty nasty…”

Of course there’ll be dust in the desert, right? Any ordinances to eliminate dust from the desert surely exemplify government over-reach, right?

Nick Voges and his son Alton

That’s exactly the conclusion that, as quoted in the same article, Las Cruces Association of Realtors CEO Isaac Chavez reaches: “It would behoove the city council to stop passing overly restrictive, punitive ordinances that are making it harder and harder for the average Las Cruces family to afford a home of their own.”

But Mr. Chavez is wrong. This ordinance is not really about dust — it’s about protecting homeowners.

Protecting homeowners

Our friends, for example, live in a development off Porter and I-70 in Las Cruces. They bought a house there — their first home — about five years ago. It’s a charming house, cozy and practical, as a first home should be. When their house was built it was one of the first homes in the subdivision. During their first winter there they planned which flowers and trees they’d plant in their front yard to augment the landscaping that came with the house. Then the spring winds came. Everyone in New Mexico knows about our winds, but the Las Cruces varietal can be especially blustery.

One afternoon I stopped by their house to drop something off. My friend was out raking his front yard, trying desperately to get the dirt out of his gravel landscaping. Because theirs was one of the first houses in the subdivision, and the construction of new housing had slowed, their home was surrounded by block after block of empty, clear-cut lots. And so the spring wind dumped mounds of unsettled dirt onto the only thing out there: their landscaped front yard.

My friend is stalwart and stoic but you can only rake dirt out of your rocks so many times before you lose heart. These days, now that the dirt has covered over everything, they joke that their front yard is xeriscaped. Again, they’re not the type to complain, but they’ve lost thousands of dollars of value in their home. And it could have all been avoided if the developers had been good neighbors.

What should have been done?

The proposed revision to the ordinance outlines a number of precautions that responsible developers should take to protect homeowners who have built homes in their subdivisions. From the ordinance: “Dust and blowing dirt and sand shall be kept to a minimum by good practices such as using an approved dust suppressant or soil stabilizer, paving, covering, landscaping, continuous wetting, controlling access and speeds, or other acceptable means.”

Everyone knows that there will always be dust in the desert, but we also know that there are ways to make blowing dust, and its effect on the health and homes of the people who live here, better or worse. Here’s how the New Mexico Environmental Department puts it:

“While windblown dust naturally occurs in undisturbed areas throughout the west, it becomes much more common where the natural soils have been disturbed by anthropogenic activities. Natural soils have a tendency to form a mineral and organic crust that is resistant to erosion. Human activities can remove or break this crust, allowing dust to escape much more easily.”

This ordinance makes sure that developers take simple steps that protect the homeowners who have built homes in their subdivisions.

Health and Safety

The cost to homeowners isn’t the only problem that the ordinance addresses. According to this fact sheet, valley fever, which appears to be on the rise, is primarily caused by aspirating unsettled dust: “When the soil is disturbed by either the wind, construction, digging or driving on unpaved roads, the spores of the valley fever fungus are released into the air. Once in the air, the spores are inhaled as dust, and they begin growing and multiplying in your lungs.”

Valley fever is especially dangerous to vulnerable populations like infants and the elderly. Furthermore, since the big patches of unsettled dirt that carry valley fever now exist right next to more populated areas, more people are exposed to the dust that carries the valley fever fungus. The amount of dust in the air, and the chances that you’ll get valley fever, are greatly increased by the way that some developers now clear cut wide swathes of land. This could be mitigated if these developers would follow the simple protocols proposed by the ordinance to protect the health of all Las Crucens.

Not really about dust

Which leads us to the larger implicit question that Chavez raises: What is the proper role for our public institutions? To my mind, ordinances like this one, which came about because people’s health and homes are being ruined by the irresponsible actions of a few developers, are an example of how our public institutions can fulfill a key mission: promoting the common good. Everyone suffers when people are sick, and home values plummet as a result of a few bad actors. It’s essential that our public institutions institute and enforce the rules that protect citizens. Articles like Mr. Ramirez’s, by failing to report the full story about the ordinance and highlighting the comments of Isaac Chavez, only confuse the real aim of the ordinance.

In the end, although this ordinance concerns dust, it is actually about protecting homeowners and their investments, and the health and well-being of Las Crucens. Don’t believe Mr. Chavez’s hype; this ordinance isn’t, as he puts it, “overly restrictive” or “punitive.” Protecting Las Crucens’ health and property is exactly the type of thing the city council should be working on.

Nick Voges is the columnist behind NMPolitics.net’s Zeitgeist. E-mail him at nick@nmpolitics.net.

That’s according to the Las Cruces Sun-News, which reported on the situation this weekend. From the article:

“A massive subdivision proposed four years ago by developer Philip Philippou proved to be a flashpoint in Las Cruces, as residents contemplated his plan to add 30,000 new homes or more to the city’s east side within 15 years.

“Called the Vistas at Presidio – I and II – the projects sought to expand the city’s boundaries by 9 square miles, as well as master plan and zone the area in preparation for subdivisions.

“The economy and housing boom tumbled in late 2008, and construction never materialized.

“Then, in October of this year, Philippou died at the age of 56.”

The project apparently met its end long before Philippou’s death. From the paper:

“Philippou had become delinquent on the lease payments for the Vistas at Presidio land and a second proposed development north of U.S. Hwy. 70. About a year ago, he owed $336,000, including penalties and interest, to the State Land Office, according to a state auditor’s review.

“Harry Relkin, general counsel for (Land Commissioner Ray) Powell, said the delinquent payment resulted in Philippou’s Solo Investments defaulting on the 2,397-acre lease for the East Mesa.

“‘That one was canceled in December of last year for nonpayment,’ he said Friday.”

In addition, there’s this:

“Along with the lease with the State Land Office, the other major components of the project were annexation, zoning and master plan approvals given by the Las Cruces City Council in 2007.

“But there were conditions on much of the zoning and master plan in order to ‘vest that development proposal,’ said David Weir, director of community development for the city.

“More specifically, Philippou had to take action on the project by 2010.

“‘There needed to be either a preliminary plat or some kind of physical improvements – extending utilities or building a road – to vest,’ he said. ‘In this case, nothing took place.’

“Philippou did seek a one-year extension, allowed by city rules, and the city granted it, Weir said. But again, no action was taken to meet the conditions, and the extension expired this year.”

City Manager Robert Garza was quoted as saying the land remains in the city because the annexation can’t be undone. “But if somebody wanted to go back and develop that, they’d have to start over, essentially,” he said.

As NMPolitics.net has documented, approval of the massive and controversial development sparked concerns that the city was growing too quickly and helped lead to an overthrow of the city council and mayor’s office by progressive-backed candidates who pledged slower and smarter growth (click here and here). Progressive-backed candidates retain the majority on the council and the mayor’s office today.

His involvement with Philippou was also one of Republican Pat Lyons’ biggest scandals during his tenure at state land commissioner.

Read the full Sun-News article here.

A scene from a recent Occupy march at New Mexico State University (Courtesy photo)

I appreciate the meaningful ways that the Occupy movement has moved the national conversation in a direction that can now include not only retrenchment and austerity but also basic fairness and opportunity for everyone. But they need our help.

While trying to juggle my infant son’s 4:30 a.m. feedings, keep up with the classes I take and teach, and fulfill my professional obligations, I simply don’t have the capacity to join the Occupy Las Cruces movement as they camp out in front of the Thomas Branigan Library in Las Cruces.

And — let’s be honest — I’m less willing as I get older to give up my warm home and cozy bed to endure cold nights sleeping on park grass. Either way, I’m glad that members of the Occupy Las Cruces group — and other Occupy groups around the country — are willing to endure this hardship on my behalf.

Nick Voges

But what’s OWS all about?

As I see it, the Occupy movement is concerned about a lot of things: income inequality, corporate greed, failing institutions, high unemployment and lack of opportunity, corporations run amok, free trade policies, globalization, environmental degradation, endangered personal freedoms — I could continue, but you get the picture. Most importantly, however, the Occupy groups around the country are about voicing concern over where the country is headed in general.

In that way, they very much represent the mainstream of U.S. public thought, according to a recent Pew Research Center finding. Like the TEA Party before them, the 99 percent movement has provided a full-throated, impossible-to-ignore outcry that speaks to the concerns of many Americans, including myself. To me, the most important thing that Occupy Las Cruces is doing is nominating and making real the sense — shared by many — that something is wrong with our country.

Not very precise, is it?

I don’t agree with many commentators that this is a weakness. Part of the strength of the 99 percent movement is the inchoate nature of their frustrations. After all, there’s plenty wrong with the country; what’s the point for Occupiers to argue about what exactly is wrong? Making everyone agree seems like a quick way of sapping the energy of any broad-reaching movement. It’s enough for the Occupy groups to keep saying over and over again: There’s something wrong here; there’s something wrong here.

Can they be effective?

Many people, including on this site, have argued that the Occupy movements will not be effective if they don’t develop a formal platform and begin to align themselves with like-minded organizations (conservative donors, after all, were key to helping the TEA Party movement gain national prominence). The only problem with this argument is that they’ve already been effective. As Dan Buecke from Bloomberg Business weekly points out, Google trend analyses that examine how often particular keywords are typed into their search engine show that Occupiers have greatly impacted the national conversation.

Furthermore, before the Occupy movements, the loudest voices in the debate about what was wrong with the country were TEA Party members. Now, despite initially being dismissed by the gatekeepers in both major U.S. political parties, the Occupiers have made certain that the national conversation about what’s wrong with this country not only includes TEA Party themes around debt and deficit reduction and shrinking government, but also addresses concerncs around income inequality, dwindling opportunity for American workers, and making sure that important government projects and services are protected and, in some cases, expanded.

The Occupiers, without the support of a political party or self-interested financiers like the Koch brothers, have changed the terms of the national conversation. That’s a pretty big deal.

Of course, this success doesn’t necessarily mean that the Occupy protests will successfully develop into a sustainable, long-term movement. But I’m not certain that is or even should be their goal. For now, under their current structure, the 99 percent don’t answer to national strategists and no one makes a buck off whether the movement succeeds or fails. The groups’ spontaneity and energy is part of what keeps the country paying attention. By adopting the structures and platforms of more traditional social movements, the Occupiers risk losing the very thing that makes them so compelling to so many: authenticity.

What can we do?

Say that you’re like me: You can’t occupy the park in front of Branigan Library, yet you want to show your support and gratitude to those who are willing to stand up and give voice to the fears and dissatisfactions you feel about the direction we’re heading. What can you do?

The first thing you can do is donate a little money to help pay the permit cost to stay in the park. You can do that by getting in touch with Jason Burke. His e-mail address is wldtrkey@gmail.com. You can also call him at (575) 915-2766.

The second thing to do is stop by and visit when you can. Talk with the folks down there. Listen to their concerns and share your own. My experience has been that we have many of the same values and concerns.

Again, as someone who wants to preserve — and improve — the opportunities that will be available to myself and my children, I appreciate the meaningful ways that the Occupy movement has moved the national conversation in a direction that can now include not only retrenchment and austerity but also basic fairness and opportunity for everyone. Keep it up, 99 percent-ers!

Nick Voges is the columnist behind NMPolitics.net’s Zeitgeist. E-mail him at nick@nmpolitics.net.

Ryan Dailey

Former Las Cruces City Council candidate Ryan Dailey has pleaded guilty to a drunken driving charge in Virginia; he says he plans to fight a similar charge in Las Cruces and will run for city council again in four years.

Dailey contacted NMPolitics.net to ask that the information about his plea be published. He said he admitted to DWI in the Virginia case in exchange for the dismissal of a charge of carrying a 10-inch knife hidden in his vehicle on a Navy base. Both charges were misdemeanors.

Daily said federal Magistrate Judge Carmen Garza in Las Cruces accepted the plea, sentenced him to one year on probation, and fined him $250. He said he agreed to the plea bargain because he didn’t want to be extradited to Virginia.

Dailey still faces charges in Las Cruces of aggravated drunken driving, improper lane usage and lack of due care stemming from a September incident that resulted in his arrest. Those charges are all misdemeanors, and Dailey is fighting them.

He said he will run for city council in 2015. He currently lives in District 4, which is represented by Nathan Small.

Dailey was one of two people who filed paperwork to run against Small in this year’s election. He decided to stay in the race even after his September arrest, but the city clerk later disqualified him because he didn’t submit enough valid signatures to run.

Small easily won re-election last week.

Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima

You can view unofficial results from Tuesday’s election by clicking here.

It wasn’t even close. In a resounding manner, voters in Las Cruces endorsed the work of incumbents who were up for re-election on Tuesday.

This year’s contest was a test of what voters think about the work of progressive-backed candidates who took over city government between 2007 and 2009. Mayor Ken Miyagishima said the large margins by which he and other incumbents won are easy to interpret.

“I think voters are happy with the way things are at the city,” Miyagishima said after winning 62 percent of the vote in a three-way contest. “They’re happy with the way that we try to be as transparent and inclusive as possible.”

Miguel Silva, the District 1 councilor who won re-election with 69 percent of the vote, called Tuesday’s election “an affirmation of the work that we’ve been doing.”

“We’ve done some good work in some very tough times,” Silva said.

According to the campaign Miyagishima ran, that work included being fiscally responsible by storing up twice the required amount of cash in city reserves and cutting the budget, increasing amenities by building a new aquatic center and adding new parks, enhancing public safety with a new emergency alert system and a police audit system, increasing openness and accessibility with more neighborhood meetings, growing more smartly with new policies, building a new city hall and revitalizing downtown, and implementing curbside recycling.

In other words, Miyagishima argued that, under his leadership, the city has done it all in the last four years.

Voters saw no reason to boot him or the other incumbents from office, which means they’ll have another four years to make the changes they promised to voters. Miyagishima said the economy will remain the biggest challenge. He expects state and federal funding for cities to continue to drop in the coming years and said Las Cruces must operate more efficiently.

He plans an initiative to allow some city employees to volunteer to work from home – cutting their personal costs such as driving and childcare – in exchange for taking 5-percent pay cuts. He also hopes to reduce the city’s health-care costs with an initiative that encourages employees to exercise more.

‘No one has figured out how to beat progressives’

Of course, it wasn’t just the incumbents’ policy work that led voters to re-elect Miyagishima, Silva, and District 4 Councilor Nathan Small, who won 70 percent of the vote in his race. Campaigning was key. On the NMPolitics.net election night liveblog, a commenter who called himself High Range Lefty – a volunteer on Miyagishima’s campaign – credited Don Kurtz, a progressive strategist who worked for Miyagishima.

“Kudos to Don Kurtz who has brought organization and discipline to running grassroots-driven elections in LC,” High Range Lefty wrote.

On the liveblog, Doña Ana County Commissioner Scott Krahling agreed.

“If these results hold, it also says that no one has figured out how to beat progressives in this community,” he wrote before the results became final. “The common assumption was that these folks came into office because of the horrible land deal on the east mesa. Maybe it’s bigger than that.”

Krahling was referring to the rapid growth Las Cruces experienced in the years leading to the progressive takeover. Fueled in part by a controversial 90,000-acre land deal on the East Mesa, progressive candidates took control with a promise to be smarter about growth and development.

‘Forward-looking leadership won big’

The organization and political strategy of progressives was key to Miyagishima’s re-election victory. But there’s no denying the message voters sent in re-electing incumbents. Noting that turnout was about 10,100 voters – about 1,300 fewer than in 2007 – High Range Lefty suggested that, “The lower vote total coupled with the incumbents winning may indicate that more people are satisfied with how the city is working these days.”

And on Facebook, former State Rep. Jeff Steinborn wrote that the election “shows that this town has much more of a consensus on where we would like to go than some have tried to make us believe.”

“I personally am heartened to see that forward-looking leadership won big tonight,” he said.

Others had their own ideas. Brian Kirby wrote on Facebook that national politics made their way into the Las Cruces election. Republicans running for mayor and council seats all lost, badly. With the exception of Judge Melissa Miller-Byrnes, a Republican, all of Tuesday’s winners were Democrats.

“Three recent polls show that the majority of Americans believe that Republican congressional members are putting their own agendas ahead of the greater good,” Kirby wrote. “Locally, people have a negative view of the parenthetical R that appears before/after a politician’s name.”

Bob Cornelius, a Republican and former land commissioner candidate, noted the low voter turnout in writing on Facebook that it’s “hard to gauge the meaning of an election when such a small percentage took the time to vote in it.”

A very definite message

The only non-incumbent to be elected Tuesday, Gregory Z. Smith, who won the open District 2 seat on the City Council, said the incumbents’ victories “would seem to be an endorsement for their efforts.”

Smith replaces Dolores Connor, who gave up the seat to run against Miyagishima. Silva said Connor “was one of the hardest-working councilors” and will be missed.

Connor posted on Facebook that it takes “dedication and compassion to be a part of an election, and as we now can see, it can happen with those who turn out to vote.”

In Las Cruces, those who turned out to vote sent a very definite message about the city’s direction on Tuesday: Keep it up.

A prior version of this posting incorrectly stated that turnout was about 9,100 in Tuesday’s election.

The old post:

To get Las Cruces municipal election results and take part in a live discussion that will include analysis and commentary, join NMPolitics.net’s liveblog right here.

I’ll be moderating the liveblog and providing news and analysis throughout the evening. You can also follow the election results this evening at clctv.com or on Comcast Cable channel 20.

There are three mayoral candidates – incumbent Ken Miyagishima, District 2 Councilor Dolores Connor and activist Michael Ray Huerta. To avoid a runoff, a candidate must win at least 40 percent of the vote.

There are also three seats on the City Council up for grabs. In the District 1 race, incumbent Miguel Silva faces challenger Natalie Chadborn. In the open District 2 race, the candidates are Fred Espinosa, Charles Scholz and Gregory Z. Smith. And in District 4, incumbent Nathan Small faces challenger Aaron Henry Diaz.

In the presiding municipal judge race, incumbent Melissa Miller-Byrnes faces challenger Frank Chavez.

Voters at Desert Hills Elementary School (Photos by Heath Haussamen)

There appears to be a steady stream of voters casting ballots at polling places all over Las Cruces in today’s municipal election.

Sources from all over the city have told NMPolitics.net about short but consistent lines of people waiting to vote at a number of polling places. In addition, an employee from the city clerk’s office said the phones have been ringing off the hook with people from around the city calling to find their polling places.

Sources have reported no major problems at any polling place.

I witnessed lines of a handful of people waiting to vote at Highland and Desert Hills elementary schools. In the 2-3 minutes I was at each school, five or six people voted.

Voters at Highland Elementary School

In 2007, the last time the mayor’s office was up for grabs, turnout was about 24 percent, which meant about 11,400 people voted.

There’s still plenty of time to vote. Polls don’t close until 7 p.m. To find your polling place, click here.

If you have any problems or questions, call the city clerk at (575) 541-2115.