How We’re Covering Crowded Fields in Mayoral Races

Many of you have likely noticed that New Mexico in Focus is no longer in the debate-hosting game when election season comes around. The lockdowns accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic largely drove this shift in the beginning, but it’s evolved into a more intentional choice in the last few years. 

While we aren’t ruling out debates in the future, we feel like the election-coverage model we’ve settled into — in-depth, one-on-one candidate interviews — provides a more complete service to our audience. That’s because debates have essentially become, in our estimation, joint news conferences. And no one needs more of those. 

Instead, how about a well-prepared interviewer interrogating a candidate’s platform and policy plans, fully empowered to respond, push back, dig deeper when warranted? That’s what we’re aiming for — and that’s what we hope you’ll find as we continue our coverage of the crowded Albuquerque and Santa Fe mayoral contests this year. 

You’ll see the first of these conversations in this week’s episode, when Host Nash Jones sits down separately with the two most progressive candidates vying for the Albuquerque mayor’s office: incumbent Tim Keller, who is seeking an unprecedented third consecutive term, and Alexander Uballez, former U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico. Those of you watching on television will see about 15 minutes from each of those interviews. Check out our YouTube page for the full dives, which both stretched beyond half an hour. 

We plan to do something similar with two more Albuquerque mayoral challengers, Mayling Armijo and City Councilor Louie Sanchez, in next week’s episode. (One quick note: Darren White, a former Bernalillo County sheriff and the race’s most prominent conservative, declined our interview request without citing a reason.) 

The Albuquerque race also includes two other candidates: Daniel Chavez and Eddie Varela. We featured them last week, but in a shorter format. We did something similar this week, sending reporter Cailley Chella to Santa Fe for interviews with three of the lesser-known candidates in the race for mayor in the City Different. You’ll hear from as many of the remaining five candidates in the Santa Fe contest as we can wrangle in the coming weeks. 

With such crowded fields, we had to make some decisions about which candidates got the lengthier, in-studio treatment vs those Cailley spoke more briefly with in the field. Here’s how we did that: We factored in fundraising — excluding any contributions candidates made to themselves — along with ballot petition signatures to identify the candidates with the most and least support among voters. 

As always, we welcome your feedback on how we’re covering elections these days. Do you like the interviews? Want us to bring back debates? Have questions about how we ranked/prioritized the candidates? Send me a note at JProctor@nmpbs.org.  

-Jeff Proctor, Executive Producer