Ready, Set, Runoff!

This week marks our last show before Albuquerque learns who the mayor will be in 2026 and beyond. Election Day for the runoff between Tim Keller, the incumbent, and his challenger, Darren White, is Tuesday.  

As soon as the results came in for the regular local election last month, we started planning our coverage for the runoff. At the center would, of course, be either a Keller-White debate or, if the candidates wouldn’t agree to a more wide-ranging, direct-engagement format than what typically passes for debates these days, one-on-one interviews with our host, Nash Jones. 

We got ahold of the White and Keller camps to get things moving.  

They never moved. 

Keller turned us down first, with his campaign manager arguing that the mayor had already sat with us for an interview before the regular election — never mind that the race had narrowed since then from seven candidates to two — and that he’d have ample time to speak to voters in three commercial-television debates. And besides, she said, the campaign would need to focus on get-out-the-vote efforts. 

White’s campaign manager said no, too, essentially giving us the same story she’d offered before the regular election: The former Bernalillo County sheriff, Albuquerque public safety boss and cannabis entrepreneur simply wouldn’t have time to talk with NMPBS. 

You may have seen Nash’s social media video encouraging our audience to contact the campaigns and encourage them to appear on public television. It’s our understanding that some of you did — and we appreciate that — but it didn’t work. 

Alas.  

We still found a way to preview the runoff in this week’s show, with the help of our crew and KOB-TV News Director Matt Grubs, who generously allowed us to use some clips from his station’s debate.  

We’ll be back next week to break down the results. We’ll then move on after that, looking ahead to the upcoming legislative session, the gubernatorial race and a million other stories we plan to explore in the coming weeks, months and years. 

As always, thanks for watching and for your support of our show. 

– Jeff Proctor, Executive Producer