Sandy Jones
Democratic Land Commissioner candidate Sandy Jones says he’s staying in the race even though he didn’t get 20 percent at the party’s preprimary nominating convention on Saturday.
“Literally two minutes after the results came in we were getting phone calls,” Jones said. “We’re in. We got inundated with people calling and telling us to make sure we stayed in.”
Jones said he’ll have the necessary signatures to stay in the race “in the next couple of days.”
Ray Powell easily won the land commissioner vote at the convention, winning the support of 44.43 percent of delegates. Harry Montoya came in second at 19.32 percent, while Jones finished third at 18.64 percent and Mike Anaya came in fourth at 17.61 percent.
By law, those who fail to get 20 percent at the convention have to collect twice as many signatures as those who do get 20 percent if they want to appear on the ballot. And no candidate who has failed the organizational test of getting 20 percent at the convention has gone on to win the primary.
Jones doesn’t sound intimidated by that fact, pointing out that Powell won the Democratic Party’s convention in 2006 and went on to lose the land commissioner primary to Jim Baca.
“A lot of the calls that we got last night, not many people thought Ray could win this thing,” Jones said. “There are people who weren’t really actively supporting us (before) who climbed on board last night.”
Montoya and Anaya haven’t yet announced their plans.