{"id":16906,"date":"2010-05-05T16:01:11","date_gmt":"2010-05-05T22:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=16906"},"modified":"2010-05-06T09:23:16","modified_gmt":"2010-05-06T15:23:16","slug":"prc-candidate%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98bigoted-anglos%e2%80%99-claim-is-false-and-sad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/05\/prc-candidate%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98bigoted-anglos%e2%80%99-claim-is-false-and-sad\/","title":{"rendered":"PRC candidate\u2019s \u2018bigoted Anglos\u2019 claim is false, and sad"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n

Earlier today Andrew Leo Lopez<\/a>, a candidate for the District 4 seat on the N.M. Public Regulation Commission<\/a>, sent out an e-mail calling residents of the community in which I grew up \u201cbigoted Anglos.\u201d<\/p>\n

The community is Eldorado<\/a>, an unincorporated area south of Santa Fe that, as of the 2000 Census, was home to about 5,800 people. Lopez, a Democrat, spoke at a forum there on Tuesday evening. The e-mail he sent out stated this:<\/p>\n

\u201cForum was at a very affluent community called El Dorado in Santa Fe County. Bluntly, told the bigoted Anglos that I wanted them to now change their disinclination to vote for Hispanic candidates beginning today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lopez\u2019s harsh words went out in an e-mail replying to an invitation to a campaign event for appellate judge candidate Dennis W. Montoya<\/a>. Lopez sent his reply to everyone who received Montoya\u2019s invite.<\/p>\n

I e-mailed Lopez to ask for clarification. Does he really believe that people living in Eldorado are all \u201cbigoted Anglos?\u201d<\/p>\n

He does believe that, he wrote to me in an e-mail.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe public record shows that residents of the El Dorado community in Santa Fe county, who are mostly affluent Anglos mostly from out of state, have an unbroken history of declining to vote for Hispanic candidates,\u201d he wrote. \u201c\u2026 I told the Anglo bigots that it was time to change their ways.\u00a0The voting history of the residents of El Dorado has no place in New Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such sad words. Mr. Lopez must live in a very small world. But before I expand on that, let\u2019s look at some numbers.<\/p>\n

Facts prove Lopez wrong<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

Eldorado is a predominantly Anglo community, but as of 2000 some 13.5 percent of its residents were Hispanic. It is among the wealthier communities in the state. The median household income there in 2008 was $92,049, compared to the statewide median income of $43,508. The average home value there was $420,847 in 2008, compared with a statewide average of $165,000.<\/p>\n

Eldorado has certainly changed since I grew up there. In fact, we used to joke that we owned the last middle-class home built in Eldorado (and that was in the 1980s). While that might be a slight exaggeration, it wasn\u2019t off by much.<\/p>\n

So Eldorado has a larger percentage of non-Hispanics than the state average and is home to more wealthy people. Does that mean people there won\u2019t vote for Hispanics? I asked Lopez in a follow-up message how he backed up his claim that Eldorado residents have a history of not voting for Hispanic candidates.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t respond, so I looked up some voting numbers myself. Not surprisingly, I found that Lopez\u2019s claim is 100 percent wrong.<\/p>\n

In the 2008 Democratic U.S. House primary<\/a>, there were four candidates: Ben Ray Luj\u00e1n, Don Wiviott, Benny Shendo and Harry Montoya. There are three precincts in Eldorado, and here\u2019s how the combined vote totals from those precincts broke down in that race:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Wiviott: 502 votes, 41 percent<\/p>\n

\u2022 Luj\u00e1n: 455 votes, 37 percent<\/p>\n

\u2022 Shendo: 193 votes, 16 percent<\/p>\n

\u2022 Montoya: 79 votes, 6 percent<\/p>\n

Even if you don\u2019t take into consideration Shendo, an American Indian, the combined vote totals of Luj\u00e1n and Montoya top the votes won by Wiviott.<\/p>\n

Then look at how voters in Eldorado voted in the 2008 general election U.S. House race<\/a> between Luj\u00e1n, Republican Dan East and Independent Carol Miller:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Luj\u00e1n: 2,785 votes, 60 percent<\/p>\n

\u2022 Miller: 1,008 votes, 22 percent<\/p>\n

\u2022 East: 825 votes, 18 percent<\/p>\n

The elected members of the Eldorado Water and Sanitation District\u2019s board of directors<\/a> all have last names that aren\u2019t Hispanic in origin. But two of seven members of the homeowner\u2019s association board<\/a> have Hispanic surnames. Those people are elected by homeowners in Eldorado.<\/p>\n

Lopez\u2019s words are very sad<\/h3>\n

I don\u2019t know what\u2019s happened in Lopez\u2019s life to lead him to assume the worst about people without considering the facts, or to lie, or to do whatever it is that he\u2019s doing right now. But I find what he\u2019s doing very sad.<\/p>\n

Though I\u2019ve seen the effects of racism diminish in the Santa Fe area and New Mexico over time, true bigotry remains a real threat in our state, nation and world. We need elected leaders who understand that, leaders who choose their words intentionally \u2013 as Lopez as has done \u2013 but also carefully, making sure their claims are based in reality.<\/p>\n

We need honest assessments of where racism permeates our society and intentional efforts to effectively combat it, not delusional claims of bigotry based on falsities.<\/p>\n

We need leaders who push us as a society to see each other as what we all are \u2013 communal beings who share this state, nation and planet \u2013 not leaders who seek to divide us with name-calling and generalizations that aren\u2019t true.<\/p>\n

With his words, Lopez was attempting to drive a wedge between people. I hope I\u2019ve helped combat his damaging words by pointing out the facts.<\/p>\n

Haussamen bio<\/a> \u2502\u00a0Commentary archives<\/a> \u2502\u00a0Feed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Public Regulation Commission candidate Andrew Leo Lopez claims residents of Eldorado, a community near Santa Fe, are \u201cbigoted Anglos.\u201d The facts prove him wrong. I hope by pointing out those facts I can combat his attempt to drive a wedge between people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[108,143],"class_list":["post-16906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-2010-election","tag-race-and-ethnicity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}