Many analysts predict that the shift to the left that gave Democrats control of Congress in 2006 will continue this year, but there\u2019s a lot of debate about how strong the wave will be.<\/p>\n
If the recent overthrow of the Las Cruces City Council<\/a> is an indication of the national mood, the wave might be stronger than some suspect.<\/p>\n The only exception was The new officials aren\u2019t just Democrats \u2013 they\u2019re progressives. I wondered then whether this was the start of a larger movement. The recent In November, voters who were upset with the perceived developer-friendly growth policies and attitude of the city council tossed out the mayor and a 12-year councilor, replacing them with candidates calling for slower, better-planned growth and more public involvement in the process. Voters gave a third, open seat to a like-minded candidate.<\/p>\n In a special election held last week to replace the councilor who became mayor in November, voters overwhelmingly picked the candidate running on the same platform of change. In a matter of three months, citizen activists upset with their city\u2019s growth policies, aided in part by a get-out-the-vote effort coordinated by an Albuquerque-based environmental group, took control of the seven-member council.<\/p>\n The question I\u2019ve been wrestling with during the last few weeks is whether the overthrow of the council is a sign of the same desire for change that\u2019s being talked about in the presidential race or a purely local response to the area\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n I think it\u2019s both.<\/p>\n Voters in But, as I\u2019ve pointed out, the political shift extends beyond the city council to the county commission and local legislative seats. We\u2019re seeing record turnout in early presidential contests across the nation, much of it from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and there\u2019s evidence that those voters are similarly riled up in Many of the local activists who organized the takeover of the city council are also championing other causes that are popular with progressives \u2013 universal health care, ending the In this traditionally conservative Democratic community, conservative Democrats and Republicans have lost significant ground to progressives in recent elections. I suspect this is reflective of the national mood and may be a sign of what\u2019s to come in the current election season.<\/p>\n A version of this article was published today in the Albuquerque Tribune<\/a> and on the Diary of a Mad Voter<\/a> blog published by the Denver Post\u2019s Politics West<\/a> and the independent Web site NewWest.net<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many analysts predict that the shift to the left that gave Democrats control of Congress in 2006 will continue this year, but there\u2019s a lot of debate about how strong the wave will be. If the recent overthrow of the Las Cruces City Council is an indication of the national mood, the wave might be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2775","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=2775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}