{"id":7432,"date":"2009-10-07T02:09:20","date_gmt":"2009-10-07T08:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=7432"},"modified":"2009-10-07T11:52:46","modified_gmt":"2009-10-07T17:52:46","slug":"berry-defeats-chavez-gop-takes-over-city-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/10\/berry-defeats-chavez-gop-takes-over-city-council\/","title":{"rendered":"Berry defeats Ch\u00e1vez; GOP takes over ABQ city council"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Richard

Richard Berry (Photo by Enrique C. Knell)<\/p><\/div>\n

Richard Berry<\/a> has defeated\u00a0three-term\u00a0Mayor Martin Ch\u00e1vez<\/a> and Richard Romero<\/a> in Albuquerque’s 2009 municipal election.<\/p>\n

With all 186 precincts reporting results that are still unofficial, Berry has 43.82 percent of the vote — enough to\u00a0avoid a runoff election.<\/p>\n

Berry and his campaign staff celebrated with hundreds of\u00a0 supporters at the Sheraton Uptown Tuesday evening. Berry told the crowd that\u00a0 he will focus on the job at hand and pledged to bring “commonsense leadership” to city hall.<\/p>\n

“Bottom line is I want to serve Albuquerque. This is a great city,” said Berry, a Republican. “I want to take a commonsense approach to government. Take my business experience, my legislative experience, and just roll up my sleeves and try to move Albuquerque forward.”<\/p>\n

Berry will have to resign his seat in the state Legislature because of a city rule.\u00a0 A replacement will be chosen by the Bernalillo County Commission.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Ch\u00e1vez told his supporters at a southeast heights bar that he’d called Berry earlier in the evening and promised a smooth transition. “I’ve spoken to R.J. and congratulated him on a great campaign,” Ch\u00e1vez said. “He and I will be meeting at noon.”<\/p>\n

Ch\u00e1vez, who got 35.02 percent of the vote, told his misty-eyed supporters that it has been an honor to be mayor of his hometown.<\/p>\n

“All you have to do is look around to see what we have done together to transform this community,” he said.<\/p>\n

Republicans will also control the city council<\/h3>\n

Ch\u00e1vez was not the only incumbent\u00a0 defeated on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

City Councilor Michael Cadiagan, who dropped out of the\u00a0mayor’s race in time to run for re-election in District 5,\u00a0will be replaced by Republican Dan Lewis. Lewis\u00a0beat Cadigan by nearly 12 percent,\u00a0picking up 55.98 percent of the vote to Cadiagan’s 44.02 percent.<\/p>\n

Republican incumbent Dan Harris easily won re-election, defeating David Barbour\u00a0 by 59 points.<\/p>\n

Democrat\u00a0 incumbent Isaac Benton won re-election by defeating Bernalillo County Commissioner Alan Armijo by almost 20 points.<\/p>\n

Councilor Ken Sanchez, a Democrat incumbent, was unopposed, and\u00a0 Mike Cook received 95.69 percent of the vote in winning the open District 7 seat.<\/p>\n

In December the council will have\u00a0five Republicans and\u00a0four Democrats.<\/p>\n

Voters OK tax, bonds and charter amendments<\/h3>\n

Albuquerque voters approved a 10-year extension of a 1\/4 cent transportation tax, $159.4 million in general obligation bonds and all 10 city charter amendments.<\/p>\n

Analysts had been closely watching the results of several proposed charter amendments. With all 10 passing, the city attorney and city clerk will have a bit more independence from the mayor.<\/p>\n

And city councilors, who unanimously overrode a mayoral veto of the charter amendments, could be getting a raise after voters approved a five-panel independent commission to review the salaries of city elected officials.<\/p>\n

All of Tuesday’s election results are posted online here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

St. Cyr is a contributing writer for this site and an Albuquerque<\/span> radio reporter. He can be reached at peter.stcyr@gmail.com<\/span><\/a><\/em>. By way of disclosure, St. Cyr is paid as a subcontractor through Mayor Martin Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s campaign spokeswoman on a contract to help promote the Town of Taos<\/a> that has nothing to do with the Albuquerque election. A prior version of this posting incorrectly stated that Berry’s replacement would be chosen by the governor.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Berry has defeated three-term Mayor Martin Ch\u00e1vez and Richard Romero in Albuquerque’s 2009 municipal election. Here’s the rundown on that and everything else that happened in Tuesday’s election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[139],"class_list":["post-7432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-albuquerque"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7432","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}