Democrats: Everything I don’t like is a “power grab”

Democrats all over New Mexico are BIG MAD that City Council has voted to allow voters to decide whether to end expensive runoff elections in City elections. As a quick refresher Republican RJ Berry won the Mayor’s race in 2009 with 44% of the vote. He won in part because two Democrats split the vote. As soon as they had their chance, Democrats got a ballot measure passed by voters in 2013 to create a system of runoff elections to determine the ultimate winner in a two-way race.

On a 6-3 vote City Council just voted to put a measure on the ballot to allow voters to choose to go back to the prior system. The Mayor will veto that, but if all 6 remain committed to the idea, it will be voted on. From the way Democrats (and not just those in City government) are acting, it would seem that Donald Trump had been installed as Supreme Leader of Albuquerque for life.

State Sen. Bill Tallman decried the idea as a “power grab.” Of course, Tallman has been silent on MLG’s numerous actual power grabs (as have other Democrats) including: her abuse of emergency powers during COVID, her use of an unelected body to force us to drive electric vehicles, her plan to force school districts to adopt 5-day school weeks (despite bipartisan legislative opposition), and her attempt to nullify the 2nd Amendment in Bernalillo County.

In reality, Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver recently gave away the game for Albuquerque Democrats. They don’t want voters to be vote in November on shifting election requirements UNTIL THEY have the votes to push for convoluted and non-transparent “ranked choice” voting.

As I wrote in an op-ed recently, runoff elections are expensive and usually wind up with far fewer voters participating to the point that (even with fewer candidates in the race) the winner gets fewer votes in a runoff than they did in a four-way race. The left wants to keep its power. Anything else is a “power grab” to them.