Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber announces he will not seek third term in office

Yahoo

17-05-2025

The wait is over.
After months of speculation about his political future, Mayor Alan Webber announced Friday he will not seek another term in office.
'After much thought and many heartfelt discussions with family and friends, I've made the decision not to run for a third term as Mayor,' Webber said in a statement. 'It's a hard decision for me because I love this city, and I love my job as Mayor,' he added.
He described serving as Santa Fe's mayor as 'the highest honor of my life.'
The statement did not include a specific reason why Webber, who had a minor heart attack in February, is choosing not to run again, and he did not respond to a request for comment Friday. However, his decision will leave a void in the already crowded mayoral race, as many of the six candidates who have so far announced their bid in the November municipal election have been positioning themselves in opposition to him.
Joe Monahan, writer of the popular blog New Mexico Politics with Joe Monahan, said Webber's announcement likely brought 'a collective sigh of relief' to the candidates, along with questions about who will surface as the top contender.
'It looks like a jump ball,' he said of the current state of the race.
A rocky tenure
Elected to a first term in 2018 as the city's first full-time 'strong' mayor, Webber, 76, handily won reelection in 2021 but has been dogged by criticism throughout much of his tenure, particularly following the summer of 2020, when he called for the removal of the Soldiers' Monument on the Plaza.
The obelisk was toppled later that year by activists, sparking a community engagement process on how to handle public art and monuments, as well as an expensive lawsuit against Webber and the city.
Critics have levied blame on Webber for what they say is a lack of transparency inside City Hall and a subpar handling of basic city services, such as park maintenance. Residents and business owners in the downtown area and around the Interfaith Community Shelter on Cerrillos Road have also criticized the administration for its handling of homelessness and crime.
In recent years, public dissatisfaction against Webber has been so pronounced he has been loudly booed at the Burning of Zozobra and other events, including a 2023 mariachi concert at the Santa Fe Opera.
Much of Webber's first term was marked by the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic, which dealt a significant blow to the city's tourism-focused economy.
Under his leadership, the city also caught up on long-overdue audits, opened a new teen center and completed a master plan for development at the midtown campus.
121024_MGS_Santa Fe Breakfast_001.JPG (copy)
Mayor Alan Webber celebrates the Santa Fe Teen Center space as city officials and regional state lawmakers gather in December for an annual pre-legislative session breakfast.
Successor's challenges
Webber's departure means a new leader will take the reins as the city embarks on a number of ambitious projects, including updates to its Land Use Code and General Plan and the development of the midtown campus on St. Michael's Drive.
The new mayor also will be saddled with a number of ongoing challenges, including how to address an aging wastewater treatment plant, how to handle the local impacts of federal funding cuts — some of which specifically target immigrant-friendly cities like Santa Fe — and how to ease the city's housing shortage and rising homelessness.
The latter two issues are shaping up to be key issues in the November election, along with public safety.
Monahan said he hopes Webber's departure will allow mayoral candidates to have a more substantive conversation on the issues, saying he feels the city is at an 'inflection point' in its response to crime and drugs.
City Councilor Michael Garcia, former City Councilors JoAnne Vigil Coppler and Ron Trujillo, former city Finance Director Oscar Rodriguez, former county clerk candidate Letitia Montoya and Tarin Nix, the deputy commissioner of public affairs for the State Land Office, are all running for mayor.
Vigil Coppler ran unsuccessfully against Webber in 2021, when he was reelected in a race against her and environmental engineer Alexis Martinez Johnson.
As the only current elected official in the race, Garcia is in a good position to try and snag front-runner status, 'if he can run a competent campaign,' Monahan said.
100424 jw teen center1.jpg
Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber puts some spin on the ball while playing pingpong with Mathias Ruschkowski during an open house earlier this month to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the opening of the Santa Fe Teen Center.
'Lasting progress'
In his Friday statement, Webber described the city as 'stronger, healthier, more resilient and more just' than when he walked into the Mayor's Office in 2018.
'Justice' was also the theme of his State of the City address last week, when he openly criticized the Trump administration, something he did in his statement Friday as well.
When Webber announced his candidacy nearly 10 years ago, he characterized the city as struggling with litany of issues: It was permitting fewer than 200 housing units a year, had yet to open the long-awaited teen center and had been issued a scathing report in 2017 that found the Finance Department had few internal controls and was at extremely high risk of fraud.
'In every one of those areas — and countless others — we made real, significant, and lasting progress,' Webber said in his statement.
Among his top accomplishments, he listed putting $3 million a year into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, adding the city to the national Built for Zero initiative to address homelessness, hiring more first responders, launching a guaranteed income pilot program at Santa Fe Community College and pushing sustainable energy and clean water initiatives.
Carol Romero-Wirth thanked Webber in a Friday statement for his service as the first full-time mayor.
'His leadership allowed us to tackle the City's considerable structural problems and decades of unaddressed deferred maintenance,' which she said was inherited from 'the previous and outdated governance system.'
'He leaves a strong foundation from which additional improvements can be built,' she said.
Romero-Wirth and Councilor Signe Lindell, Webber's closest allies on the dais, are also both not seeking reelection. Webber's departure means there will be at least three new faces on the City Council next year, paving the way for what could potentially be a very different balance of power.
'Dead-end' job?
Webber had a long career in business and journalism before entering the realm of politics later in life, serving as editorial director of the Harvard Business Review and in 1995 co-founding technology business magazine Fast Company.
Born in St. Louis, Webber spent time in Portland, Ore., and Boston before he and his wife moved to New Mexico in 2003. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2014, finishing second in the Democratic primary election. He fared better in the 2018 Santa Fe mayor's race, beating four other candidates in the city's first ranked-choice election.
Webber raised over $500,000 in election contributions in 2021, more than three times as much as his closest competitor and a record for a Santa Fe city election.
Not having to compete with Webber's massive war chest may spur more candidates to enter the race or opt for public financing. The application window to qualify for public money began May 5 and closes July 21.
Monahan said the fact that the Mayor's Office is a 'dead-end' political job may limit the number of contestants more than anything else, as mayors nationwide increasingly attract criticism for persistent social problems.
'What's stopping people may be just the difficulty of the job,' he said.
Mixed reaction
Santa Feans had a variety of reactions to Webber's Friday announcement.
Bridget Dixson, CEO of the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce, thanked him for his work.
'We've always had a very strong, collaborative relationship with the mayor and we appreciate his years of service to the city,' she said, a relationship she hopes continues with whoever is next elected.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham declined to comment, with spokesperson Michael Coleman only saying the governor is 'not weighing in on the mayor's race at this time.'
Lujan Grisham and Webber publicly clashed early last year after Webber mentioned a conversation he had with the governor during a deposition in a lawsuit filed against the city by Union Protectiva de Santa Fe regarding the toppling of the Soldiers' Monument. Lujan Grisham accused him of misrepresenting their discussion and slammed him for what she described as passing the buck.
'There is an obvious leadership problem at the city of Santa Fe,' she said at the time.
One of Webber's harshest public critics over the years has been Virgil Vigil, Union Protectiva's president.
Vigil said he spoke to Webber briefly at the State of the City about the mayor's recent heart attack and suggested it might be a reason not to run for office again.
'You're going to get another heart attack, and it's going to kill you this time,' he said he warned Webber.
Vigil was happy about Friday's news, however: 'It's the best thing to happen to the city of Santa Fe.'