A section of southeast Albuquerque now has a new city councilor-elect.
Nichole Rogers beat out Jeff Hoehn by about 200 votes Tuesday night in an Albuquerque City Council run-off election after a contentious month of campaigning by both.
Rogers will be the first African American woman to serve on the City Council.
She tells The Paper. that district voters, her children and campaign volunteers all get to take credit for her win.
“I’m just overwhelmed with gratitude,” she says.
Hoehn, earlier in his campaign, promised to offer his expertise, as the executive director of a homelessness outreach nonprofit organization, to Rogers. He tells The Paper. he plans to keep that promise and that he offered his help to Rogers just after the final numbers came in on Tuesday night.
“If she needs me, I will be there for her,” he says.
Rogers says she’ll “absolutely” take Hoehn up on his offer.
“It’s going to take all of us to work together,” she says. “Now’s the time to unify our district so that we can get to work, and it’s going to take all of us, including all the other candidates.”
The run-off race for City Council District 6 is the second time Hoehn and Rogers ran against each other since early November, but this was the first time they went head-to-head. On Nov. 5 the two came out on top in a four-way race to replace outgoing City Councilor Pat Davis.*
During that initial run there were a fair amount of traditional political hits between candidates, including Hoehn and Rogers, but things started heating up during the second round of campaigning. Hoehn and Rogers took aim at each other quickly after November’s campaign dust settled. District 6 includes some of the city’s more affluent neighborhoods, but also some of the most poverty-riddled areas. Even before the two emerged as direct opponents, Hoehn’s campaign, along with independent political groups that raised money in support of him, honed in on Rogers’ time as a nonprofit director and when her organization fell out of compliance, thanks to missing paperwork. Rogers chalks it up to the person she hired to keep everything compliant filing the wrong documents. But, she says, she has since fixed the errors.
Hoehn quickly found backing from businesses and building developers, which found him in the crosshairs of Rogers’ supporters, who quickly labeled him as a pro-business and anti-labor candidate. In return, Hoehn supporters painted Rogers as both lacking the responsibility to serve District 6 and someone who would carry water for Mayor Tim Keller and his administration. Hoehn says he hopes that Rogers’ promise to be independent from the mayor will hold true.
“We need a Council that holds the mayor accountable and keeps him in check,” he says. “I can only hope the City Council, including Nichole, will stand up to the mayor like she’s promised to do along the way, to speak truth to power, time and time again.”
Rogers, despite counting Keller himself as a guest at her Tuesday night campaign party, says she will focus on the needs of District 6 and push back against the Keller administration when needed.
“I am my own person, I have my own views. I’m in nobody’s pockets, including the mayor’s or anybody else,” Rogers says. “I have one focus, which is the same this entire campaign, the people-powered campaign, and I’m here to serve the people in District 6, whether they voted for me or not.”
The City Council will not meet until next year and Rogers is among three new councilors, so it’s still somewhat unclear how next year’s Council will align or butt heads with the Keller administration.
Hoehn, who’s been active in the Nob Hill Neighborhood Association, says he’s ready to step his community and political activism up a few notches. He says he plans to mobilize a “grassroots effort” to tackle some of the issues he ran on like combatting homelessness and “speaking truth to power.”
“Now, I can do it without fear or concern about reprisal or political consequences,” he says.
Rogers says she plans to spend the next few weeks preparing for her first meeting as a councilor.
“I’m going to study the Council rules, I’ve already begun to read through those, I’m brushing up on Robert’s Rules of Order, I’ll be looking at what projects are running and getting a warm handoff from Counselor Davis,” she says. “All of those things are on my to-do list.”
*Pat Davis is co-owner of The Paper., but has no editorial control.