The petitions are in and we have 10 candidates who will be running for seats on Sedona City Council. As reporter Juliana Walter covered last week, there are four candidates for mayor and six for the three open seats.
The race for mayor will be an interesting one when pitting two incumbents against two newcomers in a race that it’s almost certainly headed toward a November runoff because it’s highly doubtful one of the four candidates will pull dramatically ahead and win more than 50% plus one in August. This most likely means that the top two vote getters will face each other and head to head to the runoff.
Samaire Armstrong, Kurt Gehlbach and Vice Mayor Scott Jablow are challenging Mayor Sandra J. “Sandy” Moriarty for the seat she currently occupies. Because Jablow cannot run for his council seat while running for mayor, he will depart council if he fails to unseat Moriarty and defeat Armstrong and Gehlbach.
In the Council race, the competition is less cutthroat. There are six candidates for three open seats: Melissa Dunn, Brian Fultz, Pete Furman, Scott Moffatt, Jennifer J. Strait and incumbent Councilman Jon “J.T.” Thompson, who will be running for reelection.
Because council members are elected at large, one, two or three candidates could be elected in August and avoid a runoff. Statistically more likely is that either one will win seats in August forcing four into a November runoff for the final two seats, or two will win a seat in August, forcing the candidates who came in third and fourth for the third and final seat in November.
The math is somewhat complicated for council seats. Voters can choose up to three candidates in the council race, so if 3,000 citizens vote, there are potentially 9,000 votes that could be cast. If 400 people only vote for two candidates, there would be theoretically 8,600 votes cast. According to the state’s formula, those 8,600 votes would be divided by the number of seats — by three for a max of 2,833 ⅔ — then cut in half — 1,416 ⅓ for 50 percent — and rounded up to the nearest whole number, 1,417, marking the theoretical threshold candidates need to win the primary outright.
We are contacting candidates to explain how our election coverage works so that we fairly and accurately present candidates to readers.
For readers, now that the candidates are declared, expect to see ads in the pages of our newspaper, signs in yards around the city of Sedona and potential public events where candidates will speak to community groups.
Expect numerous debates and forums hosted by local organizations such as the Sedona Chamber of Commerce and the League of Women Voters Sedona Verde Valley and other special interest groups. Sedona XYZ hosted a forum in years past aimed at addressing the needs of residents in their 20s 30s and 40s and we hope they do again considering how the high cost of homes, limited housing market and price inflation affect we younger, working class residents.
When it comes to letters to the editor, in order to be fair to all the candidates, we do not permit attacks for endorsements. We did this in part to make the public space we provide to you, our readers, is as fair as possible, so that if some candidate chooses to start a letter-writing campaign, we’re not bombarded with support for one candidate at the detriment of others.
We also do this because local elections can sometimes get pretty nasty, but once the election is over, we’re all still neighbors and should remain civil, without vitriol.
If you want to endorse or comment on a candidate, you can do so by purchasing a political ad at (928) 282-7795 extension 114.
That said we highly encourage residents once and voiced their support for one of these candidates to contact us as soon as possible to assist with ads for their campaigns.
Also on the ballot this year we’ll be home rule, which we’ll discuss at length in a future letter. Just know that because home rule does not target an individual person, we encourage letters in support and opposition up until the last newspaper before early ballots go out to voters, Wednesday, July 6. After that date, these letters will not be published.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
