Chapter 13: What are some of the most important elections you've voted in, and what made them important to you?

Originally written March 15, 2021

Some astute political commentary over Zoom on Election Night 2020. I was on a panel for KNME’s In Focus Facebook page. I took this screenshot as we were closing in on midnight. I’m one of the few here not dozing off. Hope none of the other participants sue me over this.

I honestly believe the two most elections I’ve voted in were the first one and the last one. Or make that the most recent one. I’m hoping I’ve got a few more elections to vote in before I kick.

I cast my first vote in 1972, the year Richard Nixon won re-election. I’d just turned 18 in September 1971 and ’72 was the first election in which 18-year olds were allowed to vote. 

And though his campaign against Nixon basically flopped, California Congressman Paul “Pete” McCloskey — an anti-war Republican who tried to challenge Nixon — was still on the New Mexico Republican primary ballot that June.

I’d heard McCloskey speak a few months before at the University of New Mexico and I liked him.

Even though I had registered to vote as an independent in Albuquerque, I learned that I was still on Santa Fe’s voting rolls as a Republican. (I had originally registered back when I was still in high school. You were allowed to do that if you’d be turning 18 by the next election.)

So I drove up to Santa Fe and became, as I liked to brag, “the first kid on my block to vote against Nixon.” This was about a month after the anti-war protests at UNM, during which I lost my tear-gas virginity and got shot at by an Albuquerque cop.

I know Dr. Thompson would have approved my ‘72 primary vote

The funny thing about McCloskey though, was that even though he lost the New Mexico primary by a landslide, under state GOP rules he still won enough support to be awarded one delegate. And in fact, New Mexico sent the only non-Nixon delegate to the Republican National Convention that year. (That delegate was writer Tom Mayer from Espanola, who a couple of years later would be my creative-writing teacher at the  University of New Mexico.)

During the general election season, Nixon made a short campaign stop at the Albuquerque Sunport. I was there to greet him with dozens of other protestors (but sadly, many more Nixon supporters).

I booed myself hoarse.

Democrat George McGovern, of course, lost to Nixon in a landslide. In the months before I read the polls and I should have known what was coming. Still, I held out naive hope. That night, as the TV networks declared Nixon the winner, I went out to the drinking fountain in front of my dorm room and did an angry mule kick on the damned thing, leaving a huge dent.

I was on the losing end of that election. But in short order, history proved me — and McCloskey and McGovern — right. By August 1974, Nixon was forced to leave office in the face of certain impeachment over his Watergate crimes.

I’ve voted in all state and national elections since then. All were important, of course, though at least a couple of times I didn’t take it all that seriously. I voted for the Libertarian ticket in 1980 (I was mad at Jimmy Carter and wasn’t fond of Ronald Reagan) and for Ralph Nader in 1996. (The Clinton/Dole race that year only bored me.)

During my years as a political reporter, I got to attend several national political conventions (ah, the good old days when even small newspapers like The New Mexican had travel budgets!) and got to meet and interview several presidential candidates. It was fun, though none of these elections seemed to be as life-or-death as Nixon’s last election in 1972. 

But by the time Donald Trump was president it became obvious that getting rid of his angry, racist, narcissistic orange ass was unimaginably important. Trump made Nixon look like a visionary statesman by comparison.

I voted early in 2020, dropping off my absentee ballot at the county clerk’s office well before the election.

I was busy on election night itself. I had a freelance gig with the Associated Press, calling in results for Santa Fe County. And along with other New Mexico journalists, pundits and politicians, I was on this public Zoom call that was live on the Facebook page of New Mexico in Focus, a program on KNME, Albuquerque’s PBS station.

Results from the county were excruciatingly slow and on the Zoom call, the discussion almost entirely centered on state legislative races. So I had very little idea what was going on in the presidential race until we wrapped up the Zoom around midnight.

At that point I learned that many of the expected Democratic wins in Senate races had failed to materialize as well as the fact that Joe Biden actually was behind in Pennsylvania and was not performing as well as expected in Michigan and Wisconsin.

Instead of the blowout expected, the race was a squeaker. Then I saw Trump’s early-morning press conference in which he declared a premature and false victory. 

Had there been a drinking fountain nearby, I would have kicked it in.

I went to bed sad and depressed. The thing that worried me the most — even more than Trump and his gaggle of white supremacists and sleazy grifters staying in power — was the fight against COVID-19.

Would the country be able to withstand another four years of Trump’s mishandling of this health crisis and his active encouragement of his devoted followers to ignore safety measures? This was before any vaccine had been approved. I worried about myself, my children and grandchildren and all my loved ones.

But the next day I realized the big problem was something that many pundits had warned about — that the in-person votes in many states would be leaning heavily toward Trump, while the mail-in and absentee ballots would lean even heavier toward Biden. And most those latter ballots had not yet been counted.

By the end of the day, realizing which places had yet to complete their absentee ballot counts, I grew more and more optimistic.

But now Trump is gone. I’ve received both my vaccination shots, as has my son, Anton. My daughter Molly has received her first. Brighter days are coming and hopefully the next election will be relatively boring.

[Note from 2024: Reminder that the previous paragraph was written in early 2021. Covid has faded, but Trump has not. As Cathy from the funny papers would say, AACK!!!!!!!!!!!!! ]

And here’s a little song in tribute to the very first election I voted in. Fans of Billy Jack should love it.