Voters still undecided after first forum
Navajo Times | Ravonelle Yazzie Monday night’s presidential forum at Navajo Technical University drew a mostly older crowd in Crownpoint.
CROWNPOINT
Fifteen of the 18 candidates for Navajo Nation president spoke at Monday night’s election forum at Navajo Technical University. And some people weren’t impressed with any of them.
Navajo Times | Ravonelle Yazzie
Monday night’s presidential forum at Navajo Technical University drew a mostly older crowd in Crownpoint.
Jermaine Tom, 28, of Littlewater, New Mexico, an NTU student and employee tasked with picking up trash in the bleachers after the event, admitted he hadn’t even paid much attention to all the rhetoric. “I don’t vote, except at my chapter,” he shrugged. “There’s never a good candidate.”
Pressed to make a choice based on what he had heard that night, he responded, “Maybe Dineh Benally. He’s all right.”
Two veterans, Lester Emerson and David M. Emerson (no relation), groused that they hadn’t heard enough about veterans’ issues, even though nearly every candidate mentioned veterans and several panel members brought them up during the question portion of the forum.
“It’s the same old issues,” scoffed Lester Emerson, 55, of Thoreau, who is vice commander of the Eastern Agency Veterans Association. “Revolving door issues. I didn’t hear anything new.”
David Emerson said that though candidates spoke of veterans’ housing, nobody mentioned the corruption in the Navajo Nation Veterans Housing Program, which he is hoping the next president will address. “We lost more than one million to Home Depot,” he said. “To this day there’s no structure” to how the money is spent.
Others had made their minds up before the forum, and nothing they heard changed their loyalties.
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