Western mulls running mates

By Krista Allen
Special to the Times

TÓNANEESDIZÍ

The notion that candidates for president and vice president who run on the same ticket must be from different states was the main topic of discussion at Delegate Herman Daniels’s campaign booth Tuesday morning in Shonto Canyon, Arizona.

After having a bowl of soup with frybread and slices of watermelon, Stanley Yazzie engaged in a dialogue with Joe Holgate Jr. The topic was raised.

For years, the conventional wisdom is that a president from Arizona should have a vice president from New Mexico, and vice versa, in order to draw voters from the entire reservation (Utah, presumably, doesn’t have enough votes to matter). Is that really the case? Yazzie asked.

“We’re always separating ourselves,” said Yazzie, the southern representative for Shonto Community Governance. “It shouldn’t matter. If I won presidential primary elections, Joe Holgate can be my running mate. We are both from Arizona. Right now, what people are saying is that if a candidate from Arizona wins, we’ll need a representative from New Mexico or Utah.”

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