Finally, Santa Fe hangs picture of city’s only female mayor

Debbie Jaramillo is back at City Hall.

Monday, a picture of the city's first female mayor reappeared—years after a different one was taken off the wall from its place alongside the men who have led Santa Fe since 1888.

Pressure had been building for a new portrait after SFR touched on the matter in its Sept. 5 cover story ("Was Debbie Right?").

"The whole picture thing took on a life of its own after that story," Jaramillo told SFR Monday. "Everywhere I went people said, 'Are they gonna get your picture up?'"

At the time of SFR's story, the mercurial mayor said she'd joked with one of her successors: "When and if I do bring you something, you better nail that fucker down to where it's going to take a backhoe to get it off the wall."

It's notably easier than that to move Jaramillo's new portrait—and City Clerk Yolanda Vigil did move it briefly Monday afternoon as she placed the framed picture in the correct order to reflect Jaramillo's tenure from 1994-1998.

"I'll bet it stays there," former city public information officer Richard Polese told SFR Monday afternoon. Polese campaigned for the then-city councilor in her run for mayor and handled press releases and speechwriting for a time. Earlier this fall, Polese began pushing for a photo. He eventually got Jaramillo to give him a few for options, and checked with Vigil's office before hanging the new portrait Monday morning.

"I go to City Hall fairly often," Polese said. "Every time I looked at the pictures and it really hurt not seeing her up there."

Jaramillo said she was thankful for Polese's effort and that, until she started hearing from people around town, she hadn't really cared that the photo had been missing for so long. Like Jaramillo, Polese believes it was only a matter of months after the mayor left office before her picture disappeared.

Jarmillo told SFR in the September cover story that it felt to her as though it was as if the city preferred her tenure hadn't happened.

Of course, picture or not, reminders of Jaramillo's tenure are everywhere in the city, including the Railyard, the Genoveva Chavez Community Center and other resident-centered services.

Polese's picture may be a placeholder. Vigil told SFR that the city is digitizing a slide it got from the former mayor and may replace what's now on the wall as soon as this week, if the print is finished in time.

Portraits of 40 mayors hang in three rows at city offices. It's not a perfect assemblage. A picture of William T Thornton is either missing or misnamed. Mayor AR Gibson, who served from 1904-06, has a frame and a name, but no picture. Just last week, as Jaramillo's missing picture was in the news again, a relative of former mayor JR Hudson gave the city a photo to fill in a blank it had for Hudson's tenure.

The only mayor missing from the wall now is Javier Gonzales. Vigil said Monday the city plans to get a photo of Santa Fe's most recent former mayor up soon.

Jaramillo said she told Polese it felt like he was "asking me to do the impossible" by digging through old boxes for photos of herself a quarter century earlier. The one hanging now was her third choice.

"It was about the only original picture I could find," she said, adding that it was taken shortly after her 1994 election. The picture that was stolen was colorized and showed her leaning against a wall at her home, glasses in hand. Her second choice was another portrait from 1996.

The city is in the process of renaming a neighborhood park near Jaramillo's home for Mike Jaramillo, her husband of 43 years. She brushed aside a recent report that she'd somehow struck a deal with current Mayor Alan Webber to get her portrait back up at City Hall and the park renamed.

"Not only would I not do it, it hasn't been up for 20 years. Why would I give a fuck now?" she offered Monday, adding it was due to "good-hearted people."