In 2023, five folks ran for mayor.
This year, two candidates are on the ballot: Current Mayor Timothy King and the last mayoral election runner-up, Gerald “Dusty” Wiley.
The first day after filing for office, the candidates faced off in front of the Leadership Cloudcroft group gathered at The Distillery.
Wiley and King started with a healthy dose of friendly competition: Rock, Paper, Scissors, to see who would go first — Wiley won.
Watch the full conversation and get to know your mayoral hopefuls as they converse with the Reader, Leadership Cloudcroft cohort, current council and department heads, the Council of Governments folks, and more.
Look forward to more Reader video episodes from Meet the Candidates: Leadership Cloudcroft, featuring candidates for trustee, school board, and judge—coming soon.
The Election: Important Dates
The filing day for write-in candidates is September 2nd. With Trustee Foster resigning a few days ago, another seat has become available. But you need to file as a write-in candidate.
Find out more here: https://www.sos.nm.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/2025-Regular-Local-Election-Candidate-Guide.pdf
On October 18th, expanded early voting begins.
Election day is November 4th.
Special thanks to these local companies for their support of Leadership Cloudcroft:
Cloudcroft Brewing Company and The Distillery
A Note from the Editor
Dear Readers,
I made a mistake last week as the Editor of the Cloudcroft Reader. I ignored one of my own rules of publishing: people must own their words.
Here’s what happened. We conducted a two-day survey of our readers to gather their opinions on the top issues facing the Village, as well as their assessments of the job performance of Village officers. So far, so good. But at the end of the survey, we asked an open-ended question: Tell us what you think.
More than half of the survey respondents did just that, sometimes in blistering language. Few local public figures were spared, including the Reader, which received at least a half-dozen comments suggesting we had turned into a “tabloid” — or worse.
I elected to run all the comments, unedited, on our site. I felt that the comments as a whole conveyed a sense of the community's frustrations and hopes. I thought there was something to be learned in hearing what the community felt.
But here is where I missed the boat. Since the survey was anonymous, so were the comments. And I don’t like, and I don’t believe in, amplifying anonymously written comments. But I published them. This is a mistake I will not repeat.
That page of comments is no longer available on our website.
I welcome feedback from the public for the Reader and for our local leaders. But I will only publish those where the author of that feedback is known and owns their words.
The decision to run all the comments was mine alone. I should have thought more deeply before I put it on the website. That is not what the Reader stands for, and it is not how we believe we should best serve the community.
I pledge to do better.
Chris Hearne
Editor and Founder
Cloudcroft Reader
The Reader is proud to be sponsored in part by great companies like Osha Trail Depot:
Request for Proposal: Cloud Country West
