By Whitney Cheshire
Jails, taxes, lies, bloggers, candidates who can’t read a voting record… Will the GOP stay mum?
Welcome to Campaign Albuquerque 2007!
We’re going to stick with
By now, you know that the Albuquerque City Council handed Mayor and gubernatorial candidate Martin Chávez a stiff defeat on Monday when it overrode his veto, keeping in place $9 million for jail funding.
On a 6-3 vote that crossed party lines, a majority of the council said “No” to Mayor Marty and his latest attempt to funnel public safety dollars into his special projects.
Eye on Albuquerque had a pretty good take on the whole jail battle earlier this week.
But how is the are-we-supposed-to-give-money-to-the-jail-or-are-we-wasting-tax-dollars argument between the mayor and council playing out in this year’s elections?
Golly gee… Do we have enough time to cover it all?
As we wrote about last week, all even-numbered council districts are up for election in October. And with the mayor getting slapped in the face over jail funding by the council’s veto-proof majority – some on the left, some on the right – the stakes this year couldn’t be higher.
With Craig Loy quitting the council, Chávez’s die-hard support is dwindling to two votes – Councilors Sally Mayer and Ken Sanchez.
Chávez is now regularly opposed by both Democrats and Republicans – a phenomenon not uncommon for elected officials who flop all over the place with no regard for any political or social philosophy.
Chávez is quickly becoming a friendless mayor, to say the least. So he needs to find some more friends, and he’s turning up the heat to get it done.
Obviously, his tactics aren’t sitting well with most members of the council.
At Monday’s meeting, Councilor Don Harris challenged the independence of the city clerk, Millie Santillanes. He said the clerk serves at the will of the mayor and when she made a ruling last week to extend a filing deadline for one of the Chávez-backed candidates, it raised serious questions.
Did she, or did she not, unfairly apply the deadline rules? Break the law? Provide favoritism within the official elections office?
Some people are trying to answer that.
But, we’ll guess the inquiry goes nowhere since the candidate, Katherine Martinez, failed to come up with the minimum number of contributions to qualify for public financing anyway – an out-of-the-gates failure that doesn’t bode well for her upcoming run against Council President Debbie O’Malley.
But it’s still good to ask the questions, no?
Because this isn’t the first time Santillanes has had to defend herself against questionable activity, and it likely won’t be the last.
Anyway…
What about Councilor Michael Cadigan asking the inspector general to investigate those recent radio ads and robo calls that lied about Councilor Brad Winter’s voting record?
That was good stuff…
Cadigan said the ads were false and likely didn’t comply with city finance laws.
Ya THINK???
Either The Citizens for Responsible Budgets – now dubbed by the WMQB as “The Group that Lies” – apparently doesn’t know how to read an official voting record, or doesn’t WANT to read it… or something.
And now, it appears that Winter’s opponent in this year’s election – Paulette de’Pascal – is either in cahoots with “The Group that Lies” or is just repeating the lies that she heard on the radio.
Because she’s saying the exact same stuff. Go figure.
Here’s what blogger Joe Monahan wrote Monday:
“She (de’Pascal) tells me Winter’s support of a six-month delay in the mayor’s 1/8 of a cent cut in the city’s gross receipts tax is a sign of his being ‘out of touch’ with his conservative to moderate NE Heights district.”
Oh boy…
Winter never tried to delay the tax cut. Never. WRONGO! Even the Albuquerque Journal reported on it.
Voting record, people… You can research votes online now… It’s pretty simple.
So here’s our WMQB tip of the day – we offer it to The Group That Lies and Winter’s challenger (collectively, we’ll now call them “The Group That Cannot Read”).
To you, we say if SOMEONE tells you that SOMEONE voted SOMEWAY, and you want to make a public issue of it, double check the vote record first!
After all, you wouldn’t want to be legally responsible for slandering an elected official. Of course, if push comes to shove, you could always say, “It’s not my fault! Marty told me to say it!”
Now that’d be a good defense…
We’re kidding, of course, with that whole “Marty told me to” thing. We really don’t know who started the nastiness. But it was only like $5,000 worth of lies, or so.
Peanuts, right?
OK – now, what about the Republican Party? You’d think they would step up to defend their few-and-far-between conservative councilors when they are falsely attacked, no? Maybe a press release? Maybe a press conference?
Hello? Mr. Bernalillo County GOP Chairman Fernando C De Baca? Are you out there? How about a little love for your Republican councilors, the ones who have consistently voted for tax cuts? The ones who opposed the mayor’s streetcar tax?
No interest?
Odd. I Wonder why…
OK – There you have it! We’re off and running! Should we talk about something other than
We’ll see you next Wednesday!