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The majority of those who voted in last week’s non-scientific poll on this site said oil and gas drilling should be allowed on Otero Mesa. Of 222 voters, 123, or 55 percent, said drilling should be allowed, while 99, or 45 percent, said drilling should not be allowed. Don’t forget to vote in this week’s poll, located at the top of the right column on this page. Continue Reading
Actor Val Kilmer may be considering running for governor of New Mexico, but he hasn’t ever voted in the state and isn’t registered in the county in which he currently lives, The Associated Press is reporting. Kilmer registered to vote as an independent in Santa Fe County in 1992, the news service reported. He once owned property there, but he sold it in 2005. For years he has owned and lived on a ranch near Pecos in San Miguel County, but he has not switched his voter registration to that county. Kilmer has said he was thinking about running for governor, and a recent report from The Politico suggested he’s considering a 2010 run. Continue Reading
Secretary of State Mary Herrera’s office didn’t quite get it right in sending voters information on how to vote in the upcoming Nov. 4 election, the Albuquerque Journal is reporting. The Journal provided several examples of bad information included on the mailings sent out by Herrera’s office: • Doña Ana County voters were given an e-mail address to request an absentee ballot for an employee who hasn’t worked at the clerk’s office in two years. • Some 88 voters who usually vote in Radium Springs were erroneously told in the mailers that their polling site is now in Anthony. • Another 711 voters in La Mesa were given the wrong address for their polling place. Continue Reading
I’ve been disappointed in recent days to see the degree of falsehood being put forth as fact by the campaign of John McCain. The media has done a good job of calling out the McCain campaign for what is understandably being called deception by many, but I felt I, as a journalist and an independent voter who’s fed up with dishonesty in politics, had to add my voice to the chorus of people calling the statements exactly what they are: flip-flops and untruths. A serious flop came in Sarah Palin’s interview with ABC News, which aired on Thursday. In it, she said she believes humans may play a role in climate change. That entirely contradicts previous statements, even though she said in the interview that it didn’t. Continue Reading
A day after John McCain and Barack Obama paused to remember the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, they’re back to their fighting with hard-hitting new television ads. Here’s Obama’s new ad, which takes a not-so-subtle shot at McCain’s age by attacking him as someone who can’t use a computer or e-mail: For whatever it’s worth, when I interviewed McCain on his campaign bus in August, he was reading news headlines about the Georgia/Russia situation on his cell phone. Here’s Obama’s second ad out today. It’s a simple ad, without music, in which Obama makes his case that he’s the real agent of change in the race: Meanwhile, McCain is out with his own attack ad, which no-so-subtly hits Obama and his running mate for attacking Palin, playing off McCain’s assertion that the attacks on Palin have been sexist. Continue Reading
Both candidates in the 1st Congressional District race are out with new television ads today. Republican Darren White is up with his first ad of the general-election season, a positive, introductory spot that doesn’t mention Democratic opponent Martin Heinrich. Here it is: “Darren White. A lifetime of service,” the ad’s narrator states. “Ready to lead. Continue Reading
Gov. Bill Richardson is jumping into the fight over how redistricting will reshape the nation’s political landscape in the next few years. Richardson sent an e-mail to supporters of his unsuccessful presidential campaign on Wednesday asking them to contribute to the Democratic Governors Association and help stop the GOP from taking control of the executive branches in a number of states and grabbing greater influencing over redistricting in 2011. “Right now, the GOP is executing a plan to take 38 governorships over the next three years. If they accomplish this, they will have the power to shrewdly alter election district borders and steal back Congress,” Richardson, a former chairman of the association, wrote in the e-mail. “Why governors? Continue Reading
I can think of no better way to honor the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks than by getting involved. Politicians and others are recalling today the spirit of community and communality the attacks inspired in us. As the years have passed, we have lost much of that. America is bogged down in a nasty presidential race and election year. Continue Reading
Remember last year when a Washington group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, named U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce as one of the 22 most corrupt members of Congress? The central allegation the group made was that Pearce failed to report his sale of the assets of Lea Fishing Tools, Inc. to Key Energy Services for more than 540,000 shares of stock in 2003. The group said Pearce was required to report the sale and his failure to do so likely violated the Ethics in Government Act. A year later, the group released its new list of the 20 most corrupt members of Congress on Wednesday. U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson — who both made last year’s list for their roles in the U.S. attorney scandal — aren’t on this year’s list, but Pearce is. Continue Reading
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steve Pearce is continuing to gain on Democratic opponent Tom Udall, a new poll shows. Pearce is trailing Udall by 7 percentage points, 51 percent to 44 percent, in the new Rasmussen Reports poll released Wednesday. The survey of 700 likely voters was conducted Monday and has a margin of error of 4 percentage points. That’s a 3-point gain for Pearce since the group’s Aug. 20 poll had him trailing 51 percent to 41 percent. Continue Reading
The Sarah Palin factor is proving to be as good for John McCain’s presidential campaign in New Mexico as it has been in other states. A new Rasmussen Reports poll released Wednesday has Barack Obama trailing McCain by two points in New Mexico, 47 percent to McCain’s 49 percent. The survey of 700 likely voters was conducted Monday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. That’s a significant gain for McCain, who trailed Obama by six points in the group’s Aug. 20 survey, 5 points in its July 24 survey and eight points in its June 19 survey. Continue Reading
A national group whose goal is to encourage Christians to vote in November plans to hold a rally at an Albuquerque church on Thursday — the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — that will be attended by a prominent conservative actor and a controversial conservative military officer. Thursday’s is the first of several rallies in Albuquerque, Roswell and Las Cruces that will be held by Vision America, whose stated mission is to “inform, encourage and mobilize pastors and their congregations to be proactive in restoring Judeo-Christian values to the moral and civic framework in their communities, states, and our nation.” The Sept. 11 rally is being held at Legacy Church, located at 7201 Central Ave. NW, and will feature actor Stephen Baldwin and retired Three-Star Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin. Continue Reading
U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson says she knew nothing until Tuesday about e-mails that indicate that a former staffer in her office may have tried to influence Sandia Pueblo’s decision on whether to extend a contract with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s firm in 2003. TPM Muckraker was the first to report on Tuesday that the indictment of former Abramoff associate Kevin Ring, filed Monday, includes e-mails indicating interaction between a staffer in the office of Wilson, R-N.M. and Ring and another former lobbyist for Greenberg Traurig. The indictment, according to TPM Muckraker, states that the lobbyist for the firm, identified as “Firm B” in the indictment, e-mailed the Wilson staffer on Jan. 30, 2003, stating, “Sorry I couldn’t hangout last night. I greatly appreciate your taking the time to han(g)out with the (New Mexico tribe). Continue Reading
U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson and Doña Ana County District Attorney Susana Martinez are members of a new team of Republican women assigned to combat “smears” about the party’s vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. The two women are among 55 nationwide assigned to the “Palin truth squad.” Wilson is one of 19 “national members” of the group, while Martinez is labeled a “state member.” They’re the only members from New Mexico. According to a news release from John McCain’s campaign, the team was formed in response to a Wall Street Journal report that Democrats have dispatched 30 lawyers and other operatives to Alaska to dig up dirt about Palin. The group “will set the record straight against Internet and liberal smears of Governor Palin,” the release states. TheAtlantic.com’s Marc Ambinder reported that there has been plenty of accurate information reported that could be considered controversial — “that Palin sought and obtained earmarks, that she didn’t initially oppose the Bridge to Nowhere, that she raised sales taxes as mayor of Wasilla, that she maintained a working relationship with Sen. Ted Stevens,” but inaccurate information has also spread, including allegations that she “cut special needs funding (she didn’t), was a Buchananite (not true), that she wanted to mandate the teaching of creationism in Alaska public schools (she said that it didn’t have to be taught alongside evolution, although she didn’t oppose it), that her pastor was a Jew for Jesus (a guest pastor at the church was, not her regular pastor), that she was a member of the Alaska Independence Party (her husband was) and that she covered up her daughter’s pregnancy (Nope).” Other claims are pending, Ambinder wrote, and “the battle to define Palin will probably last through the election.” Wilson and Martinez, two of the state’s most prominent women politicians, get the chance to help define the GOP’s vice-presidential candidate. Continue Reading
New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District race between Democrat Harry Teague and Republican Ed Tinsley is one of 10 races “that could reshape the next Congress,” according to The Politico. With that in mind, the news outlet profiled the race in an article published today. The verdict: The similarities between the two candidates “could spell trouble for the GOP, which could lose its 30-year grip on the district if Teague can appeal to its conservative Republican base.” One sign of GOP concern, the article states, is that the vice president is hosting a fundraiser for Tinsley later this month in Teague’s hometown of Hobbs. Both candidates, The Politico reports, “have deep ties to the local oil industry and support increased domestic drilling and alternative energy development in the rural district. Both men are also wealthy enough to finance a good chunk of their own campaigns. Continue Reading