{"id":604,"date":"2006-09-21T15:27:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-21T21:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/09\/land-commissioner-hopefuls-trade-barbs-at-debate\/"},"modified":"2006-09-21T15:27:00","modified_gmt":"2006-09-21T21:27:00","slug":"land-commissioner-hopefuls-trade-barbs-at-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/09\/land-commissioner-hopefuls-trade-barbs-at-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Land commissioner hopefuls trade barbs at debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>State Land Commissioner Pat Lyons began airing radio commercials this week that are, to say the least, nasty, and his challenger, Democrat Jim Baca, has been attacking him for weeks for taking huge campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. <\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

So it\u2019s no surprise that the two took some jabs at each other during a debate Wednesday in Albuquerque<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>. But, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican<\/a>, the two remain subdued even as they took shots at each other.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Baca pointed repeatedly to Lyons<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>\u2019 contributions from oil and gas, which are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cI was the first New Mexico<\/st1:place><\/st1:state> land commissioner elected without the blessing of the oil and gas industry, and if I\u2019m elected again, it\u2019ll be the same,\u201d the New Mexican quoted Baca as saying. \u201cI haven\u2019t received a dime from them, while my opponent has received hundreds of thousands of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Lyons<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> talked, according to the New Mexican, about making land swaps with the federal Bureau of Land Management to preserve wilderness areas, and said if voters want that to continue they should vote for him, \u201cbecause the BLM isn\u2019t going to work with Jim Baca.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Baca ran the BLM for nine months under President Clinton, but left after disputes with the administration.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Baca had a return jab: \u201cI suppose the BLM won\u2019t work with me if George Bush is still in power. … To depend on the federal government to preserve wilderness is not a good idea, especially this administration, which is owned by oil and gas.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

They disagreed over drilling for natural gas on the Otero Mesa east of Las Cruces<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t let the oil and gas industry have their way on everything,\u201d the New Mexican quoted Baca as saying. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t drill on the Otero Mesa. The best thing we can do is move away from oil and gas.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Lyons<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> said the mesa \u201cisn\u2019t as pristine as everyone thinks,\u201d and said it\u2019s \u201cthe constitutional duty of the land commissioner to try to produce gas out of there. If not, you\u2019re taking away from the school children of New Mexico<\/st1:state><\/st1:place>.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

That seemed to be the heart of the debate, according to the Albuquerque Journal<\/a>. Baca, who has a slight lead in the polls, said the land commissioner should consider preservation, and not just making money off state lands. Lyons<\/st1:city>, whose fundraising dwarfs that of Baca, touted the revenue he has generated for New Mexico<\/st1:place><\/st1:state>\u2019s schools by selling and leasing state land. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

State Land Commissioner Pat Lyons began airing radio commercials this week that are, to say the least, nasty, and his challenger, Democrat Jim Baca, has been attacking him for weeks for taking huge campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. So it\u2019s no surprise that the two took some jabs at each other during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}