Democracy for New Mexico

ACTION ALERT: Call NM House & Senate Leaders About Clean Elections

From Common Cause NM:
Most New Mexicans agree that we need to clean up our corrupt political system by passing Clean Elections. But now, with the session underway, we're suddenly hearing that House and Senate leaders are trying to put the brakes on the public campaign financing bill this year.

With recent scandals and growing public distrust of our legislators, we need a vote for passage of the Clean Elections program in New Mexico now, not stalling tactics and backroom deals.

Please call the leaders of the state Senate and House and urge them to allow the Clean Elections bill to be introduced and voted on right away:

Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez: (505) 986-4727
House Majority Leader Ken Martinez: (505) 986-4776

A brief and urgent phone call from enough of us will send a strong message.  Please let us know that you made the call by reporting back to us.

Last year, we won a big victory by passing public campaign financing for statewide judicial races. This past summer, the Governor's ethics task force recommended that the program be expanded to include statewide offices. We need to follow their lead -- and our elected officials should be leading us to take corrupting big money out of politics, not obstructing progress.

Please call the two key leaders in the New Mexico Senate and House and urge them to allow the Clean Elections bill to be introduced, so we can continue to tackle corruption here at home. Thanks again for your help to clean up New Mexico politics.

Sincerely,
Steven Robert Allen
Executive Director, Common Cause New Mexico

Sunday Morning: "Eye on New Mexico" Ethics Debate

Tune in this Sunday, January 20, at 10 AM on KOB-TV 4 to the local current events show "Eye on New Mexico" to see Common Cause New Mexico's executive director Steven Robert Allen discuss the crucial ethics reforms being considered during this year's legislative session. In an occasionally heated debate with political blogger Mario Burgos and co-hosts Dennis Domrzalski and Nicole Brady, Allen argued strongly for the need to pass bills to create:

1. voluntary public campaign financing for statewide executive offices such as governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and treasurer;
2. campaign contribution limits (New Mexico is one of only a handful of states with no such limits); and
3. an independent ethics commission to investigate complaints against public officials.

These bills are the major recommendations of the 2007 Ethics Reform Task Force, a bipartisan group charged with designing new ethics policies in the wake of a series of governmental corruption scandals and allegations in New Mexico.

If you can't watch the program live, you can download or subscribe to podcasts of all "Eye on New Mexico" shows at their website. To stay current on the ethics and campaign reform issue, visit the website of Common Cause New Mexico. Our previous posts on the 2008 NM Legislative Session can be found in our archive.

A Letter From The People: Touring the Realm of the Dispossessed

Since we have a certain blogger with long-time ties to the Roundhouse wall leaners and power brokers waxing poetic today about well connected insiders, hordes of lobbyists with deep pockets and martini-fueled dealings in dark bars in Santa Fe, I thought I'd take a similar tack from The People's point of view.

You know, us -- the little people out here in the wilderness who are supposed to wait silently and submissively for the word to come down from on high on what will and will not be done in our name by the powerhouses of La Politica. We're the ones who won't get real reform related to health care, ethics or campaign finance because our "leaders" in the Legislature -- and especially in the "independent" Senate -- have come to depend on the ready money and perks from people who want to preserve the status quo and the profits for themselves. The public and the common good be damned.

Citizen Lobbyists
Our citizen lobbyists travel to the Roundhouse or interim committee meetings on their own dimes. Many take vacation days to do so. They car pool to save money. Their meals come from brown bags, not the Santa Fe hot spots designed for seeing and being seen. Those who can't afford the trip or can't get time off from work have to be content with phone calls to legislative secretaries and emails to legislators that usually get little or no response. Even if they succeed in getting their needs met in committee after committee with the help of the honest members of the legislature, their bills are often killed when or even just before they get to the Senate or House floor by the "leaders" dedicated to keeping power to themselves.

With no big chunks of cash or complimentary happy hours to offer, these citizen lobbyists too often get only a blind eye and a deaf ear when they voice their concerns. After all, they have no clout. They don't buy legislators drinks or invite them to buffets and cocktail parties or throw unlimited amounts of money into their "campaign funds" or hand them tickets to boxing matches or football games, or oooh and ahhh over them when they enter casinos or racetracks.

Citizen lobbyists have to scratch for information about what's going on with bills that will personally affect their daily lives, their health, their work, their children, their futures. And when they show up at committee hearings, they're often treated like unwelcome outsiders who take up precious time demanding to be heard when everyone who's anyone knows the deals have already gone down behind closed doors.

The Result
Because this is how the system presently works, we get things like bills proposing massive tax breaks for the coal-burning Desert Rock power plant, health reform bills that ignore the overwhelming support of the people for the Health Security Act and a summer's worth of testimony at hearings, pronouncements that public funding for elections is off the table, plots to kill the Domestic Partnership Act with last-minute, shady maneuvers and inflated, "privatized" contracts to conduct or "oversee" government functions. I could go on.

This bunch won't even allow floor proceedings to be shown online, despite $75,000 having been appropriated to do so. What don't they want us to see? Wouldn't it be fun to send a phalanx of citizens with video cameras to the Roundhouse corridors and swanky lounges of Santa Fe to track the comings and goings, the whispers and handshakes, that constitute way too much of what goes on in the Capitol? A regular YouTube bonanza.

I know our reps and senators are supposed to be doing the people's business, but as is often the case these days in state capitols and the halls of Congress alike, they mostly go about doing the business of the highest bidders, of those who wield power to get earmarks and loopholes, of those with profitable rackets to protect. These days, too many consider their real constituencies to be not the people who elect them, but the brokers, the insurance moguls, the financial market manipulators, the insider stock traders, the shady real estate developers, the for-profit prison operators, the pay-day loan sharks, the "defense" contract proliferators, the fake "homeland security" money suckers, the outrageously compensated CEOs and the high and mightily titled corporate investor class.

Somehow, not one bit of poetry, not one shred of romance or nostalgia comes to mind when I think about what's going on in Santa Fe right now. Can you blame me?

The Good Ones
Of course there are any number of genuinely honest, committed, hardworking legislators who work their bodies to the bone all year long to try and get a little something for the people, for the community, for the common good, for justice, for equality. Unfortunately, in a greed-filled and close-minded climate like the one that prevails these days, they're about as well respected by the "leaders" in our government as ordinary people are. They get the shaft and the run-around just like we do. And I'm pretty darn sure they're not feeling poetic and nostalgic about it either, as our critical needs go unmet while the elite among us count their chits.

(Updated) NM Legislature Convenes: Watch State of State Live

UPDATE: Click to read Gov. Richardson's prepared remarks or view KNME's archived video of his speech.
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You can watch a KNME live stream of Governor Bill Richardson's State of the State address to legislators starting at 1:00 PM today as the New Mexico Legislature convenes its 30-day "short session" at the Roundhouse in Santa Fe. It's expected to be a contentious one, with State Senators looking to exert more power over the process, and Richardson critic Sen. Tim Jennings (D-Roswell) replacing the late Sen. Ben Altamirano as the Senate's president pro-tem. Last year, the Senate was the stopper on a number of progressive bills and this year the situation maybe even worse, even though Democrats are in the majority. There are Democrats, and then there are DINOs.

In addition to the usual budget wrangling that's the main focus of 30-day sessions, Richardson has indicated he'll be pushing health care reform first and foremost, as well as ethics and campaign finance reform, energy conservation measures and a domestic partnership bill. He'll also control the type of additional initiatives that will be allowed onto the agenda, which he controls in short session years. According to an article in today's Santa Fe New Mexican:

Richardson said his speech will have a simple message for legislators: "Health care. Health care. Health care. It's going to be an address saying that we have a responsibility in this Legislature, with the governor, to produce universal health care for every New Mexican and to start it with a comprehensive bill — not piecemeal," Richardson said.

Expect battles over a proposal to amend the school funding formula, the budget for roads that must address a large shortfall in funding and a law passed last session that requires candidates to get 20% of the votes at Party pre-primary conventions to get on the primary ballot.

Senate leaders have already balked at one recommendation from the Governor's Ethics Task Force to institute voluntary public campaign financing for statewide races. Who needs that when our candidates can rely on "donations" from big-money interests? What fun would it be if candidates could run without promising the moon to deep pocket special interests? Democracy might start breaking out all over.

According to the Albuquerque Journal's Trip Jennings, Senate leaders including Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez (D-Belen) have "sent signals" to the Governor on ethics reform:

Proposals to cap campaign contributions, create an independent state ethics commission and give the Secretary of State's Office more than $170,000 to fix its campaign reporting system have the best shot at being heard.

Not on the to-do list was a Richardson priority of expanding the public financing of elections to statewide offices, including governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

... Some members of the group oppose parts of the ethics and campaign finance recommendations. They made it clear Monday that they weren't endorsing the legislation, but they said some of the proposals deserve a hearing.

... "This is not saying these bills will get through, or that I am supporting them," Sen. Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, D-Belen.

Big man, isn't he?

You can read more about this year's ethics reform proposals in my previous post.

NM FBIHOP has a about this year's health reform battle, including the results of a poll sent to 5,000 of Sen. Dede Feldman's constituents that indicates health care is their number one issue this year.

You can read about how last year's domestic partnership bill was defeated by one vote in the Senate in this post. Four Democrats, including our new Senate president pro-tem Tim Jennings (D-Roswell), John Arthur Smith (D-Deming), Lidio Rainaldi (D-Gallup) and Carlos Cisneros (D-Questa). voted with Repubs to kill the measure. The bill had been passed three times on the House side, including once during an ill-fated Special Session called by the Governor.

ACTION ALERT: NM Campaign Finance Reform

Today's Albuquerque Journal features an op-ed about cleaning up campaign financing laws in New Mexico by Common Cause New Mexico's Executive Director, Steve Robert Allen. Governor Bill Richardson's Ethics Task Force has once again submitted their recommendations to the Legislature for action. As usual, it will be an uphill fight to get anything passed regarding ethics, despite incredibly strong support for reform on the part of citizens. Allen cites the enactment of public financing for statewide elections as the most important of the Task Force recommendations:

For citizens to regain faith in the fairness of New Mexico's political system, it is essential that we cut special interest dollars out of the equation entirely.

The system recommended by the task force would provide full public funding for qualified candidates who agree to strict spending limits and to only accept small contributions from individuals. We have seen this reform work for Public Regulation Commission campaigns. We saw it work on the municipal level during the last City Council race in Albuquerque.

During the 2007 session, the Legislature wisely voted to pass public campaign financing for statewide judicial races. It is time to extend this crucial reform to all statewide offices.

Allen goes on to explain how Gov. Richardson came out publicly and strongly for public financing of elections during his presidential run:

Richardson appears committed to this goal. He recently signed a Common Cause pledge to support congressional public financing. He also wrote a letter to Iowa voters explaining that his goal in New Mexico this year is to expand public financing to more statewide offices. Moreover, in the New Hampshire presidential debate Jan. 5, he expressed his belief that public financing, in the broader sense, is one of the key reforms necessary to begin to heal the deep political wounds of this country.

The Ethics Task Force also recommends creating an independent commission to investigate complaints against public officials and setting campaign contribution limits. It will be telling to see how strongly Richardson pushes for ethics reform this Session, and how legislators will respond in this election year when all members of the state House and Senate must face the voters and answer for their action (or inaction) on this critical issue. We'll be tracking the movement of ethics and campaign finance reform bills throughout the 30-day Legislative Session, which starts tomorrow at Noon.

Take Action Now
To start the ball rolling, please contact your legislators urging their support for public campaign financing. Common Cause New Mexico :

From Common Cause New Mexico:
As you know, an ever-widening stream of corporate and special interest money has corrupted New Mexico politics. Common Cause New Mexico will address this problem head-on during the upcoming legislative session by supporting a proposal for public campaign financing for all statewide races.

We will lobby hard for this crucial reform in the coming weeks, but we need your help. Because this year’s legislative session is only one month long, we need to make sure public campaign financing gets the strong and vocal support it deserves. The system recommended by Governor Richardson's Ethics Reform Task Force would provide public funding for qualified candidates who agree to strict spending limits and to accept only small contributions from individuals.

Thanks for your help in our ongoing effort to clean up New Mexico politics.

Sincerely,
Steven Robert Allen
Executive Director, Common Cause New Mexico

Editor's Note: If you haven't already seen it, check out Common Cause New Mexico's report, , which analyzes how optional public campaign financing worked in Albuquerque's city election this past Fall.

You can also listen to an interview of Common Cause New Mexico's Director, Steve Robert Allen, about public campaign financing that was conducted by Jim West on KUNM News in December.

Santa Fe Reporter Unveils Online Citizen Muckrakers Guide

What a resource -- I love it already. Dave Maass and the folks at the Santa Fe Reporter have put together a comprehensive guide to snooping on the powers that be (and others) in New Mexico. The Citizen Muckraker's Guide to New Mexico, subtitled A reference manual for digging up dirt on politicians, corporations, and other citizens, is described as follows:

It reveals the data-capturing tools employed by investigators, bounty hunters, landmen and journalists. With it, you’ll be able to find out which city councilor had a bench warrant issued against her in Clovis for a two-year-old speeding ticket (Patti Bushee). You’ll be able to download a mugshot of Kent Nelson, the investment advisor who admitted dishing out $3 million in kickbacks in the New Mexico Treasurer’s Office scandal. And you’ll do it from the comfort of your local wireless cafe.

... There aren’t enough eyes in the media to watch everything all the time in the Information Age. SFR hopes this guide will inspire readers to join us as independent watchdogs and personally hold the powers that be, in the government and corporate worlds, accountable.

To learn more about how the new digging tool can be used, you should first check out Dave's article, The Paperless Chase. It explains how the online guide is organized, and offers tips for using it for tasks like running a basic background check, connecting campaign contributions to legislative earmarks, tracking corporate maneuvers, fact checking claims about the War on Terror and finding out who's exploiting natural resources.

There are sections on Campaign Finance, Crime, Courts and the like, where you can chase down People, Politicians or Corporations. There are also links to data related to topics like The War on Terror; Land, Environment and Natural Resources; and Health, Doctors and Drugs. You can also access info by using the Guide's Complete Link Roll, The Citizen Muckraker's Guide on Del.icio.us or a Del.icio.us Tag Cloud.

Maass says they'll keep adding to the Guide as time goes on. I haven't had much time to play around with it yet, but I certainly intend to dig in soon -- and expect to get lost for hours in the links. Who knows what evil lurks in the URLs of the Guide? Try it and see. And if you find anything particularly juicy, let Maass know at davem@sfreporter.com. They'll be keeping track of newfound dirt in New Mexico as it filters in from all corners of the internet. (Does the internet have corners?)

I expect that the bloggers of New Mexico -- and other dirt diggers in the state -- will have a field day being modern-day muckrakers for the cause, uncovering crime, corruption, waste, fraud and abuse (and maybe some data on that weird guy down the street).

Common Cause NM Proposes Changes to ABQ Public Campaign Financing System

Improving on Success
Candidates used Albuquerque’s new public campaign financing system for the first time during the city's municipal election on October 2, 2007. Designed to cut special interest money out of the electoral equation as well as increase the number of qualified citizens able to run for public office, the new financing mechanism proved to be an enormous success.

“Common Cause New Mexico advocated for this system from the beginning,” says the group’s executive director Steven Robert Allen, “so we’re especially pleased to see it function so well on its trial run.”

Recently, the nonpartisan government-accountability organization released a report analyzing Albuquerque's initial experience with public campaign financing. Compiled following a detailed study of campaign disclosures as well as interviews with candidates, city councilors and other interested parties, the report acknowledges that, while the system largely functioned as intended, minor alterations could make it even better. With this in mind, the report lists several proposed changes. The full text of “Returning Elections to Voters: Albuquerque’s Success with Voluntary Public Financing of Campaigns” can be found at www.commoncause.org/nm.

Please direct questions regarding this report to Executive Director Steven Robert Allen:

Steven Robert Allen
Executive Director
Common Cause New Mexico
sallen@commoncause.org
(505) 323-6399 (office)
(505) 610-4790 (cell)

Ortiz y Pino: Hillary Is a Symptom of America's Malaise

This is a guest blog by NM State Senator Jerry Ortiz y Pino, a Democrat who represents District 12 in Albuquerque. This article recently appeared in other publications including the Seoul Times, OpEdNews.com and Santa Fe Sun News:

Watching the Democratic Presidential candidates' televised debates has become painful for me. Oh, sure: watching the Republicans' version of the rainbow coalition (white, off-white, grey, bone, ivory, buff and cream) in action on television in (pardon the expression) "living color" is even more dreadful, but we know those guys are going to lose, so who cares how bad their act is?

The Democrats, on the other hand, are in all likelihood sifting through the options leading up to actually picking a winner—the next occupant of the Oval Office. If the point of these debates is to give us, the voters, any insight into what our next Chief Executive is going to be like, we are in big trouble. I say this knowing that the Press has already accorded Senator Hillary Clinton not only the Democratic nomination, but the ultimate prize, the White House, as well. This was done without a single vote having been cast and simply on the strength of one solitary measure: dollars raised. She must be ahead, the pundits reason, because she's lapped the field in the money-grubbing sweepstakes.

I know that all the commentators realize that technically some sort of voting has to take place before the coronation is allowed to happen, but to the skilled political observer's eye, this is just so much red tape and hokum. The matter has been decided. She was the first in the sprint to raise $10 million this year, which shot her to the forefront in the early analyses and which then generated an avalanche of additional money from those eager to be lined-up on the same side as the ultimate victor. Then that extra money was widely interpreted to mean she was enjoying soaring, even skyrocketing popularity, far more than her primary opponents…and that attracted yet more contributions. A classic snowball effect played out.

It should be no surprise that the polls show her well ahead of Obama, Edwards, Richardson, and the rest of the pack. She's riding a tsunami of cash, and she seems expertly shrewd in the art of spending it wisely. Her commercials (definitely carried on network television, not the dusty back shelves of cable rerun channels) are certain to be slick. Her mailings will be models of Madison Avenue wizardry. Her telephone push polls will, of course, be put together so subtly that no respondent will ever be aware they've been pushed or polled. If money can buy it, Hillary will have it in her arsenal and all the gadgetry of modern political "witch doctorism" will be immediately at her disposal.

You've got to hand it to her: Senator Clinton plays this version of the political game like the old pro she is, and she plays it to win, with nothing left to chance. So I admit to a certain admiration for this tough, smart, supremely polished woman. She might have made a terrific President at one time, but now when I see her in action in front of the cameras, I cringe. She has become the number one symptom (and not the solution) of all that ails American Democracy in these most cynical of times.

In her probable victory a year from now, we will have reflected back to us the dismal portrait of what we have devolved into: a culture that can't be bothered to decide the value of anything except by one solitary measure: the marketplace.

Equally on full display is the frightening picture of how corrosive the influence of money is on political processes. I can't blame Hillary for playing to win by these rules; she didn't write them, she just figured out how to make them pay. It can be argued that it was the Supreme Court that did the dirty deed when it ruled some years ago that any attempt by law makers to limit the influence of money in elections is an unconstitutional attempt at limiting free speech!

One corollary to this ruling has always seemed to me to be: he who has the most money has the most free speech, and the poor, by virtue of their lack of money, have practically no free speech. A second corollary is what Clinton appears to be demonstrating so precisely this primary season: when dollars are the equivalent of votes, who needs elections as long as we have bankers?

This, then, is the American political malaise. Our worship of money has logically produced an electoral process in which nothing will be said that might antagonize the sources of political cash: the wealthiest of the American Corporate lions. Senator Clinton's rhetoric becomes increasingly bland and forgettable as her campaign treasury deepens. In the end stages (now), she says nothing and promises only to avoid (her favorite word) "irresponsible" action. Wonderful. We will get four years of "responsible inaction" if she assumes the mantle.

This rapid ride to the bottom of insipid inoffensiveness was on pathetic display most recently when she forgot herself during an answer to a question on issuing drivers licenses for undocumented persons. She said something just a wee bit venturesome—then spent five minutes thrashing around trying to re-establish herself as sitting squarely on the fence on this (and every other) issue imaginable. "I can see all sides of this controversy," she seemed to me to be saying, "and you can be assured that as President I will do absolutely nothing about it…for fear that taking action might offend someone, especially someone who possibly might have supported my campaign financially. I just can't take that risk. Nor will I promise to end the Occupation of Iraq during my term, either."

A campaign run the way this one is being run seems exquisitely crafted to produce record low voter turn-outs. The message is clear. Our leading candidates feel passion about nothing but the size of their campaign's bank deposits. They intend to do nothing to change the status quo. When Democrats and Republicans are indistinguishable, will voting make the slightest difference? There isn't a whole lot of Democracy left in this country, just a powdery covering with a lot of bare spots. Watching our leading Democratic Presidential contender brush away even those remnants isn't a pretty sight.

Editor's Note: This is a guest blog by NM State Senator Jerry Ortiz y Pino. Click to read a previous guest blog by the Senator. Guest blogs provide readers with an opportunity to express their views on relevant issues and may or many not reflect our views. If you'd like to submit a piece for consideration as a guest blog, contact me by clicking on the Email Me link on the upper left-hand corner of the page.

New Common Cause NM Executive Director on 'We The People' This Week

WE THE PEOPLE

Steve Allen

Albuquerque resident and attorney
New Executive Director, Common Cause New Mexico

Campaign Finance Reform, Ethics in Government, Media and Democracy

Cable Channel 27 in Albuquerque

6 pm, Thursday, October 25th

Watch simultaneously on your high-speed computer: https://www.quote-unquote.org. Click: Channel 27s Media Stream -> Half way down the page on the Right.

WE THE PEOPLE is an innovative call-in television show looking for TRUTH and TRANSPARENCY in local, state and federal governments. THANKS FOR WATCHING: Mickey Bock, Host; Judith Binder, Producer 

More on Joanie Griffin's Ethical Problems (and The Albuquerque Journal's?)

Required reading if you live in Albuquerque's City Council District 6 (or even if you don't): Countdown to Oct. 2: The Journal and Joanie, another revealing political post by Coco over at Duke City Fix. Be sure to follow the links to other posts Coco provides in order to connect the dots fully. It's a fairly complicated web. It often is when Mayor Chavez, the city's ethics board, Greg Payne, Don Harris, Paulette de'Pascal, Joanie Griffin and the Albuquerque Journal, among others, are involved.