2018 New Mexico Election

Martinez campaign brain McCleskey backs four Republican judicial contenders

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The 2018 election will be pivotal for discerning the kind of imprint Gov. Susana Martinez— the first female governor of New Mexico and the first elected Latina governor in the United States — leaves on New Mexico policies and laws. There’s a good chance many of her priorities, if not her methods, will live on if her successor is Republican Steve Pearce. Not so much if Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham moves into the Governor’s Mansion. How much she shapes New Mexico’s appellate court for the long term is another area worth watching. Six judges on the 10-member court are Martinez appointees.

2018 Election

Industry showers campaign funds on Lyons, who may be their future landlord

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The campaign accounts of state land commissioner candidates Pat Lyons, a Republican, and Stephanie Garcia Richard, a Democrat, tell remarkably different stories. Sixty percent of Lyon’s $268,000 — garnered from 172 donations — comes from companies or individuals employed in the oil and gas or agriculture industries, which are principle sectors that do business with the State Land Office. Half of that amount, or 30 percent of his total funds, comes from companies that have active leases with the State Land Office. Those lessees are largely oil and gas companies, ranchers or dairy producers. See Lyons Donors[table id=82 /]

 

Garcia Richard has raised $220,000 from 1,036 donors, 72 percent of which are $200 or less.

2018 Election

Dunn: Land commissioner candidates won’t hold Oil & Gas accountable

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Outgoing State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn grew up on an apple farm near Alamogordo and worked for 25 years in banking. He characterizes the land commissioner’s job as one of handling a thousand different things and managing almost 200 people in ways that draw from both his business background and his familiarity with land and conservation issues. He has been accused of rubber-stamping oil and gas drilling on state lands, but he argues his record shows otherwise. “As land commissioner, you have a constitutional duty to create income from lands and protect it for future generations — it’s a dual purpose,” says Dunn, who accessorizes his suit and tie with ostrich cowboy boots and lapel pins of the U.S. and “Don’t Tread on Me”-emblazoned Gadsden flags. “It’s got to be a balance: conservation and oil and gas.”

He points to a policy switch around no longer allowing wells into the Ogallala Aquifer for oil and gas operations and his fight for Texas hornshell mussel habitat as examples.

2018 New Mexico Election

Land commissioner candidates offer differing visions for renewable power

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The state land commissioner manages 9 million acres of surface land, and 13 million acres of mineral estate, with a mandate to maximize revenue from those acres through leases to pay for public schools and universities. Fossil fuels accounts for 92.7 percent of the revenue generated the office. Commissioner candidates talk about where renewable energy fits into the picture.

ABQ Democracy dollars most likely headed for election, just not in November

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Albuquerque’s city attorney said last night while he doesn’t have a firm answer about when the city would hold an election on a successful ballot initiative, city charter language stipulates that an election is required. “At some point this matter will have to be heard,” said Esteban Aguilar, Albuquerque city attorney, at a special meeting called by the Bernalillo County Commission to reconsider its decision last week not to place a public financing ballot initiative referred to as “democracy dollars” on the November ballot. Once again, the commissioners didn’t muster enough votes to place the ballot item, kicking it to the city. The Albuquerque city charter allows questions to be placed before voters through direct petition rather than always having to be green-lighted by the city council. Albuquerque residents submitted to the city clerk earlier this month almost 28,000 petition signatures to ask voters to decide whether to increase the amount of money publicly financed candidates receive, and to change the date of city elections. The city clerk certified almost 20,000 of those signatures, enough to trigger a vote under city rules.

Democracy Dollars proposal squashed by Bernco commissioners

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The Bernalillo County Commission voted last night not to put a public financing proposal on the November ballot. The vote was 3-2 with Democrat Steven Quezada and Republicans Lonnie Talbert and Jim Smith voting against the measure. Almost 28,000 Albuquerque voters signed petitions to put the measure on the ballot, to fix a city public financing statute that was hobbled by a U.S. Supreme Court decision back in 2011. Quezada told the Albuquerque Journal he had too many questions about the proposal, and asked, “…why am I making a decision that the city councilors aren’t doing?” Talbert was more blunt, according to the NM Political Report.

2018 Election

As immigration debate rages, private prison operators spread cash to NM pols

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Two of the nation’s largest private prison companies have given nearly $33,000 to New Mexico’s congressional representatives and state lawmakers over the past year and a half, a review of campaign finance records by New Mexico In Depth shows. The two operators — the GEO Group Inc. and CoreCivic, which have maintained a major presence in New Mexico for decades — have come in for criticism over the years from immigration attorneys and advocates for warehousing immigrants under multiple presidential administrations. The focus has sharpened as the nation debates the Trump administration’s stepped-up immigration enforcement policies at the border. Across the country the two private prison operators have spent considerable money to influence government policy and have made sizable profits from detaining immigrants in their facilities, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The institute is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide.

Environment

Flyover Country: Aerial tour of Carlsbad highlights oil and gas moving in on national park

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The plane had wheeled back north toward the airport when the Carlsbad Caverns National Park Visitor Center came into view, perched on the tan heaps of a sloping escarpment that offers no clue to the dramatically sculpted caverns beneath. From the air, however, signs of another underground natural resource were plainly visible: well pads pock the horizon. The park overlooks a stretch of desert atop the Permian Basin, and I’m in a tiny, six-seat plane—including the pilot’s—to get a look at how the push for one resource could affect the other. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has proposed to auction mineral leases on 197 parcels in the area in September. Some of those 89,000 acres sit within a mile of the national park boundary, or encroach on Guadalupe Mountains National Park across the Texas state line.

High Stakes Race: Oil and gas industry and environmentalists square off over next governor

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Take a look at most oil and gas infrastructure — wellheads, pipes and cylindrical storage tanks — dotting New Mexico oil and gas fields, and little seems to be happening. But use the right equipment and you can see gases, including methane, wafting into the air. Heading skyward with methane, the main component of natural gas and a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, are royalties some say the oil and gas industry could be paying New Mexico. An April report from Taxpayers for Common Sense, a national budget and taxpayer advocate, analyzed federal leases through the Office of Natural Resource Revenue and estimated that the gas lost nationwide on federal lands in 2016 was worth $75.5 million. Half of the gas lost between 2012 and 2016 came from New Mexico.

#MeToo

Election Notes: Women in politics, Republican drama

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On Tuesday, a powerful incumbent who raised more money than any other legislator in a contested election, Rep. Carl Trujillo, was defeated by a young Norteña, Andrea Romero, amid sexual harassment charges. An investigation by a House sub-committee of those charges by Animal Protection Voters lobbyist Laura Bonar is currently underway. While Trujillo amassed a war chest of special interest money, he also raised from individuals about as much money as Romero raised in total. In other words, a lot of people in his district supported him. But it wasn’t enough to overcome the #MeToo movement, which in New Mexico led to changes early in the year of the state Legislature’s sexual harassment policy, including the creation of an explicit process for investigation of charges.