Santa Fe Dems meet to combat "general disillusionment"

By SFR

After last night's meeting at Santa Fe's Democratic Party HQ, SFR posed a question to County Chair Richard Ellenberg:

What's the biggest concern for Dems in the upcoming election?

---

"Motivating our base," Ellenberg replied. "In my view, government and big business failed. As a result, everybody's having hard times, and

there's a lot of anti-incumbent sentiment."

The meeting, a small, intimate affair, focused mainly on upcoming candidate events and a presentation by Santa Fe Community College Board Vice Chair Linda Siegle and President Sheila Ortego on the school's upcoming

bond issue

.

For the annals of hard sells:

"It's gonna be a tough election because everyone's being targeted. We need to get us Democrats to stick together...

If we have some Republicans in there,

it's gonna ruin everything."

—Leticia Montoya, Northern New Mexico Campaign Manager for

beleaguered

Secretary of State

Mary Herrera

"The Republicans targeted him because

they didn't think he had statewide support, [but] he's a fine judge.

Let everybody know

they need to work their way down the ballot."

—former Appeals Court Judge Lynn Pickard on Robert Robles, who is running in a contested race for Appeals Court Judge

The bond issue elicited most of the questions and concerns, but afterward, Ellenberg waxed philosophical on Democrats, 2010 and Republican gubernatorial candidate Susana Martinez.

"Susana hasn't taken a position on anything except that criminals need to be prosecuted," Ellenberg tells SFR. "Hear, hear!" he adds with a big laugh. But then he got down to business, attributing the loss of base support to "general disillusionment."

"Despite the fact that this administration has done more than any administration since FDR's, people are saying, 'What have you done for us?'"

Ellenberg laments. His tactic to bring back Democratic support is to remind people of the real issues at stake—things like environmental regulations like the pit rules, which Martinez

opposes

.

"It's going to be interesting," he concludes.

"Folks this year are buying things they wouldn't normally look at."

Santa Fe Reporter

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