Morning Word
Looks like the Senate race is heating up. It still hasn't turned into a blazing inferno (just wait until October), but more and more action is starting to come out of the two camps. --- We had national attention on the race on Monday and a new ad launching on Tuesday. And that's just the start of it.
The Senate race has not moved much in recent weeks. It still looks like Heinrich with a slight edge over Wilson at this time, but there is plenty of time until November for things to change.
If things remain close (the latest poll showed Heinrich leading Wilson by 9, but before that, recent polls generally put the race at Heinrich up by 4-5 points), expect New Mexico to get a massive amount of national attention.
On to the Word:
- The Washington Post wonders if Wilson, who WaPo says has moved to the middle since running to the right in the primary,
- can capture enough Hispanic voters to win the Senate race
- .
- “It’s a swing state trending to the Democrats, and part of that is its cultural diversity,” said Robert Lang, director of Brookings Mountain West at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. “It’s a majority-minority state with a large Hispanic population. Nevada and Colorado are truer swing states. New Mexico is a little more solidly blue, but I wouldn’t discount it if you had a moderate Republican.”
Enter Heather Wilson. - Wilson was able to narrowly keep her seat several times in the Democratic-trending 1st Congressional District. But Heinrich was able to win the same seat by larger margins, even in the Republican wave year of 2010. Another reason why the Senate race is so interesting.
- Heinrich is
- putting the pressure on Wilson with his legislation
- getting the support of sportsmen (think: gun owners) to open millions of acres of public land to hunting and fishing.
- The measure introduced by Heinrich, D-N.M., calls for an inventory of all public parcels larger than a square mile where hunting, fishing and other recreation are allowed but where access is blocked. It also asks agencies to acquire easements and rights of way for improving access.
- Wilson's campaign says it is a transparent ploy by environmental interests "to further their liberal agenda."
- Heinrich is an avid hunter,
- telling NMPolitic.net
- that 90 percent of the meat that his family eats is from his hunts.
- As I mentioned above, Heinrich will be launching a new ad today, focusing on "work." An excerpt (more later today): "I’m holding job fairs to connect workers with local employers and I’m fighting to cut taxes for small businesses."
- The fake audit in the New Mexico Finance Authority
- could cause a downgrade
- in public bond ratings. This would be very bad for New Mexico's budget/
- Will Gov. Susana Martinez be
- subpoenaed to testify at a wrongful termination hearing for probation and parole supervisor Larry Flynn
- ?
- “I know nothing about the Flynn case except that he was fired … [for] shooting rattlesnakes under dog houses,” Martinez said. “As far as the decision being made by me, absolutely not. It was not made by me for him to be fired.”
Flynn was fired in December, about three months after an incident in which he allegedly fired a gun outside of the home on state penitentiary grounds that he shared with former Corrections Secretary Lupe Martinez. - Martinez's school grading education reform
- isn't being a standard that will allow people to immediately compare schools
- , the Albuquerque Journal reports.
- "You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who can really explain how the final letter grades were determined or how a school can go from an F in January to a B in July,” Albuquerque Public Schools board member Kathy Korte wrote in a recent letter to the editor.
- Which leads to the question -- if the metric is too complicated to explain and so volatile, of what use will it be to parents?
- The Santa Fe New Mexican looks at the
- falling membership with the conservative/corporate group ALEC
- .
- Michelle Lujan Grisham has a
- big advantage in campaign cash against Janice Arnold-Jones in the 1st Congressional District race
- . The race is a solid Democratic seat and the cash shows that donors know this; Lujan Grisham leads despite a brutal three-way primary campaign. The challengers in the other two congressional races, who have little to no shot of winning, posted comically anemic numbers. From NMPolitics.net:
- [Democrat] Evelyn Madrid Erhard, raised a little more than $14,000 and ended the reporting period with $3,481.35, according to her report.
- [Republican]Jeff Byrd, raised just under $7,500 and ended the reporting period with $919.93, according to his report.
- Latino Decisions
- highlighted New Mexico in its analysis of the 2012 presidential race
- , which just about all observers say is Obama's state to lose. "It will be interesting to see if Martinez, who has been critical of Romney’s self-deportation strategy and a recent supporter of the Dream Act, can persuade Romney to soften his stance and tone on immigration policy," the analysis says.
- Great news, as Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez was
- back at work at his practice
- . Sanchez underwent surgery to clear a blocked artery last week.
- Freshman Senator Pat Woods will likely be one of the most-watched freshman Senators after his brutal race that included doubled-barreled attacks by Martinez's political team. Woods survived and will head to Santa Fe in January.
- Milan Simonich has the latest
- .
- U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce
- wants to open up more areas in southern New Mexico to logging
- , referencing devastating fires in the area while he makes his case.
- The unexpected budget surplus is
- the result of higher oil prices
- , something that New Mexico (or, indeed, the entire United States) does not have any effect on, and is so unpredictable. The KOB story saying legislators are cautious references the House Minority Leader, Tom Taylor, R-Farmington, and Senate Finance Committee chairman John Arthur Smith, D-Silver City. Both are very conservative legislators.
- The Democratic Party of Otero County
- wants an early voting center in Chaparral, NM
- . The odds of getting something that could aid Democrats in one of the deepest red parts of the state are probably not very good.
- [Otero County Commissioner Tommie] Herrell said Chaparral residents can request absentee ballots as well, just like anyone in the county.
"To say that they're disenfranchised and so forth -- I'm sorry, I don't agree with you," Herrell said. Sikes said she agreed it was an economic issue. She said she wanted to prepare the commissioners in case there was a storm of publicity around the issue. - There is an online petition
- asking state Senator Nancy Rodriguez to resign
- . Then again, there are online petitions for everything these days.
- Martinez hopes the scientific ghost town
- will still be built somewhere in New Mexico
- . The company says it intends to find another location in New Mexico, but the mineral rights in the site near Hobbs may have proved to be the sticking point in the purchase.
- The Las Cruces city council
- voted to support designating the Organ Mountains as a national monument
- . The vote was unanimous despite threats by opponents to try to recall councilors who voted to support the proposal. Senate candidate Heather Wilson said she supported an alternate proposal by U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce.
- And a humblebrag to finish up the Word, as for some reason
- Boing Boing selected our Breaking Bad premiere party to show up and watch the episode with us
- . It was a great time and, no, there was no actual meth.
