5-24 Watch for big money in politics

52413 $$

SANTA FE – Do you remember the days when we had a year off between election campaigns? Even better, we had a year off from negative political advertising.
No more. Announcements for next year's gubernatorial campaign began even before the 2012 elections. Governor Susana Martinez never quit fundraising. She just had a big fundraiser in Taos and Palm Desert, California that made the news. It isn't unusual for first-term governors to raise money year-round for four years.
Attorney General Gary King announced for governor long before the 2012 elections. He had been asked to make a politically controversial investigation and decision so felt he had to reveal his conflict.
Soon after the 2012 general election Sen. Linda Lopez, of Albuquerque, and Clovis Mayor Gayla Brumfield announced their Democratic candidacies for governor. There likely will be several more announcements shortly.
In fact, some possible candidates, such as Howie Morales, of Silver City have announced they may announce for governor.
Most confounding of all is a negative Republican campaign that has already begun against Democratic Sen. Tim Keller, of Albuquerque. Keller has been mentioned as a possible gubernatorial candidate but has not announced.
The Albuquerque Journal reports that the Republican Party of New Mexico has prepared a web video calling Keller "an extreme left-wing liberal posing as a business-friendly moderate."
I think that without doing any research, I am going to pick Keller in the Democratic gubernatorial primary even though he isn't a candidate yet.
The GOP is spending quite a bit of money on some pretty fancy stuff already and I'm guessing they know more about what is going on behind the scenes than any mere political commentator.
Within days of his announcement for state attorney general, current state treasurer Hector Balderas was targeted by the national Republican State Leadership Committee.
A website called "Breaking Balderas" was established carrying old articles from the Albuquerque Journal and KRQE-TV about a 2008 charge against Balderas, which since has been dropped by the attorney general's office and the district court.
The charges originally were made through an anonymous message on a phone line the treasurer's office had established to handle charges against government agencies.
The charges were referred to the attorney general's office. Reportedly there were some tensions between King and Balderas at the time. King long has had his eye on the governor's office and there was speculation Balderas might want to run for governor in 2014 also.
King first broadened his request for information from the auditor's office but eventually the matter cooled and King announced there was no evidence of any criminal action.
Balderas announced that he would not be seeking the governor's office in 2014. Instead he will run for attorney general.
In 2012 Balderas ran for the Democratic nomination to the U.S. Senate. He lost to then-Rep. Martin Heinrich in a race that became known for the gentlemanly conduct of both candidates.
But it doesn't appear there will be much gentlemanly conduct in the 2014 races. With two Washington D.C.-based GOP groups already on the attack against Keller and Balderas, the game already is on.
The choice of "Breaking Balderas" for a website title suggests the hard-ball nature of the game that will be played. "Breaking Bad" is the title of a popular television show being filmed in Albuquerque. Its main subject is drug dealing.
Why are campaigns getting started so much earlier now? It's because there is a lot more money in the system.
The U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010 allowing corporations to donate unlimited amounts of money to campaigns opened the floodgates.
Political spending was much more massive in 2012. Remember when each Republican presidential candidate had his or her own billionaire to help finance their primary campaigns?
The guess is that corporations were acting a little cautiously last year and we are about to see another big increase in spending this year and next.

Should NM have open primaries?

52213 open primaries

SANTA FE – Should all voters get to participate in selecting general election candidates? The answer has long been no. Everyone has an opportunity to join a political party that most suits their beliefs and participate in that party's primary election.
But with political parties falling in such disfavor with voters, most states have now gone to a system that allows independents to vote in primary elections.
New Mexico is not at that point yet but Think New Mexico is now pushing it. This isn't your garden variety think tank that decides what people should be thinking and then hopes the general public will agree. Think New Mexico decides on a cause and then sets out to make it happen.
The group has been highly successful. Last year, it set out to reform the state Public Regulation Commission by way of three constitutional amendments. It had to get those amendments through the Legislature by super-majorities and then convince voters to approve them.
The success rate was 100 percent. I could go through the years of other successes but that is old news. We are here to talk about what's happening next.
Some 33 states now have a type of open primary system. Think New Mexico believes we should join them. New Mexico's election statutes currently bar independents from voting in primaries. But the U.S Supreme Court case has held in a Connecticut case that it is unconstitutional for a state to mandate closed primaries.
The court said, in essence, that a state cannot stop a party from opening its primary to unaffiliated or independent voters. You can tell from that wording that it can be up to a state political party whether to allow independents to vote. In New Mexico, we call independents "decline to state." That keeps them from being confused with minor political parties that contain the word "independent" in their name.
All this means that instead of getting a legislative or constitutional solution to primary election participation, the Republican and Democratic parties are free to choose who to invite to vote in their primary.
In other words, a political party can invite not just independents but also members of all other political parties to vote in their primary. That is what most states do. If only independents are invited and not members of other parties, that is called a semi-open primary.
Fred Nathan, head of Think New Mexico, has written to both parties asking them to consider his proposal. John Billingsly, head of the state GOP, isn't especially impressed with the idea, according to Steve Terrell of the Santa Fe New Mexican. He says it would allow too much mischief.
Indeed, that is exactly what radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh tried back in 2008 when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were the leading candidates for president on the Democratic side.
Limbaugh urged Republican voters in states allowing party members to cross over and vote in the other's primary election. Limbaugh suggested Hillary Clinton would be easier to beat in the general election so Republicans should vote for her in the primary. He called it "Operation Chaos." It didn't work.
Before he left office, state Democratic Party Chairman Javier Gonzales told Terrell he liked the idea of open primaries because they strengthened democracy by letting more people vote. But his term is up and Sam Bregman has been elected the party's new chairman. None of us have heard from Bregman yet.
What would happen if Democrats opened their primary and Republicans didn't? Four states have that situation. It just means that independents have to vote in the Democratic primary or not at all.
My guess would be that those independents might be more willing to vote Democratic in the general election or at least for those Democrats they supported in the primary election.
The matter could be taken to the Legislature but if neither party wants it, why bother?

Legislature not willing to share the pain

52013 share the pain

SANTA FE – Share the pain. That refrain was heard often during the past two legislative sessions as lawmakers debated how to fix the state budget.
Their decision five years ago was to put the biggest hits on the two public employee retirement plans. Both the Public Employee Retirement Act and the Educational Retirement Act were changed to have employees pick up a good sized share of the employers' contribution.
This was only to be temporary until the state was in the black again. But when the state got in the black last year, lawmakers changed their minds. They wanted more from employees at the state, county, municipal and school district levels.
Various plans were submitted last year to change the benefit formulas. None of them passed so lawmakers said they wanted employees, employers and the two retirement boards to get together on a proposal that would share the pain among retirees, active employees and those yet to be hired.
That was accomplished after Gov. Susana Martinez made her own proposal to have employers pay less than their share. But there was one segment that didn't share the pain at all.
Legislators didn't take their share of the hit. They have a retirement plan much more generous than public employees do but lawmakers didn't share that pain.
The legislative retirement plan received considerable publicity recently when former Rep. Dan Foley, who represented Roswell at the time but now sells insurance in Rio Rancho, was revealed to be profiting handsomely from the retirement plan.
Foley didn't do anything wrong. It was his for the taking. Foley left the Legislature at 39. He had made $5,000 in contributions to the plan during the 10 years he served.
When Foley becomes eligible for Social Security at 67, he will have received $450,000 from the plan, according to an Associated Press article. Those figures don't meet the actuarial soundness the Legislature was trying to achieve for the employee pension plans.
Why should legislators put some skin in the game? They are such a small group it really wouldn't help the fund. But it would help employee morale. It's called leadership by example.
The same principles hold for Congress too. The majority of them are quite proud of the across-the-board sequestration cuts. The only problem is that the Obama administration cut the wrong areas. It wasn't supposed to cut programs the congressional majority liked. They say those cuts were political.
The president couldn't cut anything in the legislative branch of government. And Congress isn't going to cut any of its perks.
Actually, Congress did cut its cushy benefits once. Until 1984, Congress' retirement plan was incredibly generous. It looked much like some of the descriptions you see on the Internet around election time every two years. But those rants now are almost 30 years old.
Members now have a retirement plan very similar to that of federal employees. They pay into it and they also contribute to Social Security. Beginning next year, they will be covered by Obamacare and will choose a plan from an insurance exchange. And they voted in 2009-2011 to not take a cost-of-living salary increases.
So there has been some pain sharing at the federal level. Unfortunately for Congress, it hasn't helped its popularity. So Mike Coffman, a Colorado Republican, is making another go at it.
Coffman has introduced H.R.423, which would eliminate defined benefit pension plans for members of Congress completely. He would keep "The Thrift Savings Plan," which is a defined contribution plan.
Don't expect to see Coffman's legislation succeed. But it might be an indication of at least a small tendency to share the pain.
My wish is for Congress to work a little harder. They get paid $174,000 salaries for working Tuesday morning to Thursday noon and taking numerous weeks of vacation. It seems like maybe half salary would be about right.