Filing Day

All statewide candidates for elective office had to file their candidacy today in Santa Fe. Jessie Keefe, my campaign manager, and I got up there at about 10AM to file our petitions and fill out necessary paper work.



Jessie handed in our 6,500 signatures(more or less) while I filled out financial disclosure information. You will remember I was obsessive compulsive about getting enough signatures, but we have more than twice as many as needed so we will pretty much survive any attempts to throw out our signatures.
I was required to fill out some forms, show identification and fill out a really brief financial disclosure statement. New Mexico has really weak campaign finance laws and I will not be required to show my donors list until about four weeks before the election. That is really ridiculous.

Newsworthy Challenge Here

I hereby challenge my primary opponent Ray Powell and Republican Pat Lyons to start releasing their donor reports every two weeks starting on March 15th. I will do it if they will do it. The same goes for all expenditure reports.

I am sincere about this and I hope they will take me up on this. There really is nothing to hide.


Old Friends

After filing I strolled over to the Pink Adobe Restaurant to meet Rachel Cohen, my sister's stepdaughter and her husband Booth. My sister Carlota was married to Ira Cohen in my office at the State Land Office in Santa Fe back in the 80's after being together for many years. They moved to Santa Fe after living in Washington, DC and Buffalo, New York for many years. Ira died in 1992 while engaged in his favorite pastime, skiing. We all miss him.

Anyway, Rachel and Booth come from Austin, Texas where they have both retired from jobs with Texas State Government. They are true liberals who have braved the neo con winds in Texas for many years. They say Austin is a bastion of liberal to moderate Texans who really don't like w very much. They are staying in Santa Fe for a couple of weeks at my sister's home while she is away on safari in Africa. She bought a new digital camera so I envision some vacation slide shows. I hope she doesn't get eaten by a lion!