Monday, April 07, 2008

Knives Come Out

The knives come out about this time every April before a Primary Election. First we saw back room dealing that picked Sheriff Darren White to be the neo-con candidate when the bush republican operatives in the state got the national party to endorse him and throw Senator Joe Cararro under the bus.

Now we see an effort underway to get former Secretary of State Rebbecca Vigil Giron thrown off the ballot by the forces of Michelle L. Grisham in the Congressional race in Albuquerque. Rebecca didn't get enough delegate votes at the nominating convention so she opted to get more signatures from regular old Democrats going into grocery stores. (one of the best places in my experience) This allows her to get on the ballot.

Michelle and her supporters say Rebbecca allegedly came up 100 signatures short, but there is a great danger in trying to get a judge to bar her from running. Mostly, I think there is nothing wrong with people getting on the ballot and don't forget the thousands of folks who did sign Rebbecca's signature petitions. What are they? Worthless?

Of course the real game here is to weaken the front runner Martin Heinrich. Michelle and her handlers don't want two Latino women running on the ballot under the conventional wisdom that it will split the vote. I don't think that wisdom is valid and I don't think this will weaken Heinrich. Maybe it will improve his position as Rebbecca will now pull the "Bowie" knife out whether she stays on the ballot or not!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi Mayor Baca,

I'm interested in what your professional experiences with Sheriff White have been like. Did your term overlap his tenure in the BCSO at all?

He certainly comes across as arrogant and a bit slimy but one can't really trust the news media to report objectively on law enforcement officials.