My New Campaign Pick-Up Truck

We are all familiar with my opponent Pat Lyons purchase of a six year old pickup truck for his campaign at a price of $29000. (Six years old!) The campaign paid for the vehicle but the truck was registered in his name. Read about it here.

Well, I understand he is trying to sell the truck and then will give the money back to the campaign. I just wonder who he bought it from in the first place. He has never come clean with that to the media. We do know he bought a lot of antelope hunting permits from his brother to auction off.


Well, today I have a new pickup truck. My new campaign manager, Mike Davis and my soon departing primary election campaign manager Jesse Keefe,(she is moving to Hawaii with her significant other, Jeff) presented me with my pickup at Starbucks this morning. They felt that since I am traveling so much that I would need it. Over the course of this campaign you will see this little pickup many times as we travel the state and visit its communities.



State Democratic Party Chairman John Wertheim said he hoped this kind of campaign vehicle would not generate a controversy.


This little truck will have lots of heavy hauling to do around the state. You should knowI have not put the registration in my name. For some reason they registered it to some guy named Tonka. Also, this was not paid for with campaign funds but with an inkind contribution from Mike and Jessie!

Bait and Switch

While bush is returning from his five hour visit to Iraq we can see that his mascots in DC have been busy. This release is courtesy of the Center for Biological Diversity. It should upset you.

This is why I feel so strongly about having a strong Land Commissioner fighting bush during his last two years in office. Prepare for a lot more of this.

Speed

I am already at full speed for the general election. The realization that my opponent has 500k in the bank has me fundraising already. Did I mention you can donate at www.jimbaca.com


I am also having numerous meetings with groups and individuals. I am also trying to sell Bobbi's cute little VW Beetle Diesel. We are asking 11k for it. It is in pristine condition with only 52k miles on it. Let me know if you are interested.

Typical

Back in 1979 Bobbi and I went out one Saturday morning to buy me some razor blades. On the way to the drug store we thought we would take a long drive into the north valley. Instead of buying razor blades we bought a house. It was the last thing on our mind when we left our starter home in the north east heights. We had always wanted to live in Albuquerque's close in north valley but we never thought we could afford it. Then I went to work for Governor King as state liquor director and we had a little more income. Additionally, the little starter house we bought only 10 months before for 43k had appreciated to 57k. We had the down payment!

We often do things like that kind of impulse buying. Here is what happened today. Bobbi commented that it was hard to load her golf clubs into her VW Beetle. As great a car as it is, it has enough trunk space to hold a small litter of kittens. Maybe.

I sauntered into the office and did a check on the VW Diesel's value and was astonished at how much it was worth. I didn't think much more about it, except subliminally I guess.

Bobbi and I then left to travel to Pena Blanca to see how things were at the farm. Instead, some mysterious force sucked us off the freeway to the Toyota dealership. Yep, we bought a new car. If we are lucky we will own a new Toyota Camry Hybrid anywhere from next week to three months from now.

This is how we always manage our big purchases in life. No fretting, agonizing or procrastinating. Just do it.

Rael, Rodger & Rail Runner

This was a fun trip over to Bernalillo on the new Rail Runner. Lawrence Rael, my Chief Administrative Officer when I served as Mayor, and Rodger Beimer went along. Lawrence is now Director of the Middle Rio Grande Council of Govermnments. He has worked very hard with Governor Richardson to make this commuter train a reality. We all went to Bernalillo to have lunch with business leaders and elected officials there. The trip each way took about 15 minutes. No hassles with traffic. I can't wait for it to go to Santa Fe.


This is Mike Cerletti, Secretary of the State Tourism Department. I am showing you this picture because he was self conscious with his tiny borrowed sunglasses. Sorry Mike, but you knew I had to do this.

Seriously, Mike is doing a great job for New Mexico. Tourism is really important to this state. I read just today that hunting and fishing brings in a third of a billion dollars a year to our economy. That is why it makes sense to preserve and protect those sportsmen's lands from irresponsible development.

Rested

I got some rest yesterday and went and had a much put off physical exam this morning. I was glad to be told I am still alive. I had one friend call me this morning to congratulate me and I told him I was going to the Docs for an exam. He said he doesn't like to go and has not done so for several years because he doesn't want to endure the prostate exam. I told him to get over it and go because it could save his life. I hope he will. I had one other good friend just diagnosed with prostrate cancer and it would have been really bad, but his exam caught it early.

I have added a new feature to my blog. It is a little poll you can take once a week or so. It is totally not statistically accurate or scientific, but it will give you an idea of what my blog readers are thinking. We will try this out for a while and see how it works.

Now I am off to ride the Rail Runner to Bernalillo. Quick, build it to Santa Fe so I can ride it everyday if I win the election in November!

Call from Ray

I just had a very gracious call from Ray Powell congratulating me on my apparent win in the Land Commissioner race. Ray has pledged to help me in my contest against Pat Lyons next November.

The Associated Press declared me the winner at about 9:30 this morning with a margin of victory of 2223 votes. If there are no gross clerical errors on these totals then we have won the primary campaign. Thanks to all who helped.

Now, I will be the only statewide candidate to face an incumbent Republican office holder. He has half a million in the bank and more rolling in. This will be fun, right? Don't forget you can contribute to me at www.jimbaca.com

Squeaker

At 7am this morning the Associated Press had me ahead with 2000 votes and 99% of the precincts reporting. There is now a three week canvassing period ahead in which totals are rechecked. Right now, 2000 votes looks good.

Close only counts with hand grenades

As I write this at 1:30 AM I am sitting on a 1500 vote lead. 7% of the counties precincts have still not reported. This will not decided for another day, and then we endure the three week canvassing period. More tomorrow. This is fun.

24 Hours

Once again I show you one of my favorite news photos of all time. It shows Wendell Wilkie campaigning. It says it all. He didn't win this election, but do you think he was enjoying himself?


The last 24 hours of a campaign can be surreal. Serious candidates work very hard and take risks that most people would not understand. It is a grueling endurance race with manic/depressive events peppered evenly over a six month period. Things get surreal because everything can end as suddenly as driving your car at 100mph into a bridge abutment. Or, you face five more stamina challenging months of campaigning.

I would say that this campaign, at the age of 60, is no harder or easier than my first statewide campaign at the age of 38. The emotions are all there, the ups and downs, and the endless miles in the car. Actually, the only thing that is a little more difficult is sitting for so long in the car.

I am really happy I decided to do this campaign. I will be content with the results whether I win or lose, well I would really rather win. But, I wanted to see if I could still run a campaign and then bring some much need changes to the land office. I felt I have made a good effort.

My campaign manager Jessie Keefe and fund raiser Mario Montoya have done a great job. Jessie will be leaving New Mexico for a new life in Hawaii in June and I will be on the hunt for a manager real quick if I win.

My hat is off to my opponent Ray Powell for running a positive campaign. If he vanquishes me I will be fully supporting him in the general election.

We will all be at the Hilton Inn in Albuquerque tomorrow evening to wait for election results. It could be a long evening and a close race.

Hangers

There is nothing I hate more than clothes hangers. They can not be controlled. They can not be ordered. Put just two clothes hangers together and they will tangle. Put a dozen together and you may as well throw them into a smelter. I hate them. Ask Bobbi. Everytime I get around them I mutter and sputter curse words. Don't you just hate the way they launch them selves on to the floor in the closet when you pull a shirt off of them?

Who invented the hanger? I hope they hung him. Why hasn't anyone ever come up with a better hanger? They will be rich beyond their wildest dreams if they do so. It seems all things evolve, but clothes hangers don't. I wonder if they are the same in alternate universes. Or, on other intelligent and developed planets. If they are the same then those planets are no more advanced than we are.

I really hate hangers. This is not an obsessive compulsive disorder thing. Do you hate hangers? I will enable comments now so you can tell me how much you hate them.

Razzle Dazzle

This is a great example of razzle dazzle from Commissioner Patrick Lyons at the land office.

See it here.

Now, Lyons is doing the legal thing here. He is advertising a trade of land. (Although many of these trades could be deemed unconstitutional.) This is a legal description of the property to be traded in Lincoln County. If you are interested in this kind of stuff then maybe a legal description is all you need. If you are an average citizen looking for information on the Land Office web site, you are out of luck here. You wont see anything here about:
1. Why is this land being traded?
2. Who asked the Land Office to do this?
3. How does it benefit the Land Office to do this?
4. Where is this land really?
5. Was the local community included in discussions on this trade?
6. Will it impact the local community's planning efforts?
7. How will this trade affect water supplies?
8. How will this trade affect transportation issues?
9. How will this trade affect local taxpayers?
10. How does a citizen find out this information since it is not readily available?

This is why I think we need a constitutional amendment to create a State Lands Approval Board that will have final approval on all permanent land actions by the Commissioner.

Struck Silver

I got another endorsment from the Silver City Daily Press. I had a nice chat with the publisher down there about my days as State Liquor Director. I especially like this newspaper because it is one of the few small town dailies in New Mexico that has its own press. Most small town papers are part of conglomerate operations that centrally print their editions and then truck them to the communities' readers. In Silver City you can still smell that special scent of newsprint ink.

I also noticed that my opponent's financial report shows him with $50 thousand in unspent funds as of yesterday. He had loaned himself almost that much, so maybe he didn't really want to spend it and make it appear he had raised a lot, or maybe he knows something I don't! I did loan about $11 thousand to my campaign, but I put it to work in these last days.

And Now for Something Entirely Different

Anyone who is over 50 will remember Joe Friday on Dragnet. You must see this.

Useless

First, I got some more endorsements in the last couple of days, which is good. The Santa Fe Reporter and the Albuquerque Alibi, both of them large and influential weeklies, endorsed me. I really appreciate their support. Both publications offer real alternative looks at issues and politics. I am glad they exist and hope they will for a long time. I also got the support of the Taos News. This is a great weekly paper with a local news flavor.

Second, what is more useless than a candidate four days before an election that will probably set a record for a low turnout. We have all done about all that can be done except to call for more money. That will dry up anyway this close in to the election. The victors next Tuesday will then start all over and on a much bigger scale. It will be nice to be a part of a team instead of being in the wilderness that we call primary elections. Election night gatherings for the Democrats will be held at the Albuquerque Hilton Inn. Look for us there whether we are victorious or vanquished.

Third, if you want to see how much all the candidates are reporting in contributions and expenditures visit this site.

Just click on the June 1 column. I raised about $35,000 this period and spent $55,000. Totally I have spent about $120,000 and raised about the same amount.

Candidate's Heads

I will try to now explain to you what is going on in all of the candidates heads right now since we are only six days from the election. These are the questions they are asking themselves at 4 a.m. in the morning.

1. What was I thinking about!
2. Why does it cost four times as much to run a campaign as it did 10 years ago?
3. Why do I have to spend every waking moment listening to my campaign staff complaining about me not making more phone calls for money?
4. Why don't I make more phone calls for money?
5. Why wont the wind stop blowing so my sign crews can get a life?
6. Why does the publisher of the Albuquerque Journal hate me?
7. Why am I buying an ad in that publishers paper?
8. Why doesn't anyone even know or care there is an election next week?
9. Why doesn't it rain for chrissake?
10. Why is this so much fun?

Well, you get the picture. Most candidates do have fun at this and I have really enjoyed traveling the back roads of New Mexico again. If you can't turn this into fun then you shouldn't be doing it.

Memorial Day

I went to the Memorial Day ceremonies in Albuquerque this morning. As I arrived the Veterans for Peace who were holding signs on the sidewalk were being told by the New Mexico Veterans Memorial staff that they would have to move across the street. I told the managers I didn't think they had to move anywhere and they were veterans and had earned the right to voice their feelings. I went into the Memorial and mentioned it to Mayor Marty Chavez and I believe he intervened and everything worked out. I just can't imagine why the managers of that facility would have taken that position. It was a very peaceful and orderly protest by a mostly over 50's group of veterans. Of all people, veterans certainly step to the front of the line when it comes to exercising their civil liberties.

I got to thinking about all of the democratic statewide candidates that are running for office and wondered how many of them are veterans.I believe James Lewis, candidate for State Treasurer is an Air Force Veteran. Jeff Armijo, who is running for Auditor, is National Guard member.

I am a veteran of the United States Air Force. I served in the New Mexico Air National Guard's "Enchilada Air Force" as the unit photographer. After basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in the summer of 1966 I was sent to photo school at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver for five months. I had always wanted to be a photographer and was amazed when I actually got the training that I wanted. It really led to my career in journalism and politics. I kept this picture small so you couldn't see my acne. I was 20 when this was taken.

This photo is of an F100-F on the day of deployment to Viet Nam, June 1968

After returning from that training I reentered UNM for another semester and then our whole 150th Tactical Fighter Group was activated in January 1968 after the North Koreans captured the USS Pueblo. Most of the F-100's. pilots, armaments and maintenance crews were sent to Tuy Hoa, South Vietnam while many others were sent to Korea. About 75 of us were assigned to airforce units in the U.S. I was sent to Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix where I worked on gun camera systems for almost 18 months. I attained rank as a staff sergeant.

We were all mustered out in the fall of 1970 and I returned to school and a job at KOAT-TV as a news photographer, reporter and anchorman. The rest, as they say, is history. I looked kind of young then at the age of 26

When you stop and think what happened to John Kerry, Max Cleland and John McCain in Viet Nam and how the bush and rove crowd turned these veterans into cowards via their 'swift boat' strategy, it is enough to make you go postal.

More Endorsements

The newspaper endoresments continue. As usual the Journal said no to my candidacy, but the Santa Fe New Mexican said yes. That was good news for me because I really wanted the New Mexican's endorsement. Here is what they had to say.

(Former Commissioner) "Jim Baca, our primary choice, went on to serve in the federal version of the job: directorship of the Bureau of Land Management.

There, his honesty, courage and resistance to pressures from his Clinton-appointed superiors got him run out of Washington. America’s loss, Albuquerque’s gain; he served as mayor of Duke City.

At a time when the Bush administration is bent on wrecking the West, New Mexico needs a toughminded champion of conservation; Baca meets that description."

There are a lot more endorsements to come. The large and popular weeklies will chime in at the middle of the week.

Enron Jury

That Enron jury did their job for sure. I have read just about every book and article that was written on the corporate disaster and I think this jury needs some real respect. They did their job and found there was no reasonable doubt on the charges against these corporate criminals. Lay and Skilling deserved this. Once again, Bobbi and I were in Houston visiting our daughter when all this Enron stuff broke loose and I still remember the crime scene tape surrounding the Enron building. That really got me into the whole affair and I became an insatiable reader and watcher of all things Enron.

Lots of employees lost their life savings because of this company's 'bottom line' attitude. Their 'mark to market' accounting scams suckered all the financial analysts and government regulators for over a decade. When one analyst started questioning the financial house of cards and was called an 'asshole' by CEO Skilling during a multi party conference call, the unravelling began.

The prosecution in that case must have done a pretty convincing job to get so many convictions on so many of the counts.

The Birds

So, there I am last night doing a little watering in the front yard and these guys walk by in formation. I have lived in this neighborhood since 1979 and I have never seen a gaggle of peacocks walk by before. There is a first time for everything I guess. They must have been used to people because there was a lot of people coming out to watch them and they didn't mind. Maybe they came over from the Zoo.

Now look carefully in this picture and you will see the Humming Bird that has built its nest over my hot tub in a Sycamore tree. I have been watching this go on for several days during my early morning soak.(Try not to visualize that.) I have a feeder nearby so this little guy or girl has a good food supply. Last year there was one Hummer that would come up right to my face and stare at me.