Gary King won the primary election last night after votes were cast by 20% of the eligible democrats in the state. Governor Susana Martinez and her neo con minions are having a good chuckle this morning because they will see King as a pushover in the general election. They wanted him to win and he came in first or second in every county which which was hard for Alan Webber and Lawrence Rael to overcome. No young people voted, but the silver hair crowd did which explains King's easy victory because of nostalgia for his dad Bruce King.
There are 600,000 democrats, 340,000 republicans and 200,000 independents and fringe party members in New Mexico. One would think King could win this election, but the odds are terrible for him. Martinez will start spending her 10 million dollars next week and never look back. That is all money from the fossil fuel, Koch brothers, and right wing groups who just see this state as a giant well for climate killing fuels.
This race will be about how New Mexico should not be considered the 'Appalachia" of the Southwestern United States. Our nonperforming leadership has let our economy spiral into a horrible decline. That isn't just the political leadership, but the business community leadership too. I am not sure if King or Martinez has the ability or talent to fix this. But my vote will be with King because he is unlikely to let the oil boys run everything.
There are 600,000 democrats, 340,000 republicans and 200,000 independents and fringe party members in New Mexico. One would think King could win this election, but the odds are terrible for him. Martinez will start spending her 10 million dollars next week and never look back. That is all money from the fossil fuel, Koch brothers, and right wing groups who just see this state as a giant well for climate killing fuels.
This race will be about how New Mexico should not be considered the 'Appalachia" of the Southwestern United States. Our nonperforming leadership has let our economy spiral into a horrible decline. That isn't just the political leadership, but the business community leadership too. I am not sure if King or Martinez has the ability or talent to fix this. But my vote will be with King because he is unlikely to let the oil boys run everything.
1 comment:
Too many candidates ran, thereby allowing a "minority" vote candidate to win by only 35% of the the vote. The weaker two candidates who were polling low in the last month of the campaign probably should have withdrawn and ceded support to one of the stronger three candidates (King, Webber or Rael). Morales and Lopez (who had very loyal and dedicated, but small, regional voting bases) effectively acted as "spoilers" for a clear majority candidate when they took away 12.5% of the vote. Also, early on, it was clear that Rael and Webber were the most effective fund raisers and had the most support from the larger counties. When a March poll showed Gary King with the highest polling numbers and name recognition with less than three months of campaigning left, campaign strategists should have seen that Rael and Webber were drawing from the same voting base and perhaps a "deal" could have been made between the two of them to insure that one of them would have been elected by combining the financial and voting resources for only one of them.
And lastly, I want to put an old canard to rest: you do not have to have an Hispanic name to win in New Mexico. In a state where 47% of the population is Hispanic, 57.5% of the Democratic primary votes went to the two non-Hispanic candidates. I can't tell you how many times I spoke to Democratic voters who wanted to vote for the more visionary newcomer (Alan Webber) but said they would vote for Lawrence Rael instead because they felt that the Democrats needed an Hispanic candidate to run against Susana Martinez. In other words, they voted for their "second choice" because of a false premise.
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