The Vote

It doesn't look good for the Democratic party and it probably is even worse for the country.

Well, I voted a few days ago. It hurt me, but I voted for two Republicans. They appeared to be slightly less crooked than their Democratic counterparts. Lesser of two weevils.

Otherwise, I went Democratic Party. Unfortunately, in a couple of the most important races the Republican is likely to win. Susanna Martinez, our governor, has the advantages of incumbency, support from Sarah Palin and the likes of the Koch Machine, and her Hispanic heritage and name. Her opponent lacks notable electoral virtues, except for the name he shares with his father, a popular former governor.

Our US Representative is the execrable Steve Pearce, a made guy in the Republican right wing, thoroughly dishonest guy, and advocate of every idiotic policy of the Oil Oligarchy. His opponent is little known, underfunded, and a less than brilliant campaigner. So that’s another vote of mine that is unlikely to do much good.

More interesting was the vote for State Representative. These small scale local races are usually conducted at pretty low intensity. This year’s election featured a rematch between the Republican who won by 8 votes (on the second recount) last time and a Democratic candidate who got off to an excellent start. She looked to be doing pretty well until Dark Money unleashed a massive negative media campaign against her, complete with television spots and a full page newspaper add – a campaign at many times the financial scale that these local races usually attract.

It sure looks like control of the New Mexico State Legislature is really important to some big Republican players out there – Koch Machine or similar operations, I would guess, with their actual identities carefully concealed thanks to the right wing hacks of the John Robert’s Supreme Court.

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