New Mexico

Sabato’s Crystal Ball: Of ‘Lean D’ gov’s races, GOP ‘most excited’ about NM

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On Wednesday, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a project of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, made two race rating changes, both changing gubernatorial races in Michigan and Pennsylvania from “Leans Democratic” to “Likely Democratic.”

However, it kept New Mexico’s “Leans Democratic” rating. But as the Crystal Ball noted, of all the Leans D races, New Mexico Republicans’ race to take out Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham appears to be the most exciting.

It wrote regarding the three remaining Leans D races, “Of this trio, Republicans have seemed most excited about New Mexico, although Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) has consistently led 2020 Senate nominee Mark Ronchetti (R) in polling. Govs. Tim Walz (D-MN) and Janet Mills (D-ME) have led their rivals, too.”

All but one recent poll have consistently rated the race within single digits of Lujan Grisham, with the most recent The Hill/Emerson poll showing Ronchetti with 43 percent to the Governor’s 48 percent with a margin of error of three percentage points — a near statistical tie. Five percent of voters remain undecided. Three percent are voting for another candidate (Libertarian Karen Bedonie, who was formerly a Republican before switching parties).

Far-left organizations and labor unions have thrown their support behind Lujan Grisham, while the New Mexico Fraternal Order of Police, Albuquerque Police Officers Association, Fraternal Order of Police, and public safety groups have backed Ronchetti. 

In New Mexico, crime is a major issue, as is the border, with one of the largest drug busts happening in Albuquerque this month. The city recently hit its 100th homicide, on track to exceed 2021’s most deadly year of 117 killings. The federal government has reported over two million illegal immigrant apprehensions on the border within the year alone. 
Ronchetti will debate Lujan Grisham on KOB 4 on Friday, September 30. The debate will be one hour starting at 7:00 p.m.

Dems forced to discount tickets to fundraiser honoring cop hater Gabe Vasquez

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In an embarrassing turn, the Democrat Party of New Mexico (DPNM) are now being forced to heavily discount tickets to their 2022 “Rising Star” awards event happening Saturday. DPNM is slashing prices for general admission tickets from $100 each to $50.

The dinner will honor far-left cop hater Gabe Vasquez, the Democrats’ nominee for the Second Congressional District in southern New Mexico. 

In the original invite from September 3, the Democrats wrote, “Don’t miss your opportunity to meet Gabe, the all-woman Las Cruces City Council, and special guest – Jessica Cisneros, Immigration and Civil Rights attorney who catapulted to progressive prominence for running an inspirational congressional campaign in Texas earlier in 2022.” 

Cisneros is the socialist who failed twice in a run for Congress against more moderate Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX). Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the far-left “Justice Democrats,” and others recruited and endorsed her two failed runs for the seat. Despite that, she is being lauded by DPNM as a “stupendous ‘rising star’ in her own right.”

The dinner will also feature “performances by ballet dancer Than Povi, Latin Pop musician Buddy Abeyta, Jazz musician Tracey Whitney, Zia Queens breakdance crew, and the Atrisco Heritage High School Mariachi Group.”

Previous honorees include one-term Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, who lost reelection in the Second District, to Republican Congresswoman Yvette Herrell, who Vasquez is now running against. 

With prices being heavily slashed, it appears the Democrats are having trouble funding the event with willing participants, with the Party stressing that “Rising Star is how we are able to fund our most important Democratic initiatives and support our candidates throughout the year.”

Gabe Vasquez outed as cowardly cop hater

More heartbreaking stats reveal big issues with CYFD: LFC report

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New Mexico’s Children, Youth, and Families Department (CYFD) has been heavily scrutinized for the constant failures in the Department to protect children overseen and in the care of the state.

With no oversight mechanisms in place at CYFD, many children have tragically died or been harmed while in the system. 

A Legislative Finance Committee (LFC) release recently reported by the Albuquerque Journal shows more damning information about CYFD’s failures.

The Journal writes, “More than 40% of children in New Mexico who had a substantiated serious injury from physical abuse or neglect in fiscal year 2022 came from families who had a prior involvement with the state’s Children, Youth and Families Department in the preceding 12 months, according to new state data.”

The LFC report notes that CYFD “continues to underperform on targets for repeat maltreatment, maltreatment of foster care children, and serious injuries after protective services involvement.”

“New Mexico’s rates for repeat maltreatment are among the worst in the nation,” it continues.

Kicking the can down the road and attempting to remain blameless, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s CYFD Secretary Barbara Vigil said of the report, “Our underperformance is a condition of systemic challenges that have manifested over many years.”

The LFC added in the report, “Prevention and early intervention is key to reducing repeat child maltreatment.”

One of the assessments from CYFD’s release noted, “A recent CYFD workforce development plan and survey noted that protective services staff ranked workload, self-care, and compensation as the most pressing challenges facing staff. Another highly ranked challenge was related to organizational factors with many respondents feeling that rules, policies, and procedures are not interpreted and applied consistently.” 

It is unclear in upcoming legislative sessions if there will be meaningful reform made to CYFD. Previous oversight measures carried by Republicans and passed by wide margins have repeatedly failed to pass — leaving children at continued risk due to heavy staff workload, lack of accountability and performance metrics of the department set far too low.

Martinez Johnson releases her first TV ad buy in Third District

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Republican nominee for Congress in the Third District, Alexis Martinez Johnson, unveiled her first television ad in the General Election called “My Abuelos.” 

The 30-second ad was announced as a “significant ad buy” from the campaign, which hopes to unseat vulnerable first-term Democrat Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez.

“Our ad, ‘My Abuelos,’ really goes back to the beginning for me,” Martinez Johnson said in a statement exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital. “It all began with my abuelos in Roswell. We didn’t have much, but I was raised with the values of hard work and self-determination. This spurred me on to eventually graduate college as an environmental engineer. However, with skyrocketing inflation, an unsecure border, and high gas prices, opportunity is further out of reach for New Mexicans than ever before.”

“My abuelos raised me. My grandfather spent his days digging ditches to put food on the table. From there, I worked hard and graduated from college. My abuelos were staunch Democrats. They believed in hard work and self-determination,” she says in the ad, with photos showing her with her family dancing at her wedding and other images from her childhood.

“Today’s Democratic Party has left those values behind,” Martinez Johnson says. “Inflation, gas prices, crime waves — Biden and Teresa Leger Fernandez are setting us back. I’m Alexis Martinez Johnson, and I approve this message because our families deserve so much better.”

WATCH:

Leger Fernandez is endorsed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), having an event with her on Monday.

In her previous run for Congress, Leger Fernandez had the backing of the socialist Working Families Party and socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). The Third District is now much more competitive after Democrats in the state legislature gerrymandered the seats to attempt to boot GOP Rep. Yvette Herrell of the Second District out of her more conservative seat.

Gabe Vasquez outed as cowardly cop hater

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A new report from the Washington Free Beacon exposes Democrat congressional nominee Gabe Vasquez in New Mexico’s Second District for his cowardly anti-cop comments during the Black Lives Matter/Antifa unrest in 2020.

The report notes, “During a June 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in Las Cruces, N.M., a local reporter interviewed one attendee who furiously expressed his desire to defund police. ‘We need serious police reform in this country,’ the man said over chants of ‘no justice, no peace.’ ‘It’s not just about defunding police, it’s about defunding a system that privileges white people over everyone else.’ While the interviewee—who shielded much of his face in a hat, neck gaiter, and sunglasses—identified himself as ‘James Hall,’ a ‘Las Cruces resident,’ the facial features he did show bore a curious resemblance to then-city council member Gabe Vasquez.” 

“That’s because the interviewee was, in fact, Vasquez, a former city official who monitored the protest told the Free Beacon. Contemporaneous evidence reviewed by the Free Beacon, meanwhile, supports the assertion. Vasquez tweeted live from the event on June 6, 2020, sharing first-person photos accompanied with the hashtags ‘BlackLivesMattters [sic]’ and ‘Las Cruces.’ Six months later, Vasquez shared a photo that showed him sporting the same distinct, teal-and-orange neck gaiter he wore in the interview.” 

Vasquez “quietly” deleted all the evidence tying him to the cop-hating, police-defunding comments made under a false name. 

The Democrat, who is aiming to unseat GOP Congresswoman Yvette Herrell, did not return the Free Beacon’s request for comment for obvious reasons.

Vasquez, who has often lobbed inflammatory rhetoric toward Herrell, erroneously calling her an “extremist,” has proven to be an extremist himself due to his previous radical statements calling America “AmeriKKKa.” 

As we previously reported: 

​​In June, during the George Floyd protests, Vasquez once again claimed the United States is systemically racist and the “systems” (referring to police) are “built on oppression. He wrote, “Black lives matter. Until we deconstruct and rebuild the systems of oppression that keep black people in perpetual harm, justice will not be served. That includes law enforcement, the economy, and the disgusting wealth inequality that keeps white rich men in power.” 

Vasquez’s campaign is heavily funded by the likes of Nancy Pelosi, other leftist members of Congress, and even DUI-charged state Rep. Georgene Lous, who is retiring due to the politically cancerous scandal.

Trump-hating socialist who thinks America is a racist country running in CD-2
FEC reports: Pelosi, disgraced state Rep. Georgene Louis donate big to Vasquez

ABQ passes grim homicide milestone

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In Democrat Mayor Tim Keller’s crime-ridden Albuquerque, Keller’s Police Chief Harold Medina confirmed to KOB 4 that Sunday’s homicide near Kathryn and Palomas NE was the city’s 100th this year — a grim milestone for the city. 

With over three months until the end of the year, Albuquerque is on track to surpass last year’s historic high of 117 killings within city limits, making 2022 likely the deadliest year on record in Democrat-run Albuquerque.

KOB’s Giuli Frendak wrote that Medina “doesn’t see the rate slowing down, and we could surpass last year’s number.” 

The tragic news of Sunday’s homicide came after Calvary Church security guard, 61-year-old Daniel Bourne, was killed Friday by 35-year-old suspected murderer Marc Ward. 

KOAT 13 reported, “A spokesperson with APD says Bourne noticed a suspicious vehicle in the parking lot, and notified his supervisor around 9 pm Friday. Bourne then took photos of the vehicle and sent them to the supervisor. Later, the supervisor went to the church to check on Bourne, when he found him in a nearby arroyo.” 

Ward was taken into custody after officers found the victim on the 4000 block of Osuna Rd. NE. He has three previous charges of domestic violence, two charges of aggravated battery, and charges of criminal sexual contact with a minor — specifically a minor under the age of 13. With New Mexico’s lax laws, dangerous criminals like Ward remain on the street and out of jail.

NM utilities forced to buy out-of-state power, beg customers to ration usage

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New Mexico’s Green New Deal (Energy Transition Act) is continuing to harm New Mexico by creating a vast power shortage. Utilities are buckling for a full-blown power catastrophe next summer as they are forced to “transition” to solar and other “renewable” energy sources. 

During a special Public Regulation Commission meeting Thursday, Public Service Co. of New Mexico (PNM) said it is being forced to PNM executives said the utility will fill “quite a hole” next summer due to “green” replacements taking longer to materialize as the San Juan Generating Station is set to close next week.

According to PNM spokesman Ray Sandoval, PNM “generally has a 2,000-megawatt system with about 500 megawatts provided by the San Juan Generating Station.” 

With the closure of the San Juan Generating Station, it has purged countless jobs, with only around 80 employees able to retire. “For the rest of the employees, though, they’re going to have to go find some other form of employment,” said plant manager Omni Warner. 

The AP reports, “El Paso Electric, a utility that serves customers in southern New Mexico, also is expecting a capacity gap next summer. Like PNM, El Paso Electric will have to buy power from other producers to ensure adequate capacity when customers crank up their air conditioners during the hottest of days.”

The report continues, “PNM officials said they have revamped their plans for alerting customers when it looks like demand will outpace capacity and rolling outages might ensue. The media blitz will include automated calls, television and radio commercials along with social media posts that urge customers to cut back on their use. A special website would go live for tracking outages.”

As for the other effects of New Mexico’s Green New Deal, other than brownouts and lost jobs, electric utilities, including XCEL Energy, are asking to raise rates on their customers because of the Energy Transition Act, passing off large costs back to the consumers.

Eco-leftist company Avangrid continues its attempts to buy out PNM, but its previous attempts have failed at the Public Regulation Commission. However, the takeover remains “very much alive,” especially if far-left Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham gets a second term. Via constitutional amendment, voters gave the governor sole authority to appoint members of the PRC. Lujan Grisham has big campaign donations from the out-of-country company, among other connections. 

As we previously reported:

It is unclear why anyone lobbied the governor by financing the trip or how much New Mexicans paid for her non-publicized private trip abroad. However, the New Mexico taxpayers paid for her security while she was in Spain.

It is also unclear if there were any joiners on the trip other than her staff and security agents. Could the Governor’s close friend and former business partner New Mexico Rep. Debbie Armstrong have joined the trip as well? 

The documents obtained through the IPRA show receipts from Madrid and Gran Canaria, the pay stub to Lt. Gov Morales, showing he was acting in Luajn Grusham’s stead, as well as the Governor’s calendar showing she was gone throughIn 2015, PNM opened a wind farm in Cibola County, which appears to be the wind farm Gov. Lujan Grisham shot her 2018 “Turbine” ad, where she touted her “green energy” proposals while running for governor. AVANGRID has a wind farm called “El Cabo” in Torrence County.

Dems cry ‘racism’ over mailer hitting them for voting to let pedos touch kids

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On Thursday, Democrats freaked out over a mailer sent by the Republican Party of New Mexico hitting state Rep. Liz Thomson (D-Bernalillo) over her vote against an amendment to ban sex offenders from getting licenses and being able to cut children’s hair. 

The mailer features a photo of a boy getting his hair cut by a person who is filtered in grayscale reading, “Your state representative Elizabeth Thomson voted to allow convicted sex offenders to receive professional licenses for activities such as cutting hair or working as a nail technician — leaving unsuspecting women and children vulnerable to predators.”

It asks, “Do you want a sex offender cutting your or your child’s hair?”

On the other side, it shows a grayscale picture of Thomson with the words, “Rep. Thomson voted to let violent criminal offenders and sex offenders over the age of 65 out of prison.”

Instead of refuting the claims that Thomson voted against an amendment to ban pedophiles from cutting kids’ hair, the Democrats rolled out so-called “civil rights” activists to cry “racist” about the grayscale image.

“These images leave scars,” the Rev. Charles E. Becknell cried to the Santa Fe New Mexican, adding, “[W]e need to demonstrate to our fellow New Mexicans this is not acceptable.”

The socialist George Soros-funded group ProgressNow New Mexico claimed on Twitter, “What message are we supposed to take away from the @NewMexicoGOP intentionally darkening the skin of the stylist in this photo while having a (fully false) discourse about formally incarcerated people?” The group appeared to defend the convicted pedophiles as “formally incarcerated people.”

State Rep. Stefani Lord (R-Sandia Park) wrote, “The mailer shows a child who is afraid—and the whole background is black and white. You know what else is black and white? The FACT that the democrats voted to let pedophiles cut kids’ hair. I presented the amendment to stop sex offenders from touching your child, dems disagreed.”

The Piñon Post’s John Block wrote, “It’s great how the more people share pics of this mailer erroneously claiming it’s “racist,” the more people know how the Democrats voted to let sex offenders near kids. Also note how no Democrats are refuting that they voted against letting pedophiles near kids. Just saying…” 

The Republican Party of New Mexico shared a quote from New Mexico House GOP Whip Rod Montoya (R-Farmington), writing, “A shadowy, gray figure is not a racial category. What this mailer does depict is the danger in which Democrats voted to put our children. When we voted on this bill, Republicans offered an amendment to restrict sex offenders from being able to obtain professional licenses. The House Democrats voted against that amendment. Charges of racism are simply a smokescreen to distract attention from progressives’ voting records which put the interests of convicted criminals over the safety of law-abiding New Mexicans.”

Ex-LANL scientists advanced Chinese military efforts: Report

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According to a new report by Strider Technologies, at least 154 Chinese ex-Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) scientists over the last two decades have helped advance Chinese military technology, creating a greater threat to the United States from within.

LANL is the U.S. Department of Energy’s premier research institution, with a mission “to solve national security challenges through simultaneous excellence.”

The report details how many of the scientists were “lured” back to China “to help make advances in such technologies as deep-earth-penetrating warheads, hypersonic missiles, quiet submarines and drones,” according to NBC News. 

“The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is employing a “Talent Superpower Strategy” (人才强国战略) designed to incentivize academics, researchers, and scientists to go abroad, deepen their expertise, and then work to advance China’s strategic interests. What began in the 1980s as policy to encourage young talent to go overseas and enhance their skill set has since evolved to include initiatives and programs that ultimately seek to exploit their efforts in vital technology sectors for China’s gain, whether they return to China or stay overseas,” the report details.

Many of the scientists were paid as much as $1 million for participating in the Chinese government-run “talent programs” that have long been identified as a source of concern to national security. 

The threat to national security is a chief concern in the report, which notes that close interactions between China’s People’s Liberation Army (PRC) universities and “the Ministry of State Security suggests that some postdoctoral researchers and visiting scholars are vetted by China’s security services before going abroad.19 While they do not have access to the most sensitive research at Los Alamos, they still pose risks of technology transfer and economic espionage. The Department of Energy (DOE) has acknowledged instances where researchers elsewhere have passed dual-use and export-controlled research to the PRC via visiting students and scholars.”

One shocking revelation from the report is that the PRC’s success, “along with support for China’s talent programs from Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping and other top CCP leaders, suggest that similar recruitment efforts may be widespread among U.S. government-funded laboratories, academic research institutions, and major centers of innovation. Moreover, the Los Alamos case shows how China’s rapid advances in certain crucial military technologies are being aided by individuals who participated in sensitive U.S. government-funded research.”

With China becoming an increasingly hostile threat to the United States as Taiwan becomes part of the global spotlight, the gaping leaks in national security from LANL and other institutions appear to be significantly aiding Chinese military efforts.

EXCLUSIVE: Details from Gov. Lujan Grisham’s ‘private meeting’ with communist Chinese official

MLG deported illegal aliens to leftist ‘sanctuaries’ before it was cool

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During President Donald Trump’s time in the White House, far-left Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) did what Republican governors are now being attacked for — busing illegal aliens to “sanctuary cities” that protect criminal aliens.

According to the Associated Press, “When migrants overwhelmed cities and shelters in New Mexico in 2019, Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham moved several dozen of them by bus from border communities to Denver, where Christian congregations volunteered to provide shelter and aid. Fast forward to 2022 and there is little, if any, talk of transporting migrants away from the border by Lujan Grisham — or Republican nominee for governor Mark Ronchetti.”

In 2019, The Washington Post reported, “A busload of 55 migrants who had been arrested by U.S. border authorities and were then released into the United States left Las Cruces, N.M., on Sunday afternoon bound for Denver, where it arrived at about 2 a.m. Monday and left people in the care of three churches, according to the office of New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D), which paid $4,000 for the bus to help ease the burden on cities in the southern part of the state.”

Lujan Grisham said at the time that the Trump administration leaves “states like ours in really precarious positions, and we’re showing folks we can lead and problem-solve. We figured out a way to get 55 folks out of Las Cruces and to Denver. We’re going to continue to do everything like that that we can in the short term.”

Under Joe Biden, there were over two million illegal border crossings just in 2022 alone (2,150,639 to be exact), according to a report from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol released this week.

This comes while Lujan Grisham’s campaign attacks GOP governors for doing what she did just a few short years ago. 

“Gov. DeSantis is using this opportunity to distract Americans from the fact that his far-right colleagues are trying to pass a national abortion ban, a position he supports,” Lujan Grisham spokeswoman Maddy Hayden said in a statement Tuesday.

The smell of hypocrisy from Lujan Grisham can’t be overstated, especially since her campaign is now criticizing governors like DeSantis and Greg Abbott (R-TX) when she is the original “deporter” of illegal aliens from her state.

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