Santa Fe Democrat's Ward 47-A

ABQjournal NM: PNM Hike Hits Families Harder

Link: ABQjournal NM: PNM Hike Hits Families Harder.

PNM's almost 400,000 residential customers will see bigger increases in their electric bills than commercial customers as a result of the rate increase approved last week by the state Public Regulation Commission.     In addition, summer rates for most customers will jump even higher— especially for those using more than 700 kilowatt-hours a month. That probably would be a resident with a large home with refrigerated air conditioning.     All customers could see another bump if regulators approve the company's request to pass along its fuel costs directly— on top of existing rates.     The new charges customers will see in the billing cycle that begins today reflect how PNM will divvy up the $35.2 million revenue increase approved by the commission into electric rates among its different rate classes.     Studies show commercial customers pay proportionately more than residential customers, and PNM has said it is moving, in small steps, toward a more even distribution.     Final figures released by PNM this week show the increase will average 6.3 percent across all rate classes.     Residential customers will get an average 7.8 percent bump in their bills while the biggest commercial users will see an average increase of 5.1 percent.     Two other new factors will affect rates.

Is Jeremiah Wright a colossal disaster for Barack Obama or a press trick?

Link: Is Jeremiah Wright a colossal disaster for Barack Obama or a press trick?.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright couldn't have done more damage to Barack Obama's campaign if he had tried. And you have to wonder if that's just what one friend of Wright wanted. Shortly before he rose to deliver his rambling, angry, sarcastic remarks at the National Press Club Monday, Wright sat next to, and chatted with, Barbara Reynolds. A former editorial board member at USA Today, she runs something called Reynolds News Services and teaches ministry at the Howard University School of Divinity. (She is an ordained minister). It also turns out that Reynolds - introduced Monday as a member of the National Press Club "who organized" the event - is an enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter. On a blog linked to her Web site- www.reynoldsnews.com- Reynolds said in a February post: "My vote for Hillary in the Maryland primary was my way of saying thank you" to Clinton and her husband for the successes of Bill Clinton's presidency.

Supreme Court Upholds Voter Identification Law in Indiana - New York Times

Link: Supreme Court Upholds Voter Identification Law in Indiana - New York Times.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter-identification law on Monday, declaring that a requirement to produce photo identification is not unconstitutional and that the state has a “valid interest” in improving election procedures as well as deterring fraud.

County clerks unhappy with voting machine vendor - SantaFeNewMexican.com

Link: County clerks unhappy with voting machine vendor - SantaFeNewMexican.com.

Secretary of State Mary Herrera assured lawmakers Thursday that her office was prepared for the June primary election, but county clerks worry about the possible failure of memory cards in voting machines used across New Mexico.

Representatives of the state's 33 county clerks said they need extra memory cards to protect against failures during the election. The cards hold ballot information and are necessary for vote tabulators to operate.

Ballots must be hand counted — a potential source of delays in reporting the outcome of races — if tabulators aren't working.

Congress questions Big Oil’s big profits - Oil & energy- msnbc.com

Link: Congress questions Big Oil’s big profits - Oil & energy- msnbc.com.

WASHINGTON - When it comes to public opinion, Congress isn’t held in very high regard, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver reminded executives of the country’s biggest oil companies.

Then the Missouri Democrat added, “Your approval rating is lower than ours, and that means you’re down low.”

Opinion - SantaFeNewMexican.com

Link: Opinion - SantaFeNewMexican.com.

Half a year from now, when the Democratic Party holds its convention in Denver, it might not matter. But two of New Mexico's "superdelegates" to the convention — going there to vote for their party's presidential nominee not by virtue of popular selection, by being New Mexico's governor and senator — have accepted campaign contributions from today's remaining contenders.

Editorial: Colón's caucus debacle

The New Mexican 2/16/2008 - 2/16/08 The bathos is complete: New Mexicans watching the Brian Colón show on television Thursday afternoon couldn't help feel queasy as the besieged Democratic chairman arrived more than half an hour late for the press conference announcing — at long last — the results of this state's Feb. 5 presidential caucus. Spiffed out in patriotic colors and sunglasses, the Albuquerque lawyer lost no time antagonizing reporters, then launching into wisecracks worthy of a second-rate awards presentation — until he went third class, maundering about the number of caucus volunteers and confusing the term "score" with "gross," both immaterial to the topic at hand: telling New Mexico and the rest of the nation who won the caucus that took place nine days earlier in our lightly populated state. Our Dems were last in the nation to tally the results — owing to abysmal guessing about turnout atop poor party organization and execution. When finally we found out that Hillary Clinton had defeated Barack Obama by fewer than 2,000 of 150,000 — or maybe many more — votes cast, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, who'd been watching through glazed eyes along with the cable network's political commentator Jack Cafferty, quickly recapped the results. Then the sarcastic Cafferty let loose: "I slipped into a coma listening to that guy in New Mexico; that guy in New Mexico, please, he was awful!" Mm-hmm. Colón, it must be said, serves (?) the state party in a purely voluntary role. But he botched this business from the bad beginning to the bitter end. Signs of trouble first appeared when Colón blithely predicted, even after Gov. Bill Richardson had dropped out of the presidential race, ending "favorite son" factors and making the contest count, that turnout would amount to maybe 40,000. No biggie, guys; our state will be a quiet backwater on Tsunami Tuesday ... With Clinton and Obama neck and neck in a matched race of thoroughbreds for the nomination to an open presidency? With more than half a million Democrats in our state, at least some of them with a pulse? Why didn't Colón's glaring misperception catch the eye of the governor — who, after all, is his party's real leader here, and who, after all, cooked up the caucus supplanting the state primary in 2004 as a way of making New Mexico a player in presidential politics? Well, because Richardson, it turns out, had other things to do. And we don't mean dealing with the Legislature, which happened to be convened to cope with a long gubernatorial wish list in a short budget session — and which he didn't do. No, the governor had a Super Bowl date with his tocayo and ex-boss, former president Bill Clinton. And there was Lobo basketball to attend. And Extreme Cage Fighting to witness. And after that, no doubt, women's mud wrestling. This is a busy man. With nothing to run for at the moment, Richardson's smiling face was not to be seen behind Brian Colón Thursday. But he's not going to be able, forever, to dodge his majority share of responsibility for the latest Bad New Mexico Moment. The least the governor can do is lead an effort for 2012 at a true primary election — presidential and maybe the rest of the ball of wax — to be held far earlier than the first Tuesday in June.

KRQE -Provisional ballot counting could begin Wednesday

Link: KRQE - Albuquerque, New Mexico - News, Video, Weather Forecast, Sports, Community, Health, Homes | KBIM - KREZ | Provisional ballot counting could begin Wednesday.

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - The state Democratic Party today released updated numbers on regular and absentee ballots in last week's caucus. The new numbers don't include any of the nearly 17,300 provisional ballots cast last week, which officials have not begun to count, according to a Democratic Party news release. The new count trims Sen. Hillary Clinton's lead by a few votes. She leads Sen. Barack Obama by 1,074 votes out of 140,078 votes cast. Also, 4,211 votes were cast for the other candidates on the ballot, led by John Edwards and Gov. Bill Richardson. Both had dropped out of the race before the caucus. About 7,400 provisional ballots have been qualified so far. Volunteers are conducting a second search of the remaining 10,000 to see if they were cast by qualified voters

Excerpt comments from Joe Monahan blog

Colòn begged off any comment about the Guv. He knows as chairman he is going to take the fall no matter what. And what a fall it is. Check out the blog e-mail.

Anonymous: Colón is dead meat. He will never live down this fiasco.

From Rio Rancho, Joe Barela weighed in: I cannot accept the answer from the Democratic Party officials that they did not anticipate the voter turnout. Even if they did not, that is still not an excuse to be organized. We need to call this for what it really is: Incompetent Leadership from the Democratic Party...These Democratic officials should really be ashamed of themselves. Heads need to roll if they expect to win in November.

Michael Folsom was a site manager at one of the polling locations.

Folks in Bernallilo County are spitting fire. To save money they under printed ballots by at least 50%... I had 1100 ballots and was out by 3 pm. I had been begging for more ballots and got no response so I started tearing up sheets of paper and handed them out for folks to vote on. We tried to get Brian Colon to say it was OK or not and he froze...To say that the state party was useless is a grand understatement. The shine is definitely off Colon. You can expect a quick move to get rid of the causes at the March state convention. If someone wants to take a run at Colon, they have my support.

From Anthony DeMarco:

What's the deal with the chaos in today's voting? Who was running the show? I waited for two hours. People weren't on the list, there were too few staff and the whole thing was a disaster. If you ask me it was a piss poor job of organization, no matter how surprised they were by the turnout.

Anonymous e-mailers: Colón's political ambitions went up in smoke last night. He is done and gone and would not even win re-election as party chair.

I recall hearing when Colon took over as chairman that he intended to use it as a springboard for a gubernatorial run some day. Guess this caucus kinda screws the pooch, eh?

Larry Anderson in Roswell:

Turnout looks good. Management is horrible! Criss-crossing lines, mixed up lines, changes being made on the fly. A few people have left. One man leaving said, "worse election mess I've ever been in." They finally decided to set up lines alphabetically. Why didn't anyone think of this ahead of time?

Carolyn Christopher of ABQ let it all hang out

The polls didn't open until noon. Why? The news has been full of stories of how many more people were going to vote. So you cut off 5 HOURS of voting time? I've never voted at Cleveland Middle School. The Dem Powers That Be combined numerous precincts into just that one. Then we saw just three voting booths! That was it...I went to one of the booths and there were no pens! The poll worker was shouting, "Who took my pens? I had 20 pens!" It took 60 minutes to mark ONE BOX on my ballot! I should mention that I have a steel knee, titanium toes, and am 70 years old.

Obama plans to visit S.F. on Friday - SantaFeNewMexican.com

Link: Obama plans to visit S.F. on Friday - SantaFeNewMexican.com.

A spokesman for Sen. Barack Obama's campaign in New Mexico confirmed the Democratic presidential candidate is scheduled to visit Santa Fe and Albuquerque on Friday but said logistics are still being worked out.

Sen. Hillary Clinton's husband, former President Clinton, will make a public appearance in Albuquerque on Thursday, a spokeswoman for her campaign said Monday. Details have yet to be confirmed.