Campos Nominated by Senate Dems for Pro-tem Job

A version of this will be published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Dec. 10, 2012

Sen. Pete Campos

At a closed-door caucus meeting in Belen today, state Senate Senate Democrats nominated Sen. Pete Campos of Las Vegas, N.M. for the top position in the body.

Campos, who has been in the Senate for more than 20 years, defeated four others in the contest to replace Senate President Pro Tem Tim Jennings, who was defeated for re-election last month. Also running for the position were Linda Lopez of Albuquerque, Mary Kay Papen of Las Cruces and Howie Morales of Silver City. The entire Senate elects its president pro-tem. That will be done when the Legislature convenes in January.

Campos said Sunday he was honored by the nomination. “I plan to be reaching out to every member of the Senate,” he said. “I’ll be calling every one.” An educator, Campos is the president of Luna Community College in Las Vegas. He currently is a member of the Senate Finance Committee.

Also on Sunday, the Senate Democrats re-elected Sen. Michael Sanchez of Belen as Democratic floor leader. Sanchez was unopposed for the position.

Democrats also elected Sen. Tim Keller of Albuquerque as whip and, in an unusual move, freshman Senator-elect Jacob Candelaria as caucus chairman. Normally freshman lawmakers do not win leadership positions. Longtime Senate Democratic Whip Mary Jane Garcia of Dona Ana was defeated for re-election in the general election, while current Caucus Chairman David Ulibarri lost his primary race.

The president pro tem is considered the top position for a senator. But the job isn’t considered to be as powerful as that of the speaker of the House. The president pro tem gets to preside over the Senate when the lieutenant governor —the official president of the Senate — is away.

But the main power of the president pro tem is getting to name and preside over the Committees’ Committee, which selects committee members and chairpersons.

Sen. Carlos Cisneros of Questa, who last month said he would vie for pro-tem job, did not run. Instead, he nominated Campos. “I’m very grateful for his kind words when he nominated and I’m grateful he was willing to do what he did,” Campos said.

Campos and others interviewed Sunday said they didn’t know the number of votes each pro-tem candidate received. Under caucus rules, the winner had to get a majority of members plus won. Because there will be 25 Democrats in the Senate, that number is 13. It’s not clear yet whether any of the runners-up will attempt to form a coalition with the 17 Republican senators to win the pro tem position. It will take 22 votes on the Senate floor to win the position.

This is the route Jennings took to win the position four years ago. In late 2008, Jennings lost the Democratic Caucus nomination to Cisneros for the pro tem job. But because that position is elected by the full Senate, Jennings was able to form an alliance of conservative Democrats and all Republicans to win the post when the Legislature convened in January 2009.

Senate Republicans are expected to vote on their leaders this week. Nobody is expected to challenge Senate GOP leader Stuart Ingle of Portales or Whip Bill Payne of Albuquerque.

Democrats in the House of Representatives are expected to choose their leaders on Friday. House Majority Leader Kenny Martinez of Grants is expected to get the nod for speaker of the House, replacing current Speaker Ben Luján, D-Nambé.

Two House Democrats, Debbie Rodella of Española and Rick Miera of Albuquerque, have said they are running for the majority leader job.

Darnell to Become Deputy Chief of Staff for Gov. Martinez

Scott Darnell, who has served as Gov. Susana Martinez's director of communications since the beginning of her administration, has been named deputy chief of staff.

Darnell will be replacing Ryan Cangiolosi, who last month resigned to take a job with the University of New Mexico.

Before taking the spokesman's job with Martinez, Darnell had served as a spokesman for the state Republican Party.

Enrique Knell, who has been serving as spokesman for the Children, Youth & Families Department, will  take Darnell's place as communications director. Longtime reporters remember Knell for his work with Heather Wilson when she was in Congress.

Darnell will be paid $95,000 a year. Knell will make $80,000.

The changes will take place Monday, Darnell said.

Flynn Drops Suit Against Corrections Dept.

It looks like Gov. Susana Martinez won't have to give a deposition in a wrongful termination suit after all.

Larry Flynn, the former probation and parole official who was fired after firing a gun on state prison grounds last year, quietly dropped his suit against the state late last month. His notice is below.

Flynn's lawyer, Sam Bregman, had subpoenaed the governor saying that she had intervened in firing Flynn, a classified state employee who was protected by state personnel laws.

Flynn was living on the prison grounds with his girlfriend, then Corrections Secretary Lupe Martinez, who resigned shortly after the shooting incident.

Flynn said he fired the gun to kill a couple of rattlesnakes who he'd found under a doghouse in his yard.

Update 12-7-12  9 a.m. : Bregman called saying Flynn recently started working another job and wanted to "move on." The hearing officer in the case had ruled that Gov. Martinez did not have to give a deposition.


Flynn Lettter

Weh vs. Udall?

Roll Call is reporting that former New Mexico Republican Party Chairman Allen Weh is considering a run against U,S. Sen. Tom Udall in 2014.

“As anybody should do when considering a move like this, you do your homework … and gather enough information to make a sound decision,” Weh said.

Weh, 70, ran for governor in 2010 losing a surprisingly bitter primary race to Susana Martinez, who went on to win the general election.

Weh is a retired Marine colonel who owns an Albuquerque aviation company.

Roll Call points out that, despite Martinez's 2010 victory, Republicans haven't fared so well here in statewide races. Obama won the state this year by 10 percentage points, while Martin Heinrich won his Senate race over Heather Wilson by six.

But just in case, maybe Udall should brush up on his cooking skills.

R.I.P. Robert Pineda

I had to write an obituary last night for an acquaintance I sincerely liked.

I met Bob Pineda at the old Club International gym about 20 years ago. I'd always run into him, former County Commissioner Froggy Fernandez and others there in the sauna. Bob always made me laugh, dishing dirt on politics, talking about his latest theater project he was involved with and whatnot.

Robert Pineda

I didn't see him as often after Club International closed. But when I ran into him, he was always full of cheer and gossip and usually involved in some creative endeavor.

Like I told his daughter last night, he was the least boring certified public accountant I ever met. I'm going to miss.

Here's that obit:

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Dec. 4, 2012


Roberto Enrique Piñeda was a playwright, a poet, a politician, an actor and a certified public accountant.

He died Saturday from respiratory problems after a lengthy illness. He was 69.

“He was the cool grandpa, the cool uncle, the cool friend,” his daughter, Suzette Lucero, said Monday. “He was such a free spirit. … He was an original. He broke the mold.”

His brother, Arturo Piñeda, said Monday, “He was the oldest in the family. We lost our top man.”

Roberto Piñeda was born to Frank and Alice LaRibbas Piñeda in Santa Fe in 1943. He earned a business degree in 1976 from the College of Santa Fe and became an accountant.

In 1978, he was hired as city manager for Santa Fe. He was fired following a dispute with City Council members and his refusal to resign. But some city employees apparently disagreed strongly with that action. A September 1979 editorial in The New Mexican said, “in a remarkable display of courage under fire, several city staff members refuted council members’ charges that [Piñeda] was not a good administrator and was not accessible. In the end, the council’s actions and motivations came under more question than Piñeda’s ability to do the job.”

That wasn’t his last top government job. He also worked as Santa Fe County manager, city manager of Las Vegas, N.M., and finance director for the city of Taos.

He made at least a couple of stabs at electoral politics. In 1988, Piñeda was a candidate in the Democratic primary for a Santa Fe County Commission seat. In 2004, he ran for Santa Fe County treasurer but fell short in the primary.

But accounting and government wasn’t his entire life. In the 1990s, Piñeda became involved with local theater. He acted in productions such as the Northern New Mexico Community Theatre’s 1996 production of The Madwoman of Chaillot and Teatro Hispano de Santa Fe’s production of El Pozito that same year.

Piñeda also wrote a play called El Happy Hour, which was produced by Teatro Hispano de Santa Fe in 1997.

“El Happy Hour is set in a Northern New Mexico bar and it’s a day of the week when people congregate,” Piñeda told The New Mexican before the play opened. “It’s a comedy of sorts with a very honest portrayal of subjects such as alcoholism, racism, intercultural marriages, domestic violence and sexual abuse.”

He later became a member of the Screen Actors Guild and appeared in speaking roles in three movies shot in New Mexico. In 2000, he played a doctor in All the Pretty Horses. Later he portrayed Saint Paul in Tortilla Heaven and a railroad brakeman in The Flock.

Piñeda is survived by his daughter and two sons, Joaquin Pineda and Robert J. Piñeda, six grandsons, his brother Arturo and his sister Dolores Chavez.

A visitation is scheduled for 6 p.m. Friday, Dec. 7, followed by a rosary at 7 p.m. at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, 417 Agua Fría St. A funeral Mass is planned for 10 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 8, at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church.

Memorial contributions may be made in his name to the Carmelite Monastery, 50 Mount Carmel, Santa Fe, NM 87501.

Roundhouse Roundup: PAC Disclosure Battle Ahead

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Dec. 2, 2012

After the hard-fought, grueling and expensive ordeal that was the 2012 election campaign in New Mexico, one issue the state Legislature is bound to tackle next year is possible changes in the election laws.

Sen. Wirth

“We’re going to have 112 experts on election laws in here, because we’ve all been through it,” Sen. Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, said at an interim committee meeting last week. (In case someone didn’t get the reference, there are 112 members of the Legislature.)

Once again, Wirth will be sponsoring a bill that would require independent-expenditure groups, including PACs, super-PACs — and I suppose bat PACs, spider PACs and wonder PACs — to disclose their contributors.

Wirth has carried the bill during the previous two sessions. Both times, he has been successful in the Senate, getting bipartisan support. (This year it passed the Senate 40-0.) However, both years the bill died in the House.

As Wirth has explained before, the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United decision determined that capping the amount of money people can spend on ads favoring one candidate or bashing another is an unconstitutional assault on freedom of speech. But the high court still allows governments to require disclosure of who’s spending money on the ads.

It’s true that independent expenditure groups spent millions of dollars in the state during the last campaign — in some cases advertising on statewide TV to try to influence the outcome in local legislative battles.

But lack of disclosure wasn’t a problem with the political action committees this year. And knowing that their names would be disclosed — available for the world to see right on the Secretary of State’s campaign finance website — apparently didn’t stop people from writing big checks to the PACs.

The major political action committees spending money in the races governed by state election law disclosed all of their donors. Whether or not you liked the heavy-handed ads and alarming mailers that bombarded your brain cells and mailboxes during the closing days of the recent campaign, at least we know who was paying for them.

But both Wirth and Viki Harrison, executive director of Common Cause, who is helping draft the bill, said there’s a real question whether those PACs actually had to disclose under current state law. “I’ve talked to lawyers, and there’s good arguments on both sides,” Harrison said.

His bill would clear up any confusion in the law about having to disclose, Wirth said.

Wirth said he fears there will be a serious effort next year to do away with the campaign contribution limits for individual candidates that went into effect this year. Legislators already are grumbling about having to compete with groups that can spend unlimited amounts against them.

He said his bill will draw a clear line between campaigns and independent expenditure groups.

Rove

Coordinated efforts: One strict rule about independent expenditure groups is that they can’t coordinate with any candidate — at least under federal law. Spend all the money you want saying the candidate you like is a saint and his opponent is a loathsome danger to the very fabric of civilization itself. But you can’t work with any candidate’s campaign to craft your message.

Many casual observers of our political process are skeptical about this. But there was one instance in the last month of the campaign that showed a complete lack of coordination.

Crossroads GPS, that Republican-friendly PAC associated with former George W. Bush political director Karl Rove, sent out a mailer blasting Democratic Senate candidate Martin Heinrich for supporting “Amnesty legislation that would give illegal immigrants a free ride … while New Mexico families are stuck footing the bill.”

Footnotes on the mailer made it clear that this “path to citizenship for illegal aliens” was the DREAM Act, which would give the children of illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship via military service or enrollment in college.

The only trouble is that this was mailed right about the same time that Republican Heather Wilson, who Crossroads GPS supported for U.S. Senate, said in a televised debate that she, too, would have voted for the DREAM Act.

Oops.

Susana on Greta

In case you missed it, here's a link to Gov. Susana Martinez's interview with Greta Van Susteren, which aired earlier tonight. (I can't get the silly thing to embed on this site.)

One early revelation in the interview -- our governor is a cat lady!

Included is footage that didn't make it onto the broadcast.