At Week's End; 515; Loyal Opposition

You heard Bruce King stated the state this week. Now hear the loyal opposition, the Republicans. Are they really different or more of the same? Next on it weeks in. For more than a half century, Republicans have been a minority party in New Mexico, winning the governorship only intermittently, usually facing a dominant Democratic majority in both houses of the legislature.

Yet New Mexico remains very much a two-party state. And this week we get the Republican perspective on our present and our future. But first, this historical background piece by Esther Reyes and Karen Newme. There is no typical Republican, just as there is no typical Democrat. And traditionally, the Republicans have appealed, and this has been true since the 30s to what you might loosely call the business community, members of the Chamber of Commerce, the members of the Rotary Club, and it was in the period of the New Deal that the Democrats defined themselves as the party of the working class, the party of the poor, the party of the disadvantaged and the party that intended to use government to make a better life for those people. The New Deal was a series of programs adopted by President Franklin Roosevelt and a democratically controlled Congress in the 1930s. And the immediate purpose was to bring the country out of the Depression and to institute certain reforms to prevent another depression of that magnitude happening again.

So there was a big shift whereby the majority party, more or less in New Mexico, came to be the Democratic Party, rather than the Republican Party, which had dominated the Mexico politics from statehood on 1912, and before when New Mexico was a territory. So on the local level also, in places like town, so Las Cruces and the Democratic Party made considerable gains because they helped spend federal funds, your mark, for the state. Of course, my husband recognized the Democrat for makeup of New Mexico. The southern part is, of course, they call that little Texas, or used to, and it's made

up, and it has a smaller proportion of Hispanic-American citizens, and it has most of the commercial agriculture that's in the southern part of the state, and large-scale cattle raising, and that part of the population tends to be traditionally more Republican. And the northern part of the state is heavily Democratic, which was a higher proportion of Hispanic-Americans who are more dependent on federal, all kinds of federal payments. The Democratic Party is more heavily entrenched, but there is, in fact, a broad consensus on which people from both sides of the aisle can meet, and on which the disagreements are not that wide. The disagreements are more about spending that money and how much for what particular projects are out of them, whether or not the money should be spent, whether it's education,

or transportation, economic development, even social welfare, they're not too far apart on the issue. So it gets down to partly personalities, and the apportionment of money and power. That's what it's about, rather than about issues. The administration before King was a Republican administration, and it was not that significantly different in terms of policies or outlook than the King administration. So it may not make that big a difference. Joining me now are three Distinguished New Mexico Republicans who no doubt have their own version of the history you just saw. Frank Bond is a former GOP representative from Santa Fe and Republican candidate for governor in 1990. Senator Billy McKibbin is New Mexico Senate Whip and a three-term state senator from Lee

and Roosevelt counties. And David Cargo was governor of New Mexico in 1966 to 1970 and long-active in GOP politics both nationally and in this state. Welcome, gentlemen. Frank, does it make a difference that Bruce King was sitting there standing there on Tuesday? And you weren't standing there? I guess to be it, but yeah, I think it does, because he and I had some fundamental differences that were espoused in the campaign, and I assume I would have followed what I had talked about in the campaign for that reason, there really were some differences. And I look at what I saw in red with respect to what he said about the employee salaries and teachers and a large propensity to shift towards the social programs. I guess that doesn't surprise me so much, because Governor King did speak about that a great deal.

But what did surprise me was that after we had some real differences on pay raises and those kinds of things, and yet I told people that I would commit myself to doing the best I could for teachers, he in fact committed to what they wanted and then does not turn me back on them, I guess I would an educator at the state, I would be terribly disappointed. Because as you look at the broader policies of the state, in terms of taxing policy and where we're going to go, and in terms of spending policy and where we are versus where we're going to go, but more especially what our dedication to education and the like in some policies for the business community, I think you would have seen a very different speech for me on Tuesday. Well, I know that politics is an iffy business, and this last year you would have had to have dealt with a predominantly democratic legislature, you would have had some of the same fiscal problems that Bruce King faces, same constraints. Can you tell us what one or two key things might have been different over these last twelve months, not just as speech on Tuesday, but what might you have done differently as a Republican governor?

Well, I would have done a year ago what he did on Tuesday and said about the taxes. But to follow up on that, I would have put together a group of people that would have significantly developed the tax policy, which would have changed it for the purposes of the business client. I think he just got it mixed up. I mean, he should have done that last year when, in fact, they did raise taxes. This year he found himself in the constraints and the problem is, is that when you do it that way, and you don't develop a tax policy, which could guide to the legislature if they were to adopt it, you're going to finally find yourself every year coming against the constraints of the budget like we have, and then having asking a guy like Billy McKibbin and his colleagues to ratchet up the tax at here or there to just meet those very immediate needs, and without the development of any long-range policies, you're never going to get ourselves out of that position. And that would have been my first priority in terms of a general policy outside of the things of education and the other important issues.

Senator McKibbin, Frank's on the sidelines for better or for worse here, you're in the trenches. You've got to go back and deal with this governor. There's some in Santa Fe who say that this small Republican minority in both the House and the Senate is more of a silent partner to the governor than a really dynamic opposition. How would you answer that? Are you fellows and I guess there's some women there too, really in opposition to this governor? Well not on and off a lot of the issues, I'm completely encouraged as a matter of fact I think for the first time since I served there for 12 years, the liberals were beginning to wake up and smell the coffee. We have a problem. We have a financial problem that's not going to be solved by trying to spend ourselves out of it and go back to a million and a half people who are about 47th in per capita income and ask them to make up the difference in all that mineral wealth that we lost. That's what we've been doing. This message that he sent in his state of the state should have been said about six years ago when we started losing our mineral wealth and income off all the gas.

We've taken a real hit down in the southeast quadrant in New Mexico. We've seen these things and the governor and others up here just simply have not recognized what the real problems are and how deep they are. They've swept out all the corners and and and and soft up all the little pockets of money around and tried to maintain that that program of theirs that if we'll just keep spending and keep spending and raising salaries and the part I guess it disturbed me the most is that there seems to be a mindset that somehow the government sector is superior to the regular people out there that they're entitled to raises annually. It doesn't matter who has to pay for those and pick up the tab. That's the part that aggravates me the most that somehow genetically maybe they're superior and these other folks should just live on less so that the selected few can continue to have more. They don't know about genetics but they do vote we know that absolutely but the the ball needs to be taken back away from government zone of self running machine. The people I think have just about had enough I'm encouraged by that too they're going

to take it back away from them and return it to the private sector where it belongs. Government is is is speeding itself and gorging itself into hell with the rest of the folks. Well you know but it's all well and good to talk about that philosophically but there are an awful lot of people out there voting for the other side here. You've got a real small minority in both the House and the Senate. You've got a Democratic governor that was elected pretty decisively over a good strong attractive Republican candidate here. I wonder if the if the people of New Mexico are really reflecting or or I think they were somewhat disappointed and I call them just exactly like I say them whether Democrat or Republican. I want to give Bruce King credit for saying we're not going to have any salary increases and we're going to tighten our belt we're going to do what's necessary. I'm going to also give Gary Cruthers credit for not having enough contrast between the two parties. The first thing we were presented was a massive tax increase and I was in a state of shock personally as well. You're old Republican guy. Absolutely because I've been telling people for years you give us a good conservative Republican and we're not going to do things that's going to make business get more

profitable. We're going to do things that allows business to harm more people and encourage commerce and industry. If we do that we've got a problem that apparently hasn't been identified yet by some people. Dave cargo is there less here than meets the eye and the difference between these two parties. I mean I hear these gentlemen talking here but in Santa Fe often you get the impression that when it comes down to the final decision legislation or whatever that these parties are more in agreement than not and that some of these differences are quite marginal. What's your view? I think that's true because you see the Democratic Party has been all encompassing and they take in everything from the far right to the far left and it's interesting we're talking about a minority in the legislature. When I went to the legislature we had four Republicans in the Senate and there were nine of us in the House and I came out of that four years later and became governor but you've also got to remember that since 1928 with Dick Dillon you've had really two Republicans elected by Democrats.

Ed Meacham and myself and then he had Gary Carothers who was elected by a Democrat and that was Tony Anaya, one Democrat I think elected him but I think that yes I think that's the fact of the matter and but I'll tell you something else that I think was very interesting and that is that in Billy just referred to this, the spending during the Carothers years percentage wise the increase in taxes was more significant than it has been under Bruce King. Bruce King on a lot of things is quite conservative but the thing we have failed to do is address probably one of the worst tax systems in the whole country. It is absolutely horrible because what it does is two things. We have this over-reliance of course on the grocery seat stacks. What it does, it just absolutely cripples a business community and it absolutely devastates working folks and unfortunately I don't think there are worse to both worlds.

It's absolutely the worst and if the Republicans, if my party would be eclectic they would not just say it's bad for the business community, it also hurts working folks. Folks who are out here working for very low wages. Well I want to ask these two gentlemen about that because again it's fairly easy to talk about fiscal responsibility but this state is facing and you know this Frank, you articulate a business in your campaign, unprecedented social problems. We've got more homeless people than we've ever had before, we've got teen pregnancies, we've got problems in the schools. We've got crises that are crying out for some kind of concerted public action and I think there are a lot of people asking where is that going to come from, who has a plan and a vision for the future, they didn't get very much out of Bruce King's speech on Tuesday nor out of this first year of this democratic governorship, can they find those answers in the Republican Party in clear, simple terms in which they can put their confidence?

I think Roger it sort of depends on how this election goes but given the fact that we don't have any really a statewide election coming up it may not be as clearly put as we'd like until we come to the next gubernatorial election but it's clear to me that when you face a crisis like that you've got to have the administration that's in and maybe the minority leadership and Billy can speak to that for himself of the legislature beginning to set some priorities on the basis of that crisis and certain areas but while you deal with these crises that you described, if you don't at the on the same hand on the other hand excuse me, deal with education so that as I recall Senator Hobson from Toularosa and the Otero County spoke after the legislature said he may have gotten his priorities left a little wrong because he didn't support education enough to get enough people educated and then you keep people off welfare that we've got hand in hand we've still got to dedicate the vast majority of our resources to education and you can talk about you know the crisis

but as Senator McKibman described with the hit the oil and gas community has taken and the business community generally if you don't have some general support for the business community to provide employment we'll never solve that and you know one of the things that struck me was I was thinking about coming on the show today is that the economy will come up and obviously President Bush has taken a lot of it's on domestic policy but when you start looking at responsibility and I would take it had I've been the governor of this state is that if you start looking at it you say well the president has got to have a tax policy he's got to have a fiscal policy that creates a good business climate that we're surviving fully 50% of that responsibility has got to be the 50 governors of the states. That's where the action is. And people focus on the national level but we've got to focus here locally and you've got to listen to some guys like Billy McKibman talk you might not like the message that Billy gives because it's not very soothing and I think probably that was my

problem in the campaign people weren't very comfortable with some of the things I said and in concept. But you heard of that discomfort gentleman let's face it is a widespread and deep-seated public perception that the Republican Party represents the interests of the few it's the Republican Party that represents the rich and the powerful the Democrats are able to portray themselves pretty persuasively as the party of the downtrodden the forgotten the unfortunate in this country there are more of those than there are of the rich in the powerful etc you've got a democratic majority in this state which is again pretty strong senator McKibbon how do you overcome that I tell you how you overcome it by some common sense and playing talk to the common people who live in New Mexico and you don't have to turn up the rhetoric to do that let me give you just a brief background New Mexico is the fifth largest state union the good lord endowed us with more natural resources and virtually any other state that you can name he give us a magnificent pristine climate and beauty beyond the description in certain places for tourism and every conceivable activity that we can have and what have we done with it for the last four decades someone his

kept New Mexico pregnant and barefoot it I like to say and it's a time that we we change all that and you know why we have so many dropouts that we have so many suit against well it may be it kind of sound like we have dropouts out of the schools big problem we have all these social issues you spoke of you know how we're going to solve those we're never going to solve them I don't care if you took the general fund and all the permanent funds and dumped it in the education that's not going to solve that you're going to solve it when you get enough job that people can go and work and be productive and come home with the dignity of providing for themselves and not have the government hand them something and they continue to do that because there's not a job if you don't have job you're never going to solve the problems in New Mexico and we have a business climate here that's rotten and I'll be the first to admit it we have a tax structure you couldn't you couldn't compute your tax liability if you're going into business for the next two years to save your soul it's it's it's health or culture it goes up and up and up and up every time a legislature meets we have regulations and licensing that's unthinkable

just think about an individual going into business and trying to set it up to create some jobs and some industry the first thing you run into is the government the biggest enemy New Mexico has is its own government in the United States the same way the environmental things that have gotten out of hand the rules the regulations the unbelievable weight of the bureaucracy in the form let me tell you something that's what wrong and when we solve that with the social issues will take care of themselves people won't jobs and they want to pay care and they want the dignity of making themselves a living I think first of all we're faced with a kind of a bifurcated problem the first is that we have to believe as as Republicans we have to believe in eclectic in eclectic approaches to politics we've taken the film we saw and it says well you know traditionally the side has been a concern yes and they were overwhelmingly democratic when I ran for office there was thirty to one democratic these the part of the state that remained Republican was

an northern counties they were overwhelmingly Republican and what we as Republicans have not done is to pick up the votes of Hispanics and picked up the votes of Indians and other minorities and you see now when I was running I ran against Fabian Charles and got a majority of the Hispanic vote I got 90% of the Navajo vote almost 80% of the Pueblo vote we've got to we've got to be in power before we can do anything and to do that we have to engage in in very eclectic politics that appeals to people on a basis that they understand and that doesn't mean representing only the rich but the other part the corollary to this is that we talk about all the government provides and they provide welfare they provide this and that and the other they also provide jobs and if you take from from nineteen fifty on well actually go back a little further than that the percentage

of government employment has escalated and exacerbated the problem escalated and exacerbated it and we rank second in the nation when it comes to the return of federal jobs and money backed us we never want to go to revenue sharing because we get more in our share but as long as we're locked into that kind of thing we're not going to develop the kind of industries and the kind of businesses that we have to have before before you can get into that you've got to do something about this business of government employment and I'm not seeing all government employment is bad but in New Mexico it's endemic and I think it's had a tendency to swallow us up but you know we we've got we're stuck with that it seems to me you there's not a whole lot you can't repeal this government overnight in Santa Fe it's a it's a big reality there it seems to me you're up against an old fashion politics here Bruce King is very good at shaking hands he knows everybody's

first name down the Rio Grande Valley etc it doesn't the Republican party have to be a party of new ideas here and and I take it you're talking about that Senator McKibbin but you you guys have got a real selling job here that's got to be done which is which is not being done very effectively you can't reheat the same old part of sleep and attracting you we're going to have to do it different I have some ideas that I think are different you're going to have to have some people who are committed to make some changes that want to do something and not be something and go in there and make the hard decisions and if they if we do get a governor I hope it's one that would be committed that I'll be a one-term governor if I can turn the direction of this state away I think that is three years of Bruce King are are you guys going to come forward here with an alternative program I mean that Tuesday speech wouldn't be too hard to to pose an alternative to there wasn't a whole lot there well I think I think the most disturbing part is it is that it doesn't point to anything in the future and people said well Bruce King's it's comfortable as an old shoe and I said yeah that's the problem with an old

shoes you don't go very far and you don't go to get there very fast with that and yet and yet Bruce as Dave Carter said is a person who people very comfortable with it gets out there and is always in small groups very comfortable but and so as an individual he's still going to be very difficult to be if that's who we're looking at in three more years to run against nevertheless I think it is incumbent upon the Republican Party to show some leadership by virtue of the ideas and I think that the really critical election in 1992 will be in the legislature to see if we can see if we can have some friends join Billy McKibbin and the other Republican and I think we're going to do well I think we're going to surprise a lot of people and I think we're going to do well in the selection coming up and if we focus on the legislature and that's where we as a party need to focus you know if you're only interested political longevity the best way to do that is to do virtually nothing and if you don't stir the pot too much you won't stir up too many people I think with Tony and I and Bruce King you see the two

absolute extremes Bruce is smart enough not to do a whole lot they say as a matter of fact Tony and cheek if he's doing nothing better now than he ever did it before and Tony was one of those who was charging with all kinds of ideas not all of them are bad either but they were just maybe coming on so strong people couldn't digest they were afraid of oh absolutely we saw what happened Bruce King comes back this is his third time because he doesn't try to make that great big move but the times have changed and we're gonna have to come to his credit you know demonstrate that kind of political courage to throw up some trial balloons a lot of them got shot down let me ask you very quick place shouldn't the Republican Party gentlemen be also the conscience of this state government we've not only got a problem of policy we've got a problem of ethics and honesty and conflict of interest in this in this government what about that they well we have got to understand that that the demographics of this state are changing rapidly we're one of the most highly urbanized states in the union and not only that you got a lot of people who are very much

interested in ethics they're very much interested in in reasonable environmental causes they're very much interested in a lot of things but they're interested in urban problems for instance you've never here a discussion of a mass transit system and I noticed the other day that we ran the average person in Albuquerque spends 228 dollars in gasoline parked at parking lights per year now you see we haven't picked up an environmental impact and you got to pick out issues that you can become very dramatic about things that you can appeal to people on and you've got to remember what's happening to our changing electorate you know and the other thing that that I think we and I don't want to dwell on this too long but do you realize that in another three or four years we're going to be a state where the minorities are the majority we cannot continue to talk in a vacuum where we're not talking to these people they're very conservative people just a few seconds but Roger

let's get back to the ethics thing a minute I mean that that it's not just an issue that that that taken care of in some way might give some people some real confidence about some predictability and reliability of the kinds of people in certain public office I don't know that ethics or ethics boards or commissions in and of themselves chains things but I think rather than the kind of discussion we've seen up there in Santa Fe so far we ought to be looking at some of these laws and is Dave and I were talking about earlier Oregon and I just spoke with the last week with the chairman of the ethics commission and state of Nevada we're going to have to wrap this we'll come back that that that that is something I think we really need to focus on and reflect the better confidence thank you very much Frank Bond thank you Senator Billy McKibbin and thank you former Governor David cargo and thank you for joining us for it weeks in I'm Roger Morris for a video cassette copy of this program

send $2995 plus three dollars for shipping and handling two at week send K NME TV 1130 University Boulevard Northeast Albuquerque New Mexico 8 7 1 0 2 or call 1 800 3 2 8 5 6 6 3 Visa and Mastercard are accepted please indicate the date that program aired