2012 Election Special, Part 1

We'll be back on this channel in an hour from now with an update on the Mexico Races and Ballad Issues, but we're not stopping. We have a live broadcast on K&MD, broadcast channel nine. We'll see you then. Welcome to Election Night 2012 here on the Mexico PBS, polling places across the state are now closed. In just a few minutes, we expect to see results from early in absentee votes to begin to come in. Those are very significant numbers because they're likely to amount to roughly half the vote total in most races.

We've assembled a group of experts we're quite excited about. You'll see a lot of people coming and going through the night here at our table to get us started this evening. Lieutenant Governor John Sanchez, welcome Lieutenant Governor. Good to see you. Attorney and a regular for us on the Mexico and Focus lower Sanchez. Political-sized colleges, author and commentator and a lot more. Martha Burke is back with us and another New Mexico and Focus regular former New Mexico House Republican whip Dan Foley. Lieutenant Governor, let's start with you. One of the narratives we're watching tonight is the balance of power specifically in the New Mexico House. It's going to require some upsets. What do you think things stand as we are just a little bit after polls closing now about the effort for that regard, the chances, some of the early indicators you might be seeing as well? Yeah, I think here in Bernalio County, I think you're going to see some pickups. There's a new seat that's been brought in here. And I think we're going to do extremely well. One of the races I think we need to be looking for is up in San Juan County, Rey Bigger's little seat. Sharon Kloster-Schillich has run a great campaign, obviously Representative Bigger has some problems and we may have the First Native American Republican in the New Mexico State House, which

would be great for New Mexico, not just our party. Valencia County seems to be a hotbed and a county that I've spent a lot of time with the campaigning is down in Doniana County. We have Andy Nunes' old seat and we're looking for Mike Teyes to pick that up. So I think it's going to be a long night that's going to be some tight races. At the end of the day, Jean, I think though that the Republicans are going to have a very good night and there's a really good chance that we become a majority in the House of Representatives. Thank you for coming with you because I want to take advantage of your time being here. When I see a couple more questions, I'm glad you mentioned campaigning. You are the one that was out there stumping a bunch for this administration, but in every corner of this state, giving you a sense of what you felt in these last couple of weeks when the rallies and the things that you were going to, my understanding is how the Wilson in fact had a pretty big rally just this past Sunday and it will be on what she had previously. What was your sense on the ground? There is an absolute increase in the level of enthusiasm among Republicans and conservative Democrats and independents who really look to see the frustration that's happening in Santa Fe.

I mean, you have legislators who are blocking not only the governor's priorities, but I think really the will of New Mexico. If you look at polling, whether it be the issue of driver's license, it's very legal. Immigrants reforming our tax code, clearly reforming education, there's frustration. And I think you're seeing people who are supporting those legislators who are willing not just to rubber stamp. It's not that it's to stand up to fundamentally changing and reforming our state. And I think that's the level of excitement you're seeing both at the legislative level at Heather Wilson's rally. I was there the other night. And throughout all of New Mexico, and so we hope to translate and carry that over to victory tonight. Laura Sanchez, good to see you as always. Democrats surely have another idea when it comes to keeping control of the House. What's your sense of the chances here in some of these really tough races? We've been focusing on about a half dozen, like someone focusing on that. And there are some that are definitely close, but from what I'm seeing, I think the ones that are close, they may very well switch to Republican hands, but there's others that may very well switch to Democrat hands. So I think on balance, we're still talking about having a majority Democrats. I think it's going to be tight, but I think it's still going to end up being a majority

of Democrats in the House. Any predictions on the amount of losses holds keeps you in a state? You know, it's hard to say right now. It's a plus or minus, depending on how things turn out right now. I'm just going to try. See if I get to the point. I think I'm watching Valencia County in particular. I think Valencia County is going to be really important. And those two seats down there in the House are going to go ahead and take one of those seats in also the Senate overlaid. Right. I think those are, that's a battleground area for Democrats and Republicans. I mean, generally, everybody's sort of looking at that. It's really highly contested Senate race to how seats that are just neck and neck. And I think people are really coming out and hitting, I think anecdotally I heard about a lot of door knocking today, a lot of phone calls being made. And so there's a lot of energy in those areas on both sides. So I think we'll, we'll look at those closely, those returns as we get back from Valencia County. They ain't going to bounce back to the subject, Lieutenant Governor brought up. If, in fact, the House does fall for the Republican side, as a former Republican whip, obviously it would be a little bit different from the majority. But what would be the first order of business if, in fact, that circumstance happened for folks?

Well, I think the first thing would be everybody getting together and pinching themselves and making sure that it really happened. Right. Second would be figuring out who the speaker of the House is going to be. You got to remember in the House, the speakers, the king. And so you've got to elect somebody that not only will carry out the will of the majority, but isn't going to embarrass the majority. You know, we've had some speakers over the years that, as time went on, they got kind of power-hungry. They say things like, the rules don't matter. We do it my way. We do. And I think that helped lead to Republicans picking up seats over the years. So I think it's going to be extremely important to pick that person that can lead the majority should be the Republicans. I think that, you know, obviously the choice is always usually the leader stepping up. I wouldn't be surprised to see someone like Don Trip assume that position as Speaker of the House and see Tom Taylor stay right where he is as a majority leader. I think that that would be a good, comfortable mix. You know, I'll tell you, I predict that the shocker for the night, in the Senate, there will be two upsets tonight. I believe Tim Jennings will lose tonight. And I believe Mary Jane Garcia is going to lose tonight. Mary Jane Garcia, polling data that I've been seeing over the last few days has shown the presidential race out of control for Obama.

Steve Pierce isn't winning in that district. Heather Wilson isn't winning in that district, but the Republican candidate for the State Senate is winning in that district. I think those are going to be the two shocks. I think at the end of the day, the House, I think, has a real good chance of becoming a Republican majority by one or two seats. Interesting. Martha, question for you more specifically about women and locally for women. We'll get to some national stuff here in a little bit in a little bit. You had served under the Richardson administration for his efforts to increase more women in elective office and other things here in New Mexico. What's your sense of how things have gone since that time and how women might be impactful here on voting? Well, women are the majority of voters in this state and nationally. They're the majority of registered voters and those that actually show up at the polls. We've seen a lot of movement in what women care about because of all the talk about restricting choice, even more, and now contraception. So that has moved way up the list in terms of women's concerns, gallops out when the new poll today, top of the list, abortion.

Jean, that hasn't happened in almost 20 years. That's shocking. It is. It is. Above the economy, above jobs. Here in the state, I think, of course, the highest profile race with a female is Heather Wilson. And despite turnout at recent rallies, she's been running behind about eight points, the two or three issues that women care most about. She doesn't have a good record on. That's choice, that's contraception, that's health care, how she wants to overturn Obamacare and women are not in favor of that in this state or nationally. So I think that's going to go against her. And she's heavily identified with the military industrial complex. Jean, people are sick of the wars. And they're sick of the money that's being spent on the wars. And I think that's going to go pretty hard on Heather. Interesting. Lieutenant Governor, I see you shaking your hair a little bit. I'll get to you in a quick second. I'm curious if these national issues you talk about in the polling things.

Are you feeling confident these things will trickle down to a state level and be that steady as okay? Absolutely. And where we are and pay equity in this state is somewhere around thirty-fifth. So women are not making the money in this state that they need to be making and they know it. Our poverty rate is very high, 25% of our folks are on Medicaid. And that's mostly women and kids. And so I think that women know that we need to change national priorities, get money out of this military spending that we've been doing and put some money into public services that women are the biggest users of. The other thing is the minimum wage. Women are the biggest group making the minimum wage. And I learned today, which I had not seen the breakdown on that, Hispanic women are more in the minimum wage than any other group of women. Now where does that put us in this state? A huge, Hispanic female vote.

We've got to hold you there to say I'm going over a second, go to the law. These things in the voting booth that Martha's talking about, how does one manifest these kind of things into votes? Sometimes a male candidate could be really great on certain issues for women and a woman candidate opponent, maybe not so great and then vice versa. Is it that direct aligned by gender? Is that where the trend is going these days? Well, I think there can be a direct line that way. And I think that we've seen a lot of people try to push on those issues and try to get a lot more specifically, obviously, Democrats trying to get a lot more women to the polls. I think that anecdotally we've heard that there's been a lot of lines today, a lot of issues of the polls. And I think that often Democrats and working poor who go to the polls have a lot of the things going on. So I do think that we had a strong early turnout, we had strong absentee ballot turnout. And then typically, on election day, a lot more Democrats come out, but these other factors, how long it takes to actually cast your vote, can't have an impact on whether people stick around and actually cast a vote or not.

But I do think it will have an effect. I think not being able to vote straight party line could also have an impact on some of those down ballot races on those issues. I think it's interesting with the stuff that Martha says that I think she may be correct on some of it nationally. I'm not sure she's correct on it any more than a minute ago. I would tell you that more women in New Mexico, I think, align themselves with the Catholic Church. I think more women in New Mexico align themselves with these issues, especially Hispanic women. You'll find a larger majority of them are practicing Catholics and find that issue, find those issues to be important to them. I think more importantly, what's going to transcend, I think nationally, is the surge that Mitt Romney's had amongst women voters in the last two weeks. It's off the charts. It's off the charts. It's a surge that he's had amongst women voters, maybe not with Martha, but according to every polling place out there, he's had these, he's had these, he's had this surge. And we're talking about a state that has, you know, if we're going to capture as Republicans the House, it's going to be because of women like Monica Youngblood and Sharon Clotchichilich that I would hope people that are advocating for women's rights and women's issues would

be embracing those women that are going to be coming in and taking over the leadership. I'm going to hold you there. They're going to throw to the guys across the way. We've got a special couple of people with us, Rob Nikoleski and Matthew Reichbach over at our election table. Well, I'm Rob Nikoleski, along with my compatriot on the left, Matt Reichbach, and we're basically blogging about the elections that is coming up, and now that we've got a 7pm polling deadline that has already come and passed, we're going to see what happens, and we're, I'm expecting, I don't know about you, Matt, but I'm expecting a lot of very close races. If I could say one, make one safe prediction, I think we're going to have maybe two, three, four state races that will probably go to automatic recounts in which you get less than one half, and one percent of the vote, it goes to automatic recounts. I've got a feeling we're going to have a long night. Yeah, the Secretary of State's office said 10, I think, that I saw them tweet earlier today. And also, but on the federal level, it's going to be all Obama and Heinrich, they already

called it for Obama on NBC as soon as the polls closed. You mean here in New Mexico? In New Mexico? In New Mexico? I'm going to say, okay, well, you've got a scoop if you add. Yeah, I would be very surprised to see if Romney can win in New Mexico. But I think maybe a more interesting thing, it's kind of a foregone conclusion that Obama will probably win here in New Mexico. But I think the more interesting thing is how many votes, out what a percentage of votes, Gary Johnson gets, since this is his home state, and I think that maybe there might have been a few people out there that thought, well, I don't think Romney is going to win. Like, I'll open to the idea of voting for Gary Johnson. Why not? Yeah, he needs 5% to get major party status. That's his big push over the past couple of weeks was, well, I know I'm not going to win, but if I get 5%, we get major party status, we get on the ballot, we get some extra money, some more attention. So that's what Gary Johnson is looking at. It's a thing on the federal level. That's pretty much maybe the only thing really to watch is if Gary Johnson gets to 5%. Right. And also, in the New Mexico congressional races, it's pretty much expected that Michelle Luhan Grisham wins in District 1, that Steve Pierce wins in District 2, and Ben Bray

Luhan wins in District 3. But, you know, Gene, it's up to the voters to make the decision, not us. There you go, Rob. We've got some early results coming in from states and it's District 15 for early in absentee and mail-in voting results. That's a very interesting little early bit there, Dan, your first thoughts hearing those numbers? That is a fairly strong Democrat seat. I think that, you know, the polling data will show you that the president and Heather Wilson, they weren't winning that seat either. I think the fact that it's that close with early in absentee voting shows that there's a surge in the state moving closer to the middle, closer to the center right.

You know, that's the seat that, if you look at the numbers, you'd expect us to lose by eight, nine points. Because of the performance. Because of the performance. For it to be close like that, after early in absentee voting, it'll be interesting to see, Laura's right, you know, and in presidential years, Republicans don't do well in New Mexico as Democrats do. In gubernatorial years, Republicans do better than Democrats do, historically. So, you know, I think you're seeing, even just with those early numbers, we are outperforming as Republicans what normally we do in these type of elections. Lieutenant Governor, you're sense of this with those numbers with Avisoto and Ms. Snyder? Well, I think Dan hit it right on the head, you know, it is, but to the bigger picture, I think that Tim Eikenberg did a pretty good job representing that as far as his constituents. I had an opportunity to serve with him. And so, you know, we'll see what the final results are at that point. My concern is, is that, you know, the amount of voter turnout and there's other contested seats, and I think Dan called on some of the other ones.

I think we're going to see that at the end of the night, we should probably pick up, you know, three to four seats in the New Mexico State Senate. I'm confident we're going to be able to do that. Sure. Same question, same race, Avisoto and Snyder. Again, it's early, but again, in early indicators here, because we rely so much on getting our direction from early voting now. Right, right. And the early vote, it looks like, you know, favorite Avisoto, I think, I still think that the day of voting will favor the Democrat, especially in that particular seat. Daniel, definitely outraged, Diane Snyder, and I think, you know, he picked up a recent endorsement also from a quality pack, the LGBT pack, which provided some extra surge momentum and potential votes and boots on the ground. So I think that helped quite a bit. So I would not be surprised if it's Daniel Avisoto. Mm-hmm. And he had a tough primary. You know, I mean, not primary, but he had a tough, you know, when they appointed him and they went through that process, he, he, whether it's some pretty good candidates that tried. Yeah. I mean, to the Democrat. To wait. That's more than anything. Getting it. Getting it. Getting it in that. Getting it in that central committee. Getting through the central committee of either parties is probably a lot harder to get

it through the actual primary. That's right, too. Yeah. Well, I want to stick with our race for a quick second. Do we have any sense of, in the region, so to speak, does that point to anything in the region? Do we have a sense of it? Well, you know, that's an interesting district, because I mean, Diane Snyder held it before. Obviously, I can bird came in. And I can bird wasn't in us. I mean, he's not your typical lefty Democrat. I mean, he, you know, part of the, he was on the Amacabord, you know, strong real estate ties in that area. So I think he was much more a centrist, you know, definitely not your left wing type. I think Daniel has had a long history of serving, you know, government, sort of being a lobbyist, working with the county clerks, working at the State Secretary of State's office, an attorney has worked on various commissions in the legal profession. So I think he brings different issues to that. So I don't necessarily think it, in and of itself, his candidacy means that it has shifted dramatically. I have seen some changes in that district. So it isn't quite as Republican as it had been before. But I'm not sure that we can call it a trend across the region just yet. Okay. That's where I was looking for there. I went through and the big sheets that I have here, I went through and we took the new precincts and fed them in and got the voting data from the new precinct.

So when I talk about how a Senate seat looks or a house seat, it's not based on the old stuff. It's taking the data. This seat itself, you know, when McCain ran, he got 41.6% of the vote, you know, pierced at 37.28. Now, Susanna Martinez got 52.3. And you know, the winner in that whole deal, which was, when I did these numbers and looked at this stuff over, 59.10 for Diana Doran. So you know, it might have helped to have had Diana Doran out there stumping for you also in that district as well, because she, you know, she pulled almost 60% of that vote. But how much of that was part of the issues, how much of it was the incumbent and the issues around that particular race? I'm not sure. I think it's a bit of an hour. No, no. I mean, that doesn't bring in, that's a pretty good number. It's still the pull 60% of a seat that, you know, that clearly when you look at everybody else in the race, it's below 45% performing is a pretty good deal. And so I mean, I don't think this, I don't think it's a shock to see Daniel Ibisoto win that race. Okay.

Interesting. You're thoughts on that very same thing. What's your, what's your thought? Is, is this enough to get a better sense of what you were saying earlier, feeling like there's some momentum, the trains chugging down the road, is this a good help sign for you? It could be. I think that, you know, again, it's, money has a lot to do with it. And you know, you look at some of the congressional races, obviously, there was a money advantage there. I think that's going to translate it to some of those Bernoulli County legislator seats that are very close. And again, having the resources in order to get your message out is always a challenge for any legislator. I mean, I think it's important to note also that without Governor Martinez and Lieutenant Governor Sanchez, I mean, the union's brought in over $2 million out of state dollars. I mean, had Governor Martinez and Lieutenant Governor Sanchez not stepped up and tried to raise the money that you guys raised, this would have been a shellacking. The fact that we even have seats in play is a testament to the work of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor and those folks that went out and brought in money. We've got results. House District 24, the old Conrad James seat. Let's see what we got. Here we go. Can you guys all see that?

We've got Conrad James at 49% and Elizabeth Thompson, the Democrat at 51%. Laura, let me start with you on that one with Elizabeth Thompson there at 51% obviously within two points is this early is not really going to be saying much. Hang it in there, though. Early. Right. Is that helpful for that? Well, it's hopeful. I mean, and I think there was a very strong push for her. I think this particular race started to pick up a lot more momentum towards the end. There was a lot of mailers back and forth from both sides. A lot more information. Exactly. And that's the early in absentee being affected by those mailers that you're talking about. Is that a good result with almost 50% of the vote in already? I think it's, well, I think it's definitely a good indication. I mean, again, if on the day of voting, if it favors Democrats, which it often does, then we could see. But that is also a district that's, I mean, it's, it's typically a good Republican district. Sure. But he gave up, he gave up, you know, we talked last week on the show Conrad James is a stalwart right now. He's the one that stepped up, which is very rare and said, go ahead and make my seat tougher so that we can make more seats competitive for Republicans around state.

That was great. That's right. Isn't that interesting? I know it's going to Matthew Reichbach. I was talking about that very race, Matthew. About this on the podcast that we run. And he was saying that's Conrad James is one of the rising stars in the Republican party. So if he does get taken out, as it looks like he has a little bit of a hill to climb here early in absentee, then it might be another rising star that needs to be found. Yeah. Well, you know, he, as Dan said, that it's a very competitive district. He got redistricted. And this is the very first time that Conrad James has even run for office because he ran unopposed when he took over for Janiss Arnold Jones in that district. So this is, this is really like his, his, his first, I can made him a voyage, so to speak, as a, as a legislator. And we've had a pretty good idea judging by the performance numbers. It would be about a 50-50 district and it's 51-49 in the early going, so it's holding true to form. It is a 50-50 district if it ends up performing a little bit higher for Democrats or Republicans. Maybe that'll show us how some of the other races are going to.

Yeah. And the other thing too that I think maybe we should talk about is the fact that this is a presidential race in a state that you expect President Obama to repeat. And I think that might be able to help Democrats a bit more than if it would be an off-year election. Yeah. And this is, of course, District 24 that we're talking about. It's a, it's in Albuquerque, Northeast Heights, and it has, again, like the district was traditionally a little bit more Republican, but as I said, it was redistricted to make more competitive for Democrats and maybe that might backfire on Republicans if they wanted to put more, more in play. They could lose this one for that. And you can see the performance numbers in some of these districts that are, you know, make much more competitive and we'll see what happens going to, going to tonight. But right now it's, it's, it's a pretty blue for the Democrats and then in some of the outlying areas, you can see that it's more red for the Republicans. I think that's what we would expect from just about any race in any, in any state that the urban areas would be more democratic and then the outer areas, the rural areas would be more, more red.

Yeah. So, Elizabeth Thompson against Conrad James, that'll be one we'll be watching all night long, Jean. I think the point that these guys were just making on this, I mean, you know, Democrats have to be excited about this seat again. You know, it's just really, it's just there sometimes in certain cycles. I wonder if, if, if Ms. Thompson would feel like she got the effort from the party and everybody else, the best effort possible here. Definitely. I think, well, I think for Democrats in general, anytime there's seats that we're, we're pulling ahead in the heights, I think that's, you know, we tend to celebrate that as, as a victory. But I mean, I think those, these are very optimistic numbers early on and I think waiting to see, you know, those early returns on the actual day of voting will be, hopefully, will, will trend towards Thompson. But I think she can be proud of the effort and the huge push from a lot of women's groups, the Democratic party and others that she helped, she brought a lot of people together to help. Interesting. Dan is, I mean, obviously, you know, people talk about a rising star on the Republican party and sometimes it takes a tough race to make one solidified as a star in the party. You survive a tough one.

That's when you, people really know you're for real. Oh, well, Conrad James is clearly a rising star on the Republican party. I think he's a rising star in New Mexico. I mean, you know, he's, he's done a great job in Santa Fe. He's been very articulate on his position. But he hasn't been confrontational in his position. You know, you don't see Conrad leading the fight in the media. You don't see him getting clashes with Democrats. You see him actually working well with both sides of the aisle. You know, it's interesting to see those returns, but I still think, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to lose all hope in Conrad when in that race. I do think these early returns are troublesome. I mean, you'd like to see them, especially on a 50-50 shot. Sure. You'd like to see it, you know, by tense of a point, not a couple of points that could be problematic. And like Laura said, when you start talking about the heights, that's, that's, that's usually been a pretty solid place for Republicans over the years. Here you go. Let's go to House District 15. That's an open seat. We've got some results coming in from again, absentee in early voting. Let's see if we got those numbers clicking up there. Look at that. Emily Kane at 51 percent, the Democrat and Chris Saudeau, the Republican at 49 percent. We've got, again, this is early in absentee.

So 50 percent of those votes are, or in the, in the bank as they, as they say. And we've got a new guest here. Thank you. Make it, Mr. Boytono. Senator, good to see you again. Good to see you too, James. Absolutely. What's your thought on that particular race right there, that open seat? What, what, what, what are you, what are you sensing there? Well, you know, my, it doesn't surprise me the results, Mike. Yes. I know there was a lot of money spent early on on negative campaigning. Mm-hmm. We were talking about Conrad James' seat a minute ago. Sure. I've got some, if you'd like. Absolutely. I've got some pieces. I was actually in a, in a house where they hadn't been home for a week, and they came home. More pieces, negative pieces, blasting Conrad James for this and that and the other. So early on, a lot of negative campaigning, but I think closer to Election Day, people are spending money on getting their message out, a lot of door to door, in Bernal Leo County door to door, of all the things any candidate can do. Right. When you go door to door, meet the voters, let them eyeball you, let them ask them, ask you questions, and they need to know who it is that's at their door.

Mm-hmm. That's been going on. I've walked with Conrad, I know he's working really hard. So my guess is the ours are going to do much better on Election Day than the early results are showing. Interesting. What would you attribute to the final piece to put that seat over the top for Mr. James? Is there one thing you could think of that's going to do it? Well, I would say his integrity, his efforts, door to door. I mean, I've watched him go door to door, and I don't know how much his opponent's going door to door. But, you know, if you look at robocalling, if you do, if you look at mailings, if you look at whatever a candidate can do, the most important thing, at least in the Heights, is to go door to door. And my guess, too, with the Arnold Jones campaign and the Heather Wilson campaign, I know they're there, counting on a lot of votes coming in from the Heights. Sure. There's been an intensive get out the vote effort in the last few days. And my guess is that's going to benefit Conrad. I think that's going to benefit Dianne Schneider, too, in that race against Ivy Sado.

It's interesting, you know, just opposing what you just mentioned about Conrad, what Laura just mentioned about, you know, his opponent in that seat. It's really going to be one of those seats to watch down to the very end. I can see it just going either way, falling into the way, for sure. But you're, again, your sense of this, I want you to go to 15 as well. I would tell you both of them. I think where they're coming in an early and absentee voting is better than where we thought they were going to be early and absentee voting in presidential years in New Mexico is heavier D than it is Republican. And so to be this close with early and absentee voting in these seats, we expect the D's to gain a bigger advantage and it's made up on election day by Republicans in these Heights precincts, places like that. There's a better G-O-T-V by Republicans in these conservative areas than there is by the D's. So to see, I mean, even though we're here talking about, oh my gosh, early and absentee voting to see where a pointer to away with early and absentee voting that we know leans heavy towards the Democrat, I think, you know, don't start popping the champagne if you're on the Democrat side.

I think it really sits in a good position for both of these Republicans, all the ones we've talked about as we start counting the election day votes. Martha, the world is changing is what we're all hearing here. I mean, these are previous seats where you would really think of them three or four cycles ago. They were so solidly Republican or one side of the other. It's interesting to watch this precinct, this county, this whole area changing very quickly, even the time that you were in the administration with Mr. Richardson. Massive changes, isn't there? It's interesting. Well, there are some changes, all right. And of course, redistricting has had something to do with it. My own district, which is 23, has been redrawn and it's going to be a tight race, too. There's a woman, Marcy Blays, running against Paul Pachico, who's an ex-police, and that's going to be a tight race. And partly, probably mostly, Jean, because of redistricting. I don't think the demographics have changed that much in the state. I do have to correct my colleague for a much earlier statement he made about the Catholic vote.

And there are a lot of Catholics in the state, very obviously. We are majority Hispanic, very obviously, and those two things go together. But we don't assume that because a person is Catholic that they are anti-choice. And as a matter of fact, the polls show that almost all Catholic women upwards of 85% use birth control. And they're upset about that. I looked at a poll today from Lake Research in Washington, and 72% and above are willing to buck the church on that issue. Men and men of Hispanic voters. So we don't take that for granted. We don't make that leap that just because you hold a church membership in a certain sack that you're going to vote a certain way on an issue that is fundamentally important to you. Sure. Glad you got that in. Let's take a look at House District 23. We have some results coming in. There's our map coming right up there. There it is.

Actually, there's the result. And we're clicking that in there. These just mentioned the Democrat of 48% and Paul Pacheco at 52% for the Republican Daily Get Your Initial. Again, early in absentee. Because early in absentee voting is usually towards the Dems in these presidential elections, usually a heavy Dem turnout. So for Paul Pacheco to be ahead with early in absentee voting, I think that could be a huge win for Paul Pacheco as he moves forward. What was the ground game in that particular district? What went on there? You know, we heard about early districts with the mailers and things. What was the point of friction there? I think, you know, I think, and I'll defer more that she lives there. That's her, you know, I'd like to hear her thoughts. I think, from the Pacheco side, it was, I thought I think they did a very good job of mail walk mail. They did a very good job of mailing that district. I think they did a good job of putting their opponent in a box early. And I think they did a good job of distancing themselves. And I think the people that came to her defense, I think some of the union, some of that out-of-state money, I think some of that, you know, the folks that were doing the filming and the things like that, the Corwin guys, I think that's backfiring on a lot of Democrats

across the state. And I think that that union money is not going to see it as well when, especially when you start trying to say, well, this money from Susanne is out of state and you start seeing us from Yates Petroleum and Mac Energy, they're not out of state. They live in Artisia. The owners of the companies live there, they live there, they vote there. But when you start seeing that money's coming in from unions and it's coming in from California, Texas, New York, I think that really, really struck a difference. But I think Pacheco did a good job of mail walking. Let's go right to the ground, sure. I just agree with you on that because living there in the district, and I was out of town for eight days recently, and when I got home, I had the stack of mail and the mailers. And actually, not much was said about where the money came from on either side. Blaze did a lot of walking, she did a lot of door to door. She did raise a lot of money in the primary, she had a three-way primary, and as you know, that's tough because you spend a lot on that and then you have to go right into the main race. So I don't know, I think a lot of it's redistricting. Pacheco is better known.

He ran once before where he lost. He did do a lot of negative campaigning. She made the decision early. She was not going to robo call nor do negative campaigning. And I think that should have helped, and maybe it did. I don't know how much of the absentee in early voting is in on that district. I do agree that it's a bit of a surprise that the Democrat is not doing better than she is. We're going to check out House District 30 and see what's going on in that area of our states. And we've got Nate Gentry at 46%. Mary Ellen Brotterrick at 54%. And again, this is early in absentee voting. And Senator, I'd like to ask you, your initial thoughts when you see that number from early in absentee? What jumps out at you there? Again, it doesn't surprise me because tremendous amount of negative campaigning early on came out of the gate earlier than usual. In which direction? Well, on the incumbent. On the incumbent.

So money trying to defeat an incumbent. And I have to interrupt for a quick thing. Just to give you a, we had our numbers flipped there. Nate Gentry actually wasn't a lead there. Okay. Yeah, it was. That seemed more logical the other way around. We all sort of were thinking it and we apologize for that. Go ahead and continue. My fault. And you know, actually Nate, this is my, this is Nate's, Nate's my house member. I don't know that I've ever seen an incumbent Democrat work. I mean, a incumbent Republican work as hard as Nate has. I mean, he came, he came to my house twice. I mean, there are hundreds of yard signs. And what yard signs mean are that somebody's been to the door, talked to somebody, and they feel comfortable enough about the candidate to put a yard sign out. And so Nate's been working hard like Conrad. I think Nate's really looked at as being a rising star in the Republican Party. And for the opposition, for the Democrats are going to try to get Nate out. They're going to try to get Conrad out. But you know, this is, this isn't, you know, there's five or six really competitive seats in the, in the house. This is kind of a second tier competitive, you know, to the governor's credit.

One of the things the governor said during redistricting is I want to see competitive seats. And you know, usually it's communities of interest and continuity. We've got, we've got six or seven seats that are 50-50. And so that's good for politics. You look at the fundraising in those seats, James 92,000, Thompson 89,000, very competitive. And you know, it makes for good politics. Sure. Sure. Let's go to Maryl and Broderick there. It's her first time running. Again, we had her numbers flip there. We apologize. She's actually six points down in early and after. Yeah. And that surprised me a little bit when I saw these numbers and how I, I would expect that. I know Nate also as somebody who works really hard, I mean, he has a reputation for just knocking on doors and he's very systematic about it. Sure. So I was a little bit surprised. I still think it's going to be close, but I, yeah, that, that makes sense that the numbers were a little bit flip. I will say this much about the, you know, we didn't talk about 15 very much. That's right.

If I do, I'm sure. But 15 and 23 both may have some effect, certainly 15, some of the Hispanic vote may favor Saucero in that one. So I think that's one to watch. I mean, you know, all things being equal and sort of people coming to the, to the polls and not really necessarily being completely decided, they may just go down the ballot and pick a surname. That may help Saucero. I do think he's also somebody who works very hard. So I think that's one to watch as well. If you were on Mary Ellen's team, would you be pleased with this, this gap, the store with early and absent team? Would that be something that would surprise you? Um, that it's six points I think it was, is that what looked at? Yeah. I would, I would like to see something better. Sure. I think some of the Democrats are leading in other districts, but that's a tough race. And also some of the negative stuff that happened happened recently in the last couple of weeks. Some of those absentee ballots may have come in fairly early in the process where, um, this extra information where it got really negative, um, was in a factor. Mm-hmm. Interesting. We want to thank Lieutenant Governor Sanchez for his time. We had to make a change there. He had to go and speak in a matter of the change. We have Whitney White Cheshire and all the friend of ours here at the show.

Good to see you. Good to see you too. A long time friend. A long time friend. I'm the cold of this time. Glad you're back. Thank you, Jean. Um, let's start. You've been listening off to the side. And if you want to backtrack a little bit, that's okay. But I want you to do start with this race. We're just talking about the Merino and Broderick and each race she's having right now. What's your sense of that race? Is that a say-to-race? That we're talking about? Yeah. Go ahead with that one. Sure. Um, well, I think, uh, Salcedo is like several of the other Republican candidates that are in tight races right now in Bernalino County. Mm-hmm. Um, they are overperforming the Republican ticket right now. So anywhere from three to five percentage points over what Romney and Ryan are doing. So this is a really good sign for the Republican candidates, especially the barrage of negative advertising that they've all had to take in an unprecedented manner. So I think Salcedo has an excellent shot in House District 15. It's friendly towards Republicans. It's certainly had Republican leadership in the past. He's run a very good campaign.

He was very competitive in fundraising. I think that these results are definitely early. I mean, when you're talking about the lump of early and absentee vote, it's not really indicative of what's going to happen in the race. And again, he is overperforming the Republican presidential ticket. So that's a good sign. I want to stay with you with this. I appreciated Laura's point there just a second ago about how sometimes you can have a huge bubble come in on early and absentee and then the negative stuff can come in afterwards. Don't you run a little bit of a risk there in your strategy if you're going to be doing things by not getting maybe negative stuff out earlier in the process or sometimes it's driven by money, the amount of funds that you have available to tough call? Well, I think that both sides were very well funded in this race. I don't think we've ever seen anything like it. And actually the negative campaigning started much earlier in this season than it normally does. Usually you see a couple of positive pieces, a lot of door knocking and then a couple of gacha pieces. And this really started for all of these candidates and these campaigns weeks and weeks ago. The only thing is is that it escalated, where it usually stops in the mailbox and on the phone.

It flowed into KKOB radio and of course television broadcast TV. So kind of an unprecedented year, I'm curious to see how they all turn out. Sure. Stay right there, Miss. I'd love to see you back here. I'm another friend of ours, Sophie Martin, regular on the line on the Mexican Focus. Thanks. To you coming in. Thanks for having me tonight. You've been listening as well. You'll be in and out throughout the night and your sense of things as you see them and feel them so far. Especially in these races we're talking about in the heights we're talking about right now. Well, I mean like everyone else I've been sort of parsing the early and absentee numbers trying to figure out where things are going to go. I think that this discussion of timing of negative campaigns, timing of negative information, it really is changed I think by this huge shift toward early voting. You kind of can't afford to give people time to forget the nasty things that you said about your opponent, you want to make sure they stick and so it seems to me what I'm feeling with some of this stuff is I'm going to hate you with nasty, I'm going to hate it again

and again and you can't wait until the last minute, but you also can't go so early that people are like, you know, that was yesterday's news. So you know, it'll be interesting to watch that I have also really been paying attention to the to the gentry broadric race and I'm astonished at how close the numbers have been and even with that flip is, you know, broadric came in with a lot of I think grassroots support but not a whole lot of money. I think am I right? Is she an emerged New Mexico candidate, is she one of the trainees from emerged? She may be. I can't quite remember and that certainly means a lot of training. I think like everyone else, I'm just kind of crossing my fingers waiting for the real numbers to come in and not quite it should be, they should be rolling in too. Sure. We're going to take a quick break here and talk to Maggie to lose Oliver from Burley or County and Maggie, can you hear me on the phone there? It's your can.

Can you hear me? Absolutely. How'd a chance to get down to the lowest place today to do my own voting was very exciting to see. Give me a sense of what you're seeing first of all for turnout and how you folks are managing the turnout with a new consolidation of voting setters. What are you seeing out there? I think we had a very successful day in terms of that, throughout the course of the day, we did have maybe one or two handful of sites that were experiencing late times of maybe a little over half an hour. The University of New Mexico site was just busy all day long just experiencing a really high level of turnout for what is one of our smallest locations. We were just pretty much slammed there all day long. By and large, the vote center has handled really well. For the vast majority of the day, three-quarters of our vote centers were experiencing a less than 15-minute wait and we were very proud of that, we think that that went very well. Where we did have higher turnout, we were able to basically put some redirection in place to try to get folks to maybe go down the road to a place that might be a little bit

closer. So, basically, you know, a successful, generally successful, I mean, the great thing about, you know, being able to handle that end of the night rush is that now there are options for voters, whereas in the past they'd be stuck where they were. So it's been great to be able to provide that option. Tell me about early in absentee voting, what were the numbers that you were seeing, how many folks took advantage of it, what were the percentages, and who did it favor, Democrats or Republicans? We had very high numbers of turnout, and excuse me, I'm losing my voice. But we had very high numbers for absentee, or excuse me, for early voting in particular, just shy of 150,000 voters voted early, which is about 25,000 more than we had in 2008, which was our record, we've had about 40,000 voters taking advantage of absentee ballot, which was about a little less than half of what we experienced in 2008. So added together, they both came up a little bit shy of the raw number of voters that passed the ballot before the presidential in 2008.

The voting early gave quite heavily the Democrats, basically we saw turnout comparing to voter registration percentages in terms of Democrats or Republicans to DTS and other parties. However, absentee balloting, we saw a lot closer parity between Democrats and Republicans. Rob Nikoelski, you have a question for our county clerk? Do we have one for Maggie? I know it's not your county, but over in Santa Valk County, they had people over in Rio Rancho who were waiting three and a half hours to vote. First of all, do you have any insight on why? And secondly, if someone's waiting in line, even though it's after 7 p.m., can they still vote? Well, to answer your second question first, yes. If they were in line at seven o'clock, they have a right to cast the ballot. And so as long as it takes you to process those voters through the line, they should stay in line. They will be able to cast the ballot before the evening is through. To your first question, I'm just speculating, but first and foremost, I know they only had about five voting centers established for that Rio Rancho Metropolitan area.

Seems like maybe that might have been not enough, first and foremost. And then secondly, just to speculate a little bit further, I don't know how many computer voters they had at each location in terms of issuing ballot, ballot on demand system. Basically, we find that that's a real bottleneck. And so where you can expand those numbers, it kind of doesn't matter the size of the site, you can process voters more quickly. They may have not had enough computers at those sites. Thank you, Maggie. And to toss it back to Eugene, I'll say the one positive side, I went by there, I'm waiting, coming here, and even though some people were waiting three and a half hours, they were frustrated, but there wasn't any kind of level of anger, which I thought was encouraging. That's been in some reports you've heard around the country from other places. Maggie Toulouse Oliver, Bernalino County Clerk, thank you for spending some time on this tonight. Really appreciate it. Sure, it's my pleasure.

Absolutely. And we're back here with the table. We've got some results coming up. We've also got some new guests here joining us, Senator D.D. Feldman, thank you for joining us. You're a sense of things so far. What are you hearing for Democrats, and let's talk about House races here, our local legislative House races. What's your sense of the energy and everything going into this morning? I think there's been a great focus on the two races in the Valley, the two women that are running, Emily Kane and Marcy Blaze. Those are the swing seats traditionally, and there's been a lot of energy and a lot of money that has gone in on both sides, both of those constituents in those areas have been absolutely carpet bombed with negative advertising. One calling, another, an embezzler, the other hit by a last minute barrage of reform new Mexico ads. It's been to the point where I think that in District 15, both of the candidates have said but out, but out.

We would like to have this race about this local area, about our positions on the issues, not about some sort of general statewide big money campaign. And that's what has happened this year. And those two races are cases in point. I do want to talk about the money in the overall sense. I'm glad you brought up those two races in particular. It's just extraordinary. The amount of money in the Mexico right now. We've got some U.S. Senate race results coming. Let's take a peek at what we've got. We've got Heather Wilson. They didn't. 43% Republican, of course, and Martin Heinrich at 54%, 15.6% of precincts reporting. And let me go back to you, Senator, 54% for Martin Heinrich. Is that about where where you thought he would be this early in the night and is that going to be a good place to hold from? Yes. I think it will tighten some, just primarily because of the huge amount of money that was dumped into this race at the very last minute. It's sort of inexplicable given the lead that he had.

There just must be so much money out there that the Koch brothers really don't know what to do with it. So they're dumping it into New Mexico, even though the statistics don't justify it. Sure. And as early in absentee, Whitney, and again, I go to the same question for the same race for Heather Wilson. You know, it's interesting when you think about Martin Heinrich. He really didn't have a lot of statewide name recognition. But then somehow he pulled that off and some really far-flung corners of the state. On the flip, Congresswoman Wilson had a lot of name recognition from having stumped in, especially the southern part of the state back in that primary against Steve Pierce way back when, seemingly way back when. Has something topped out for the Congresswoman at this point, do you think? There's just a room for growth here in this race that you're feeling like could be a surprise here for people. Well, I think that you're seeing the result of millions and millions of dollars of negative advertising against Congresswoman Wilson over years and years of campaigning is the result.

So most voters have an opinion of her one way or another they like her. They don't, based on that. You know, Martin was kind of a new face to them. They hadn't had the opportunity to really get to know what his policies would be. Once they became more quain and with Martin Heinrich, they became less enamored with him. You know, obviously her internal polling was showing at a neck and neck race coming into the campaign. These again are early, you know, very early results. You don't have any reporting from San Juan County, you don't have any reporting from Chavez County, you don't have any reporting from any of the Republican districts and counties. So all I can say is it's very early. I'm sure that her team is very confident. And again, she's overperforming the Romney ticket at this point as well on the Bernalillo County returns, which is a very good sign for her. So, you know, it's not over yet and she had some tradition of that back in the day, so to speak. She had a, she went over perform. A lot of other, a lot of national races and national candidates. Very interesting about her back in that district, but Sophie again, for Martin Heinrich, you know, what's been the trick here?

I'm just still kind of amazed that he's in the position that he's in, not because of who he is as a candidate, but on that statewide thing. I mean, City Councilor, City One rep, that doesn't really mean much in many corners of our state. It seems to me. Well, think about, though, where Martin's, where Martin's base is, his base is here in the most contested part of the state in the, in the Greater Avocurkey area. You know, the North is very blue when you think about their congressional district of the South, obviously, very red, and then there's this nugget in the middle. The fact that that's where Heinrich is from, I think, helps to push him over. And I think to Whitney's point, she makes a really great point about Heather Wilson being so well-known, not just here in Bernalino County, but I think around the state. It can be very difficult to change people's opinions when you, when you are so well-known. Heinrich had a lot more room, I think, in some of the other parts of the state. But when you look at the map of New Mexico, the blue in the North, the red in the South, and then that nugget of recent representation of the center of Bernalino County of the Greater Avocurkey area, that, I think, is sort of a demographic thing that's pushing

him as much as anything else now. Does he have other stuff going for him? I think that he's put forward a really interesting profile, the sort of, the hunter, the environmentalist. Like that speaks to a certain part of the state, or I say to a different part of the state, in ways that, that I think we're seeing sort of a rise in the west of an interest in that, in that kind of pro-hunting alternative, sort of weird combination, but here it's happening in the west. You know, we're kind of pioneering that, and he is at the forefront of that. It's interesting, because again, he followed sort of a Heather Wilson template in CD-1 when he was in office. And is it too early to say that perhaps he was insulated a little bit or helped, in fact, this is going to be a strange one, and going to, and I'm going to follow you. When he first got in his seat, Ms. Pelosi gave him committee assignments that had a lot to do with armed services, and he had to take a lot of votes on these committees. And maybe he kind of proved his chops in some other areas and other ways through some

of his work in those first couple terms. I know. I think that that's an important point, especially in a state like New Mexico, with our bases, with our real reliance on federal spending for defense and energy. I can't imagine that that was, you know, by chance, that he got those assignments. I think that that was a really smart move. And the speakers part, and good for him. And I think also good for the state that we have that representation on committees. Sure. Senator, on the similar note, Heather Wilson is no stranger to armed services, and she was part of the first Bush administration, a lot of key, different areas, security. She's had her own firm or private contracting firm here for years in the years, Keystone. Again, your sense of what does that mean on the ground for folks this cycle? Is it something there? I think we forget the challenge Republicans face in a state where 140 Democrats, 150 Democrats exist for every 100 Republicans. It's always, always, always an uphill battle. And I saw Heather to fundraise a couple weeks ago. I said, you're like the Eli Manning of New Mexico politics.

So, for the quarter, for, okay, now we really, you know, get everything in motion. And really, that's one of Heather's strengths. She is the comeback kid. She creates this momentum during the last seven to ten days of the campaign. And I feel that that's been happening both or wrong. What would you attribute that momentum to? Is there anything in particular? Any advertising? Any particular memes? It's kind of interesting, because Heather is more of a known quantity statewide than Martin was. And we saw a little bit different kind of marketing toward the end of the campaign playing the banjo. I mean, we knew, you know, Rhodes, South America and all of this other kind of thing. So, you know, I think a lot of voters, the swing voters thought, well, I know everything about Heather already. And then they put some new things on the table. But, you know, a lot of it really is just grassroots work, door to door. You've got the swing voters, you know, what issues are they interested in? And that's where the play's been the last seven to ten days. And, you know, I'm hoping that Heather's got, you know, enough mode to carry her to victory. But it's always an uphill battle.

Sure. Let's take a look at some results coming in now from Senate District 9, Doyle and Sapien. Let's see what we've got going there at this point. We've been looking at a lot of early voting and absentee numbers as they've come in. And this Senate, particular Senate District, this has been pretty hard fought there. As you can see it, they're wedged on that map. It's interesting. John Sapien in the Democrat at 54 percent in David Doerl, the Republican at 46 percent. And again, this is early in absentee. So, right, exactly. What do you want to ask your first thing? I do this for everyone. Your first initial snapshot in early in absentee. Is that better for where you thought Mr. Doyle would be at this point, or were you hoping for something a little bit more? I think a lot of these Republican candidates are actually doing better than I would have thought in early in absentee voting. And again, I come back to where Romney and Heather Wilson are performing in this election. Especially if you look at Genesis Arnold Jones, who's certainly underperforming the overall ticket, which is unfortunate to say. But a lot of these Republican candidates have been running very good, strong races. I'm not sure that Doyle is doing quite as well as some of his counterparts in other legislative districts in Bernalio County.

It's definitely was a tight race, definitely a lot of issues going on there that were far beyond policy. It's going to be a challenge for any of these candidates in this election year, any of these Republican candidates in this election year, to really hold on to the Republican seats that we had that were so contested. Again, back to the amount of money that's coming in here. The fact that Obama is clearly going to be taking this state and any gains that Republicans make in close seats in this election are going to be victories. Interesting. Some of them say with you on this side of the table, and there's Doyle Sapien as well. When he mentioned that particular district and a lot of the things that had happened historically, they have a Doyle we talked about at this table for the past couple of weeks and things going on there. What's your sense of it as you see those numbers for early in absentee? Well, the first sense I have of it is how small of those numbers are. Three hundred, you're more than 400 points, less than 700 combined. It's hard to really say, this is like extended family voting for you and you know what I mean? So I think it's very difficult to extend those out and say, I see, I see a clear advantage

to one or the other. I think that this is going to be close fought, but I actually do think that Sapien is going to pull it out. He's going to end up on top on the front. Senator Feldman, what would be the thing to put him over the top in this race? What would you think? Well, I would look to see whether he carries placidas or not. That's the thing. He said, had a hard time there, he had that part redistricted into his district and it was not his favorite place. But I think he's made some amends there and I think he's going to pull it out too. And I don't think that David Doyle has run a terrific campaign. There's been a question of whether he really lives in the district and it doesn't, you know, it's hard to tell from these numbers, especially when you don't know the difference between absentee and early. Sure. Because the Democrats have had an advantage in the early and the Republicans traditionally in the absentee.

So when we don't know the proportion of absentee to early, and I'm sure somebody does know that, maybe we do know that, it makes it hard to judge. Interesting. Very quickly, Senator Boyton, if you can do it in under 30 seconds, your thoughts on this race? Well, I saw Sapien the other day and I said, you're the king of aggressive, hotly contested race in Americans and incumbent Republican four years ago had, you know, a hotly contested primary. This is, you know, this is a second tier race is from our viewpoint, the Republicans in terms of seats that we're hoping we can pick up. It's not top three, but it's a second three. Sure. A lot of it has to do with, like Senator Feldman said, what happens in Placetus, about a third of the votes are there in Placetus or have been some major issues and we'll wait and see what happens. Interesting. And glad you guys brought Placetus because our map, the blue map, just sticking way north there. It didn't really tell the tale and I'm glad you're through in that detail. For those of us, for those of you joining us on K&MD, we're going to take a minute to update those watching our NewsHour coverage. This is a New Mexico PBS, the election night special.

2012 coverage in here in New Mexico early in absentee votes are starting to come in. I'm Gene Grant in the New Mexico PBS studios. We're here for the next few hours, tracking the vote totals and other election developments across the state. Senator Mark Boytano, as we see some of these lone county or sole county votes coming in, we turned to Bernalio. What are you seeing for Bernalio County specifically? What's your sense of things? Well, about what we expected. We had big turnout early on, absentee early voting, populations, Democrat, not Republicans, so we're going to see those results favoring Democrat candidates, but we need to wait and see. Sure. One of the things, I don't know if we're going to talk about the money, but one of the things we're seeing here that we didn't see when Senator Feldman and I ran 16 years ago was just the huge amount of money that aren't connected to the campaign. Back in the old days, a candidate would raise money, there'd be a couple of interest groups

that would step in, but now, I mean, we've got interest groups that are pretty much taking over the election. Absolutely. And the funny thing is, a lot of times, the issues that they bring to the table aren't even relevant in a particular district. That's right. Senator Feldman on that very point. Exactly, the literature would make you think we're all about driver's licenses and third grade, what goes on in third grade, when actually we're about jobs and some of the economic issues, which have gotten short shrift, really, in the overall literature. So again, I'm very upset about how these campaigns are being bought and sold, and the candidates don't have much to do with it. We've got a House District 15 results coming, let's take a look, Emily Cain at 51%, she's the Democrat against Chris Saasato at 49%, that's early in absentee, Whitney Way to thank you for joining us tonight here on the Mexico PBS as well. Your thoughts on that race, as you see those numbers. I think those are pretty good numbers for Chris Saasato. He's, you know, it's hard to, they're very difficult to get ahead in early absentee

voters or Republican candidate. Probably the only one I could call out right now would be Senator Ryan running against Joe Carrero, who's running as the independent, but the rest of the Republican candidates are all a couple of points. Here you go. We'll be back on this channel in an hour from now with an update on the Mexico races and updates on the Mexico races and ballot issues, but we're not stopping. We have a live broadcast on K&MD, broadcast channel nine, that's channel 204 on Comcast, HD's package, and channel nine on the dish neck work. We're also live streaming by the link at New Mexico PBS dot org. New Mexico PBS election coverage is presented in part by the American Cancer Society Cancer Direction Network and Urenco USA. We're back here on K&MD, channel 9.1, glad to have you back, we're here with Whit and

Weight talking about some Bernalio County races, sorry, no, our regular colleague is with us here. Tell me about what you're seeing again in this Emily Cain situation, I love, this race interests me so much. Same here, I mean, I think Emily Cain has such an interesting personal biography, she's firefighter, I mean, just a fascinating story, she has been fighting hard for this seat. I mean, this has been one of the really hard fought and I think is a very close race, the numbers and early and absentee are quite close. This is one of those kind of knucklebiteers, we'll have to see. I saw one of her mailers and it reminded me so much of the old days where people ran on the things they did for work. You know what I mean? It was like a big deal. You are a person and that kind of stuff, you know, what you might actually be about, it's very refreshing in an old school kind of way, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, I think that her personal biography really does speak to the kind of person she is and is very compelling whether she's able to maintain, you know, a lead throughout this. Well said, yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. And when she tells people that she's been on the fire department, plus raising four sons at the same time, I think women in particular and women are a big factor here in that district and also, I think in the Martin Heinrich race also. Let's talk about that a little bit. We had Martha Burke with us earlier and we thank her for coming by and stopping with us as well. Women in those districts, but I'm interested in what you just said about the Heinrich race. What do you see women being impactful in the race? Well, I think the advertising, some of it was geared toward women. He does take out the trash. He does change the cooler and the air conditioner. He's got his to-do list.

His sons are there. Sons are figuring pretty large in this campaign. All the kids are in it. And yeah, the kids are in it and people relate to that. And of course, then they're the national issues about rape and abortion, which are becoming very important to women. I think nationally, the poll data is showing that even for Catholics and others, these are voting issues. Whereas we had thought before that women were kind of insecure about the economy in particular, it's kind of been eclipsed or at least matched by some of these other issues on a national scale. Martha referenced a couple of polls that showed abortion was the runaway number one issue for a lot of women voters this term and kind of snuck up on everybody. It hasn't been really talked about, honestly, and except for the most interesting ways about religion tied into that. I don't know that it hasn't been talked about. I think it's actually come out quite a bit lately, especially in the context of the sort of forcible rape and abortion that women's bodies just shut that thing down, which still

I'm kind of stunned by. One thing that's happening in New Mexico around women voters and women candidates in particular is that Emerge New Mexico, which is a nonprofit in the state that trains democratic women to run for political office, has 11 candidates running throughout the state this time around. Seems to me that that program has been growing and growing phenomenally successful. They get commitments from women who are interested in running for office and train them, explain to them how the whole process works and gets them going. One of the things that Maureen Sanders, who is the chair of Emerge New Mexico, often says is you have to ask a woman an average of nine times to run. Whereas a man sometimes you don't have to ask at all. You just put himself out there and so Emerge is out there saying like, listen, women, we really want you to run. And I think we're seeing the impact of that in the racist throughout the state. And actually the Emily's list list is interesting. Hold on there, Senator Botoni, please.

I think there's a relationship between that being front and center and the money, too. Because I know when, when Dede and I ran, we, in our races, we didn't talk much about abortion because we figured people already knew where they stood and it wasn't a wedge issue. But you've got a lot of national money. The Supreme Court appointments are huge. And you want to mobilize the base. So you're in local races and you're bringing in the abortion issue in a local race. And it's not, you know, maybe it's for that candidate, but in a bigger, bigger sense, we've got the presidential race and we want to make sure that the base is educated and mobilized. So frankly, that's been one of the huge surprises to me about this election go around. We've front and center prominence of abortion as a wedge issue. Interesting. Well, and I think Senator Botoni is exactly right. The reason we're talking about this so much is because there have been hundreds of thousands of dollars from liberal interest from out of state that have targeted all of these legislative races. I mean, if the criticism is that we're talking about third graders in New Mexico and whether or not they, you know, should be socially promoted or not, if you start looking at the coordination

of the campaigns on women's issues, what they call women's issues, and then defining it, it's been hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. Republican candidates have been called extremist. If they are pro, if they are pro life, they've been called extremist. If they don't support Obamacare, it's been awful. It's been in districts all across the state. It's been in districts that aren't competitive, and it's extremely well coordinated. The fact that we're even talking about it tonight is a result of the amount of money that's come in from out of state on this issue. Interesting. That's it. I will point out that the movement, there has been a movement away from successful national or federal abortion laws, and towards that fight happening in the states, and what we're seeing is the waiting periods, the required doctor notification that abortion can cause mental distress in women, that there's no research that actually backs that up, but your legislator says, as a doctor, you have to say that to it. I'm not saying that well, but you know, it's all happening in the states right now.

And so, to the extent that a voter cares about abortion, the state legislature probably should matter because we have seen so much movement in so many states in that direction in Utah and North Dakota and South Carolina and all these different places. It is coordinated on a national level. All these groups are working in state legislatures. And there's been a huge amount of money spent, yes, but it's also been spent to attack people like Michael Sanchez, who have stood up for a woman's right to choose in the legislature. And that has been a big issue in that campaign. So, this is interesting to me. I appreciate the correction you guys had me on there because it has been an issue certainly, but I'm curious how, outside of the outside money, I hear your point on that, the issue has to be there first in order for someone to make an issue it seems to me. So, if these issues going on around the country where people are misspeaking, depending on your point of view, about rape and about abortion, wasn't the situation already set

up for these groups to come in? Not at the level of the legislative races. I mean, this is exactly what we're seeing with these big independent expenditure groups coming in. They're defining the issues because they're the ones with the most money. That's exactly what Senator Feldman was saying, was it is no longer about the candidate and what they bring to the table, it's about the person that has the most money. So, if the left wing, you know, liberal groups want to be talking about women's rights as they pertain to abortion and healthcare, and then you have conservative groups talking about tax, lower taxes, you know, job growth, that type of thing, you're going to be, that's the message that everybody's going to be discussing. But because they're able to filter through all of the legislative races, it has a statewide effect where in the past, the only statewide campaigns were presidential and Senate. We're going to jump over Guest real quick to Matthew Reichbach and who's our other person over there. Oh, Tom Garrity, good to see you on Senate Districts, 35, 36, and 37 down south in our state. Yeah, we've been talking about Bernalio County, but let's go down south and see some of the results down there. We're going to see the map when it comes out on your screen as

well. I know that Bernalio County is usually the first one to come with results, so that's why I've been concentrated on that a lot so far. But looking down south, early in absentee, that's a pretty interesting one with Russell Allen. He's a feeding Senator John Smith, who's a big Senate Finance Committee Chairman. Yeah, and just seeing, you know, what is happening with the vote right now, you know, obviously a strong Republican response right now down the southern part of the state will be interesting to see how much of an impact the Heather Wilson Congressman Steve Pierce and Governor Martinez, how they're, you know, swing through the state there and that during that last week is really panned out. And also, it's only 33 votes, so we can't get too excited about that right now. This is the one that I've heard the Republicans are looting a lot to is Mary Jane Garcia, the Democrat looks like she's going down to Lee Carter unless something changes big. Well, again, it's just the early in absentee vote, you know, that's a little bit surprising to me because, you know, typically as a part of, you know, getting your base out, you want to make sure that they're out voting early and early and see Mary Jane Garcia down

by that percentage points with the early in absentee is definitely a surprise. Yeah, she's had some problems, she's, she paid a fine for some campaign finance where she paid her, she wrote checks to herself for cash, which is against the law. She paid the fine, she said, well, I don't want to be seen as a crook. Yeah, she's, she's had her fair share of, of scandals in the past, and they may be catching up to her. And then here in Senate District 37, here's some good news for the Democrats. Yeah, most definitely, you know, you know, again, with the early in absentee voting, we're pretty neck and neck, you know, when we're just looking at just a couple hundred votes, separating, you know, William Salles and Kathy Joe Alberson, you know, it's in her, it's an early night so far, and so really can't go too far in projecting anything. Yeah, this is Steve Fisherman's old district in case you didn't know, so that's, that's one to watch out for. That could be a pickup for the Republicans, but it looks like right now the early results show, the very early results, we should say, show the Democrat ahead. And I think we'll toss it back over to Gina.

Thanks guys. Very interesting stuff there from 3536 in 30, so let's start with 35. John Arthur Smith, a little Twitter would across the table here when we all heard Matthew and Tom give us those results. There's Senator Feldman. What's your first thoughts when you hear it? That was not even on my radar screen. I thought he had it so in the bag, and he may still have it. These are only the absentee an early, and there are a few number of votes. I think there's 20 votes separating them, so it may be that the folks there vote mostly on election day, I don't really know the patterns in the South. Sure. But isn't that a leaning Republican district historically, the 35? Yes. It's actually 40, 40, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's 51% average Republican voting during more than 8% Democrats, so it's definitely a winnable seat for Republicans, but classically has been left kind of off the table because of Senator John Arthur Smith's popularity. So very surprising to see that from, from the result, compare that to what's happening in Burlington County among close races, because I mean the offices or the performance within

those districts is comparable to Burnley-O-County, so to see the difference in those results is shows that we have to wait for every county to start lumping in their votes, that we were just originally talking about Burnley-O-County. Sure. Absolutely. Let me go back to Senator Botano, and let's go to 36 of Mirjan Garcia at 44% and caught her at 56. Again, early in absentee that makes a difference. And you know, our polling was showing that caught her last, last seven days or so that caught her was leading that race, and it may be that he's set up to pull a Lincoln or a Nixon. You know, this is the third time he's run against Senator Garcia. And, you know, for him, third time might be a-