Report from Santa Fe; Ramsay Gorham

Let's start. . . Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from New Mexico Tech on the frontier of science and engineering education. For bachelor's, master's, and PhD degrees, New Mexico Tech is the college you've been looking for, 1-800-428-TECH. Hello, I'm Lorraine Mills, and I'd like to welcome you to report from Santa Fe. And I'd also like to welcome our guest, Senator Ramsey Gorm, Republican Senator from Albuquerque, but also the state chair of the Republican Party. Welcome.

Thank you, Lorraine. Thanks for having me. Well, I'm delighted to have you here, and I must explain that this was originally set up as a show between you and your capacity as state Republican chair and Bill Cisneros, the state Democrat chair. Unfortunately, yesterday he stepped down due to health reasons, and we wish him all the best. Yes, we do. His acting state chair will be Joni Gutierrez of Las Cruces, and we've been doing a show with her in a couple of weeks. But now, we not only get to talk about the Republican issues and the state permanent funds, but we get to talk about you and some of your favorite issues. First, could you give me a little of your background? Well, I started in the Senate as a mom with two kids. They're now a lot older, and one is graduated from college. The other is at West Point, so he's in the Army. I just had a burning fire for a lot of the issues that I thought were being ignored in our legislature, especially some of the victim's crime issues.

I thought the law fell on the side of the criminal, much too often, and not on the side of the victims. Well, I would actually like to talk about some of those issues now, because you have really made a wonderful name for yourself in the Senate as the defender of the victim and of the innocent. So, let's talk about a couple of those bills. There was one that you really got national publicity for, a new champion in the rights of this wonderful woman that had to do with the statute of limitations on rapes, where there is DNA evidence, so tell us about that. Well, what happened was Mike Walker of the Santa Fe rape crisis center contacted me because I had run Megan's Law several years ago, which was the sex offender bill and establishing the website on the internet for sex offenders and people in their neighborhoods. Because that bill occurred, he thought of me, when a woman from Santa Fe named Maggie

Raigel came to him and said, my 16-year-old daughter was raped, and after having pursued the rapist for four years, she tracked all of the rapes in Santa Fe through a map and discovered where he operated and became convinced that this was the man who had raped her daughter, but she couldn't prove it. But this was a citizen and a mother and an outraged mom who did all this detective work herself. She was so courageous and long-suffering, and I was so impressed with her story that I said, let me please run this bill, and what happened was this man was caught for another rape, and that's when they found her daughter's purse in his car. Still, it wasn't enough evidence to convict because he had washed her down after he raped her, and the DNA evidence was inconclusive.

But all during this time frame, law enforcement said to Maggie Raigel, the mom, well, you know the statute of limitations is ticking away, and you probably won't convict him. He confessed those three weeks before the statute of limitations was up. But it showed her we had to change the law and remove that time frame because if there's absolute conclusive evidence, why wouldn't we want to go ahead and convict and just protect future victims? So to me, this stops crimes in the repeat offender category, which is 80 percent of our criminal violations. I need to clarify one thing. Before this bill passed under your sponsorship, what was the statute of limitations? The statute of limitations for first degree rape did not exist.

There is no statute. Second degree was six years. Third degree, it drops to five years and so forth. So the less violent the rape, the less time for the statute of limitations to run out. But in many cases, these are juveniles and may not have come forth right away and so terrified and ashamed and afraid that they wouldn't tell anyone. So it's more important when you're dealing with minors and with children to have more time to have a broader statute. Now, what is it now? Well, it's unlimited. In other words, if there's a DNA rape kit and they find that man 30 years later, he can be convicted. So what we have to do is tell all women and children out there, you must take the time to go get a DNA rape kit done if you are raped because that evidence can save you from years

of terror in the future and other victims becoming victims. We were speaking before the show began about this wonderful case where they had a suspected rapist of a case that was 20 years old and a 13-year-old had not only been raped but murdered. And the police sent a fake sweepstakes letter to their suspect and when he licked the envelope and sent it in, they were able to get his DNA and it matched and they were able to convict him. And then the question was, was it police and genuity or entrapment? I think everyone breathes a sigh of relief when those cold cases are finally solved and we all just feel a lot better. And see, before this bill, he would not have been convicted in New Mexico because it was a 20-year-old case. Now he would be and my hat is just off to Maggie Ragle for being willing not to just fight

for her daughter but for every other woman that had to go through what her daughter has gone through it. I love those stories. Yeah. Some of your other issues you've done a lot with domestic violence? Violence. We passed another bill this year which put the definition of domestic violence against a household member in the Victims of Crime Act. And the consequence that many of the victims will reap from this is that now law enforcement has to inform the victims when their violator will be released or when they come up for parole. The significance of this is that most violent crimes of domestic violence occur within 48 hours after that offender is released because that's when they are full of rage for the fact that they had to go to prison in the first place and they regard the victim

as being the one responsible for them having gone to prison. So this allows moms and children to be notified, to notify employees, to take those children out of school, to get the homework assignments ahead of time, and to be gone, to either be in a domestic violence shelter or in a hotel room or staying with family members somewhere else in the country. Oh, that's a wonderful, wonderful bill. Now it's the first lady working with you on some of these issues because domestic violence is one of her core issues also. Well, I haven't up until this point because I worked on these issues long before Richardson was elected, but I would be most willing to work with her. And as a matter of fact, I know that she and I heavily support one of the same facilities for women, and that's the Women's Resource Center in Albuquerque that was opened by my

friend, Sheryl and DeSantis. Well, she's very gracious lady, and you two would work beautifully together. I haven't even met her yet, so I look forward to seeing her. Yes, and she's in for a treat, too. Now we'll go into party politics for a minute because I want to congratulate you on your victory to become the chair of the Republican Party. It was quite a battle, and Mr. Dendall graciously, I think he'll be writing, I think he's still going to be thinking about politics, and we'll still be hearing from him, but not out of two. Yeah. So tell me how you were able to accomplish this victory? Well, I just went out to the counties. I felt very strongly that we need to multiply our manpower in the Republican Party, and so I went and visited the counties, and I just listened to what they wanted to see happen. And I agreed with them.

So it just became sort of a unified effort between myself and them about what direction and the vision we wanted for our party. We were in agreement. Speaking of counties, and then we'll go back, too. You have some events coming up around the county, the Republican County organizations. Tell us a little bit about those while we're on counties. Well, Dunga Anna County is going to run a GOPAC school, which is the Republican Party's grassroots educational efforts for county officials, party officials, and any interested candidates. So that's coming up, and I'm really pleased to see that. Has it been a while before a lot of attention has been paid to the counties? Well, actually the party has just held three training centers and seminars in the state. So no, we have done that, that started right before the election, and I continued those

after I was elected. Up until that point, I think the GOPAC schools were given, the campaign schools, in other words, but really the communication with the counties and trying to establish a grassroots organization had not been given a lot of effort. Well, right after you were elected, President Bush came to our state and to Santa Fe. So what was that like for you, suddenly you're the head of his party here, and here comes the president. He doesn't visit a lot of states, and here he was. What was that? Oh, it was phenomenal, especially after 9-11. I think he's been the greatest hero of just about anybody involved because he went and fought for our soldiers. They haven't been dragged through the streets like they were in Africa. In Somalia? Yeah, so I think it's been a radical departure and has returned a lot of patriotism to our country, and just the fact that we went out and tried to protect our own citizens and

didn't wait for the next horrendous occurrence. Did you get to visit with the first lady at all? No, I didn't. I saw her, and I was at a dinner where she attended, but I did get to visit with the president. Oh, well, so that's about that. Oh, he's just really charismatic and vivacious, got a great sense of humor, very competitive. He introduced himself and said, I hear our new state party chair, and I said, yes, and I'm here to make sure you're going to win in 2004, and he said, well, good, because I didn't win here the last time. And I said, well, things are going to change now, and he said, that's a good thing. Oh, so he was aware of that. Oh, he was aware. Maybe I'll be back a couple more times. And it was a very close battle. He only lost by around 370 votes, but still, we want to win, let's go around.

I wanted to ask you, as you received the mantle of the Republican Party, what kind of shape is it in? What are the strong points? What is the party achieved under your predecessor? And what are the challenges that face you now? Well, I think the challenges are we have a very strong opponent in the Democrat Party at this point in time, and we have to become much more efficient and well organized, and I think we will. I think we have to determine what our priorities are, and we have to go back into our own resources and re-evaluate, where are we going to be spending our money? So we've gone through a transition. I've got a new executive director who will be coming on board in the next week or so. So I'm very excited about that.

Now when you say we have a strong opponent, you mean our governor, Governor Real Richardson. One of his finest qualities is his large, big tent capacity to enroll everyone in what he's doing. So he enrolled a lot of Republicans before and has appointed them in key positions. And it's such a skilled negotiator that he can make, you know, he finds out what people need and want them to try to make it happen bipartisan. How can you separate your message as the Republican Party from what he has to offer? What are the points of distinction? Well, I think the points of distinction are he was handed a state that for eight years Gary Johnson did a phenomenal job on the fiscal side. And I have my issues that I disagreed with Governor Johnson on. So when I say this, I'm not being partisan. And we went into the last session, we were one of two states in the whole country, in the black.

That is a phenomenal achievement with all of the debt that most states are bearing in Medicaid, education, woes, infrastructure, woes. So we have a golden opportunity in our state right now if we don't get into debt to really grow our economy. But I believe we're heading in the wrong direction, we're spending wastefully or maybe I should say for non necessities, $800,000 increase in the governor's staff, not needed in my opinion. Not when you compare things to the acute needs we have in health care and education, water, things like that. So I believe that Spartan approach that Gary Johnson took and it made us choose our priorities but look what opportunity we have. Well, it's not only Governor Johnson, it is our state's founding fathers who set up the

biggest hot potato issue that's happening now that we're going to talk about the school permanent funds. So this was set up by the state's founding fathers so that the interest from these funds could be used for education. Now for a long time, not just Governor Richardson but many other people have been talking about, I remember Tony and I used to have a button, A for education and NEA used to wear buttons it's a rainy day because this fund was also called the rainy day fund by people who couldn't influence how it was being spent. But now the governor has said our most important election in the state's history, he believes, we'll be coming up September, I think 23rd, for the people of the state to decide whether to use, whether to take more of the interest from the state's permanent fund and to catch our viewers up a little bit, Pete Domenici, Senator Domenici has come out and said that he's thinks that it's being done carefully enough that he could support it.

But you in a press release that just came out say that you think that it's best to fight this. Please tell us and then there were some other questions I have to ask about this. I think this is the most important issue facing our state right now. Well I took this before my executive committee just last Saturday, it was our very first executive committee meeting and I gave them the pros and the cons and what Senator had said and we had an hour long or more debate on this and our executive committee voted 21 to 3 in favor of opposing this raid on our funds. And here's why we want education reform but we want education for our children and our children's children not just for the next few years. This is a permanent fund that is for the rainy day meaning when our natural resources give

out not when teachers suddenly think they need a raise. Now we agree we want teachers to have raises but look what has happened you know how I was just talking about our golden opportunity we have literally hundreds of teachers coming to New Mexico from other states and why because they've already spent their permanent fund. Look at California they had a fund much larger than New Mexico's back then and they said we'll only open it up for one issue now they're $37 billion in debt they are firing teachers their teachers are coming to us we have had a crisis with no apparent solution but the solution has been keep our state solvent and then we look a lot better we are the ones

attracting our teachers we as republicans want to give them their $30,000 base pay and we believe we can do both we can give them the increases we can fund education reform and we can do it without writing the permanent fund okay I'm going to go over the safeguards that are built in but first I want to ask you what are your alternative sources of income then because as far as I understand the ones that came up during the session were to raise fees for example to remove the exemption from Los Alamos National Lab which is the tax yes I guess it would be a tax and then of course to use the to raise taxes which nobody wants to even hear about and then to use these permanent funds money so what are your alternative sources of income if you if this money is not touched all right first of all the money that we're using out of the permanent fund only 83% of it is going to education there's another 17%

that goes to the general fund that we could show education as our priority and trade off and put that money back into education because that's what the permanent land grant was supposed to do is fund education and what part of the general fund does this go into or is just it's voted on every year so it could be called the black hole of the general fund that's one alternative another alternative Lorraine that is always interested me is we need to do an independent that means with people not under the hiring and firing capacity of the governor an independent audit of all of the school system statewide we must know where the money goes and then use any type of wasteful spending and there have been fraud fraudulent spending reported maybe too much

middle management in some districts let's find out is that true if it is put that money into teachers pay then we have Medicaid we know there's double dipping with people who have private insurance and government insurance free government insurance that there may be putting their kids on one and themselves on the other and we need to get that straight we need to investigate it then there's the severance tax permanent fund money which is what we call as senators reps and the governor the capital outlay or the park now that would more than cover all of these the 78 million dollar per year increased in spending if let's say maybe the legislators decided that for a year or two until the economy caught up we gave our money to teachers pay raises and education reform instead of divvying it up to all sorts of little

projects that are worthwhile but is education our priority or not now of the funds of the sources that you mentioned none of them is immediate except for that 17% back to the permanent funds the severance tax it could be they said well that would have to be done in the next session the 2004 session or Lord have mercy maybe one of these special sessions that's it it could be done in October but those are going to be after the people vote on this so it may not be necessary so I thank you for telling me the alternatives and I want to ask you about the safeguards that are built in because the proponents of this plan feel that they're being very physically prudent and the safeguards are the fact that three fifths of the legislature can return the percentage to 5% at any time and the increase payout it only increases 0.3% this is the and finally as soon as if the fund ever drops below 5.8 billion dollars Lord have mercy then it immediately stops

at 5% and these little incremental increases over the next you know 12 years or so won't happen so they feel that they're being prudent and that it isn't exactly a rain on the funds it's just a little more interest so how do you answer that first of all the safety factor doesn't kick hand until we've lost 700 million out of the corpus not out of the funding stream in but let's just think about this if you're not putting as much money in your piggy bank but all of your bills are still just as high and going up with inflation do you really buy that you're not losing money in your piggy bank that's not how it works in our family's budget and so I'm saying this is like slaying the golden goose you know the fable where they had two golden eggs a day but it didn't make the farmer happy enough after a few years so we killed the goose thinking there would be

hundreds of eggs inside and found out he was worse off than he'd ever been it's a wonderful analogy and I think what the proponents of this bill of this action are saying is that let's make a few omelets while we're you know where the goose will still lay the golden eggs but let's make a few omelets and use the eggs a little more so we'll see it's up to the people at the ball the egg rolls into the lap of the people and I suspect that there's going to be a huge advertising campaign and so and and I think you're committed to that but how does it affect you that Senator Domenici is not with you on this well not at all in a negative sense because I've been in the legislature I'm a senator and none of us agree on everything all of the time if I were in Congress probably senator and I would vote together 90 percent of the time and this is just one of those issues where he falls on one side and I fall on the other and I don't think it bothers him

and it certainly doesn't bother me but this is a core Republican value according to my executive committee we are committed to making certain all of our children will be educated with plenty of money all during their future we will not mortgage our children's future and we will not raise taxes on you all the public because this fund saves each tax payer filing $600 a year and that's now without inflation another thing people have to realize of a rain is that our resources are depleting what used to take X dollars to drill now takes double or triple that amount and the return is probably half of what it was before so you must remember that the funding stream going in even before we tap out interest on it is not nearly what it

used to be we are already in the decline of the natural resources and we're already in the decline of our most precious research which is time so I thank you so much our guest today has been Senator Ramsey Gorum a Republican Senator from Albuquerque and the State Chair of the Republican Party I'm Lorraine Mills and I like to thank you for being with us on report from Santa Fe Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from New Mexico Tech on the frontier of science and engineering education for bachelor's master's and PhD degrees New Mexico Tech is the college you've been looking for 1-800-428-TECH