District 33 State Rep. Micaela Lara Cadena Has Shown She Deserves our Trust; Challenger Kiki Vigil Has Not

This a political analysis and a study of two humans: Micaela Lara Cadena and Kiki Vigil, candidates for state representative.

When I came home from this morning’s radio show, of which one segment featured Cadena talking energetically and knowledgeably, my wife said, “She’s so great! We’re so lucky to have Cadena!”

Kiki was invited. Didn’t show. (Like Nathan Small, he lacked even the courtesy to make some excuse before the show.) No response whatsoever. Nothing personal, though. I opened the League of Women Voters supplement, to read Kiki’s statement of his ideas. “No response received.” I also check on-line, asking a neutral AI program. “Vigil has made remarkably few substantive public statements that I can verify. Both Source New Mexico and VOTE411 show that he did not answer their issue questionnaires.”

Cadena first ran for this job ten years ago. A working mother, with young schoolchildren, and a background in advocacy. We’ve watched her grow as legislator, a caring and competent person who fights for what seems right and is highly articulate on the issues.

Few know much about Kiki Vigil, and he’s not talking.

He ran for county sheriff in 2014. Many, including me, supported him. He won. He lost the Democratic Primary in 2018.

I saw why, close up. But objective evidence includes him illegally taking over the Detention Center in 2015. County Manager Julia Brown told him he had no such authority. Then she sued. The District Court held that Kiki had had no such right.

He also made a disastrous personnel choice that torpedoed department morale again. Ignore what I wrote about it. Defending his record in 2018, Vigil acknowledged “misjudgments” in appointments to key positions. His own chosen under sheriff, Eddie Lerma, brought a whistle blower lawsuit.

Kiki is a failed sheriff who switched from Democrat to Republican because local citizens, mostly Democrats, had seen enough of him. He turned Republican while Donald Trump was the party’s leader, though likely less for love of Trump than as a snit fit.

While saying little of himself or his views, Vigil has tried to blame Cadena for Project Jupiter, which she has energetically fought against. There’s this grain of truth to that: Cadena voted for an admirable bill, sponsored by the Sierra Club and other worthy groups. At the last moment on the last day (a Saturday) of the legislative session, house leadership said that the Senate had amended and improved that bill, so that the House needed to conform to that. A formality. No copy of the amendment given her. No time to research it. She did vote for the amended bill; but what’s happened since has demonstrated her character and guts. First, she demanded an explanation from the leader, who wept and said she hadn’t known the truth either.

Cadena has publicly called out our Democratic governor and Democratic leadership, including local Democratic Representative Nathan Small for deviously gaining support for Project Jupiter, which has paid well for important people’s support and recently spent millions trying to con us. As leadership conned Cadena.

Admitting you were gulled could be embarrassing. Many wouldn’t. Cadena did.

Calling out your own party leaders while you and they remain in office could be career-shortening. Many wouldn’t. Cadena did.

So our choice is between a caring, competent person with intestinal fortitude, and, . . . Kiki.

In any case, early voting has started. Whomever you like, do vote!

– 30 --

 

[The above column appeared on the 11th of October, 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website the Las Cruces Sun-News (sub nom Voters Weigh Cadena against Silent Kiki Vigil), and will be up presently on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM ).]

[Our radio discussion with Cadena is on-line in the radio station’s archives right here. I urge you to do your own research, if you have not yet decided how you’ll vote. District 33 Candidates’ emails are: MICAELA@LARA-CADENA4NM.COM (575) 644-5830 and Kiki Vigil KIKIVIGIL@YAHOO.COM Another good source of information is the League of Women Voters’ Non-Partisan Voters’ Guide, available at the website, www.lwvsnm.org. Candidates were invited to state their basic cases. (Not all did so.) It’s in both English and Spanish. ]

[Also perhaps worth a look is my May 2018 column on Vigil’s poor response to women’s allegaions of sexual harassment by his chosen undersheriff, Ken Roberts. The three women recorded their talk with Vigil, and I listened to it:

He [Vigil[ scoffs at the complaints. “C'mon, bullshit! You get angry, you right away take action.” The woman had immediately told her lieutenant, who told her to document things. Later, Vigil repeats, “These are serious allegations” and says the victim should take a lie-detector test and explain why she didn't complain immediately.

Mentioned in the present column is Vigil’s illegal takeover of the Detention Center in December 2015. On December 8, 2015, Vigil’s office arrested Detention Center Director Chris Barela on charges of fraud and embezzlement, which charges were soon reduced to a misdemeanor. Soon afterward, citing security concerns, Vigil issues an executive order taking control of the detention center. Vigil and deputies wearing tactical gear moved in. The County Commission and County Manager Julia Brown immediately contested that, arguing that the sheriff had no legal authority to seize administration of the jail.

A district judge soon issued a TRO directing Vigil and his pals to return control back to county management.

Also relevant is my May 2016 column, headed Sheriff's 'First Amendment Lawsuit Bites the Dust which, frankly, I'd forgotten: Kiki filed his "First Amendment" lawsuit against two county commissioners. U.S. District Judge Kenneth Gonzales dismissed the suit on a Motion to Dismiss, which amounts to saying that even if he assumed the truth of every fact the Sheriff alleged in his complaint, there was no viable lawsuit here.

A Federal judge quickly dismissed Vigil’s ridiculous lawsuit, claiming that the County Commission’s decision not to have him sit on the dais with them at mneetings somehow violated his rights, and he wanted the court to give him damages and order the Commission to behave right. The Federal judge quickly ruled that even if you accepted as true all his factual allegations, he had no case. That he brought it at all suggests bad judgement and litigiousness. A decent lawyer could have warned him he had no case – and I explained that in an earlier column right after he filed the thing. (In  December 2015 ("Sheriff's Lawsuit is Wrong Answer to Serious Questionss" , I’d written that the silly lawsuit was about the only thing more foolish than the Human Resources Department investigation claiming Vigil had said bad things about HR personnel. Both Vigil’s DASO and the County’s HR Department seemed messes to me.)    

Dishonesty and Stupidity Mix Sports and Politics

Sports and politics intersected in some weird ways this week, aside from the Protect College Sports Act.

First, while watching the 49ers beat Arizona, I saw the Trump campaign ad the Department of Homeland Security illegally paid lots of our money to air. Then I saw the Senate hearing in which a Missouri senatorial buffoon embarrassed himself while trying to embarrass former special prosecutor Jack Smithy, because apparently neither senator nor staff could distinguish the professional (male) Atlanta Hawks basketball team from the college Iowa Hawkeyes.

The ad was literally an entire 2024 campaign ad we paid to re-air because it rails against communism and shows Mr. Trump striding resolutely, almost heroically, down a White House hallway. That plainly violates several laws.

The Hatch Act Federal employees (not including the President) from using public time or resources to take partisan stands. Someone could be criminally indicted.

Trump and minions made illegal use of appropriated money. The laws forbid using government money for “publicity or propaganda purposes” unless Congress has authorized the expenditure. The Government Accountability Office has interpreted those restrictions to prohibit, communications that are purely partisan or designed to aid a political party or candidate.

The GAO should be investigating and reporting the crime to Congress.

Then Missouri Republican U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt took aim at Jack Smith and shot himself in the foot. Or somewhere. Smith was the special prosecutor who brought charges against Donald Trump. Trump has sought revenge against everyone involved, even alleging that his widespread legal problems – a civil jury finding him guilty of sexual misconduct toward a woman in a store, then of defaming her; Georgia’s prosecution of his demand that Georgia officials “find more votes” for him in 2020; and his involvement in trying to scare Congress into overturning the national vote that year – were just a vast, secret conspiracy to harm Donald Trump.

Smith has testified repeatedly, and very effectively. Someone was unwise in scheduling for this month, another public chance for Smith to say, quietly but convincingly, that he brought charges against Trump only because the evidence required it, beyond a reasonable doubt.

Trumpists wanted to suggest that Smith conferred with the Georgia state prosecutor. Schnmitt’s staff had found what he considered a smoking gun. He grandly asked Smith if he’d attended a February 2024 game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks. Smith said he sure hadn’t. Schmitt said that since Smith didn’t “know that we have this stuff,” he’d show Smith a big blow-up of texts from Smith’s staff about the game, “so you don’t perjure yourself”; but he pulled that down before Smith could read it, calling Smith “a total dirtbag,” which didn’t sound too senatorial.

When Scmitt was made to put the thing up again, Smith admitted that around then, wanting to see Caitlan Clark play, he’d attended an Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland. What depth of stupidity and carelessness is required to confuse a Hawkeye and a Hawk, or women’s college hoops and the NBA, then call a guy a perjurer without taking a second look at your supposed evidence? Lawyering, I never did anything near so stupid; and very rarely saw any opponent do so.

Schmitt tried to recover by saying that at least he and Smith were both basketball fans – though Schmitt’s blunder suggested he knew little about the sport.

A hearing timed to help Republicans win elections may not help much.

                                                        – 30 –  

 

[The above column appeared on the 4th of October, 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, and will be up presently on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM ).]

AI Could Seriously Damage Society

AI presents two pressing problems that Washington chooses to ignore.

Last week’s column discussed the danger that AI development, unregulated, could destroy us. We also must prepare for the economic and social dislocation AI could cause, and avoid letting it uglify society by enriching the very few at the expense of the rest of us. These columns were inspired by a warning by Bridgewater Associates, which uses AI and would be subject to the regulation and taxes advocated.

We suffer from extreme economic inequality. Our tax and other policies encourage worse inequality, by taxing workers’ wages at far higher rate than rich folks’ interest or profits. Workers spend their income in their communities. AI agents don’t buy beer, boots, or broccoli.

Automobiles greatly increased productivity, but the revolution was widely shared. Making horseless carriages improved everyone’s lives, and employed many workers, drivers, salesmen, and accountants. Inventive bicycle-makers could build their own autos. AI won’t so automatically benefit all of us. ChatGPT will provide us useful information quickly, but we will pay a high price, while our employment – and thus our ability to pay without hardship – may dry up.

Banditry, beggary, and communist rebellions followed the Industrial Revolution, and our present populist madness was inspired by globalism enriching traders but forcing farmers off their land. Consider a world in which young unemployed folks gang up to kidnap privileged executives on lonely roads. Why shouldn’t they?

` We can evade or mitigate the worst consequences. The government could give tax advantages or grants to companies that deploy AI in ways that augment existing employees, with workers sharing in the resulting productivity gains. We should include worker representatives on committees deciding how AI will be introduced. We will need a serious lifelong education system, including training for nursing, construction, engineering, and skilled trades.

Taxing employment discourages companies from employing folks. Why not tax AI use. Tokens are the units of data an AI model reads, processes and generates. Taxing AI tokens weakens that disincentive and creates revenue that could be used to help all citizens gain a stake in AI development, or used for re-training. We’ll need to figure out how to measure token consumption across different AI models and minimize opportunities for tax evasion; but we can solve such issues. We should also tax some of the enormous returns to capital.

Giving everyone a direct stake in capitalism might preserve people’s faith that it works. If citizens have equity in the leading AI companies, the economy’s success and their success are intertwined. These firms are using all human knowledge to build a tool that could displace much of human labor. The profits should not accrue to the companies alone.

Using token-tax revenue or credits on other corporate tax burdens, government could acquire ownership stakes and distribute them pro rata to citizens, who would hold them just as any other shareholder. Distributing the shares rather than having government hold them would connect citizens directly to AI’s progress, and prevent government bureaucracy or corruption from impeding it. Having every citizen be an equity holder would help hold society together through disruption. If all citizens have a piece of the pie, all have a stake in keeping the country peaceable and prosperous.

As Bridgewater warned, “None of this is achievable if the risk of technological catastrophe isn’t pre-empted.” Delay will render AI risks nearly impossible to avoid.

But increasing economic inequality will also hurt us.

– 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared on the 27th of September, 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper’s website, and will be up presently on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM).]

[ The AI dangers discussed in my previous column are getting plenty of play, although the current president of the United States finds that inconvenient and therefore labels it a hoax. The serious dangers discussed in this column are getting much less attention, but deserve some. Unfortunately, thoughts that tend to encourage a more just and equitable nation aren’t too popular with the well-heeled, who have a disproportionate influence on our government. ]

AI: Wonderful & Clear and Present Danger

AI is potentially a wonder, but presents two urgent threats that Washington is ignoring.

The first, which is suddenly gaining headlines, as it should, is to regulate AI development early enough and well enough to avoid the very real danger it could do us serious harm. The second is to prepare for the economic and social dislocation AI could cause, and to avoid letting it destroy society as we know it by enriching the very few at the expense of the rest of us.

I’ll tackle the first today, the second next week.

If we act soon, we can make a difference. Frontier AI models have broken out of their intended constraints and done things that would be criminal if done by a person. The “Hugging Face incident” increased public concern about rogue AI When OpenAI ran an operation with more than 1,000 AI entities, each required to operate in isolation, those entities broke that rule, conferred on secret message boards, then launched a cyberattack against the company, Hugging Face, which quickly reported the crime to the FBI. Investigators found that the coordinated hack, involving 700 agents, was deliberate, known to be illegal, and carefully hidden from humans. One investigator said the AI agents were now just like human employees, able to go off and do things on their own. She added she no longer slept so well. Another likened AI agents to a separate species.

Resigning Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon said that soon “superhuman systems” could “hack anything.” He told Anderson Cooper that human extinction within a decade was a ten-percent chance. Many scientists agree. For example, a rogue swarm of AIs could hack into a biological research facility and create a super virus beyond human control. Thus, Anthropic recently blocked scientists from using “Claude” for “gain-of-function” research – the sort of research that may have given us COVID-19. Alternatively, we could see a vast attack on our energy grid.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a global slowdown of AI development. Rival Elon Musk quickly said, “Dario is right.” Open AI CEO Sam Altman agrees.

Such cooperation in begging the U.S. to regulate ASAP, is almost as startling as the Hugging Face incident, particularly because two requesting companies are preparing huge Initial Public Offerings. Lawyering, I had a close view of IPOs. Just before one, the least hint of rain can keep company secretaries from becoming instant millionaires. So these statements are quadruply meaningful. These folks are frightened.

The U.S. needs to join an international human effort to develop the technical and government tools needed to regulate and control AI development. Development and use must be closely regulated to strict safety standards; and use must be consistently monitored, as AI systems evolve and expand in potentially harmful ways we don’t or can’t yet foresee.

Federal law should require: mandatory reporting of serious safety/security indents; independent testing before deployment of high-risk autonomous systems; that federal agencies using autonomous AI meet specified standards; mandatory human authorization of high-risk actions; federal regulation of AI identity and permissions, so that any AI agent making any request must have visible exactly what it’s allowed to access; and federal authority to suspend an AI system that demonstrably presents an extraordinary danger, with judicial review. .

These make sense even if “doomsday” predictions prove exaggerated. Voluntary standards just aren’t enough in an area so potentially dangerous. Our current “president” violates any law he finds inconvenient.

                                                     – 30 –

[The above column appeared on the 20th of September, 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper’s website, and will be up presently on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM

 

It's Past Time to Let Cubans Live!

Sending your kids back to school this season is a great moment to keep in mind how that would feel in Cuba, where the Trump administration’s oil blockade means you’re sending them off to school hungry, while you, they, and the educators navigate blackouts, food shortages and a transportation system starved of fuel.

Trump has turned Cuba’s already severe economic crisis into the extraordinarily acute electricity, transportation and basic-services crisis Cuba is experiencing today.

Many students and teachers now must walk long distances to attend their classes. The schools, once committed to a properly balanced diet with adequate protein intake, struggle even to procure and transport something. At home, you’ve likely been unable to feed them adequately. You’ve also worked out getting their school clothes cleaned and ironed at the home of a friend who has electricity, and locating rechargeable lamps so they can study after dark.

One mother bought a pair of sneakers for 15,600 pesos. The average state salary in Cuba is roughly 3,000 to 4,000 pesos per month. Put that 15,600 pesos in that context – then add books, a bigger jacket, and school supplies. Both supplies and sometimes meals, formerly supplied by the schools, are becoming parents’ responsibilities this fall.

While a central accomplishment of Cuba’s revolution was universal education system, this year merely opening and operating Cuba’s 10,000 schools for 1.4 million students is a major accomplishment – before struggling to approximate something like the conditions necessary for effective schooling. For school,s no water means problems with drinking, toilets, cooking, washing and basic hygiene.

This crisis results partially from longstanding U.S. sanctions, a collapse of tourism during the pandemic, inflation, and other problems. But Mr. Trump has substantially worsened the misery.

Reuters reports that many ordinary Cubans have only a few hours of electricity a day and suffer disrupted health services and shortages of water and food. Fuel prices have skyrocketed far beyond the average Cuban’s means. Reuters found gasoline selling on the black market for as much as $38 a gallon, three times the average government monthly salary. The blockade has also disrupted public transportation. Collapse of fuel imports also worsens refrigeration, water pumping, and farming.

The U.S. has had a comprehensive embargo dating to the 1960s, when it might have had some justification. (Unquestionably, letting the USSR place missile launchers in Cuba in 1962 was a stupid mistake, although it triggered a U.S. promise not to invade again.)

I remember the Cuban Revolution. The U.S. could have merely accepted it. Fidel Castro was a strongly nationalist leader – and a strong character. It’s a slight oversimplification to say the U.S. pushed him into Soviet arms; but a 1964 U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that Castro had turned toward the Soviet Union in 1959–60 “more out of necessity than conviction.” It noted that Castro's relationship with Moscow wasn't entirely comfortable. Castro was dependent upon the USSR in ways he disliked. He wasn't simply Moscow's puppet.

That is why we have made life unnecessarily difficult for Cubans for more than a half-century. For many decades the U.N. General Assembly has warned that our actions – even pre-Trump – violated international law. If one of those Cuban mothers could somehow ask me, I sure couldn’t explain why it’s in our national interest now to starve her and her kids. Nor could Donald Trump, of course. Could you?

We should remove our muddy boots from Cuba’s neck. Should have, long ago.

                                                    – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared on the 13th of September, 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper’s website, and will be up presently on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM ]

Not Seeing Why to Hate the Democratic Socialists

Let’s put this anti-Democratic Socialist nonsense in some perspective.

The predominant fact about the U.S. is that after banishing the robber barons and somewhat equalizing things, we’ve gone from a dangerous inegalitatian society to an insanely unequal one in decades.

That kind of inequality isn’t good, even for the wealthy.

In the U.S., we’ve seen not only leftist groups complaining of the inequality, but groups like the Tea Party and MAGA complaining that our system is no longer working for them. Strip away the social policy issues like women’s health, gender, and racism, and their complaint has been that there’s an elite making out like bandits off us. That’s what I see, too! (But, no, I don’t believe that elite buggers children in a pizza joint.) They just get bamboozled into thinking it’s the welfare cheats or the immigrants stealing from them, not corporations – or that putting a wealthy con man in the White House will somehow improve things.

What is this socialist stuff, anyway? It got a bad rap in the 20^th Century: the Russian Revolution scared businessfolk; and Russia under Stalin turned very, very ugly.

But in the 19^th Century it was a Christian concept, mostly! Many groups in the U.S. and the U.K. tried cooperatives and Christian communities. There were a surprisingly wide variety of Christian Socialist groups who saw socialism as an actively Christian concept. Many argued that the economic relationships created by industrial capitalism were themselves morally defective because they violated the Christian conception of community.

Why not? Jesus lived that way. Jesus celebrated the poor and understood the debilitating effect on a man’s heart of having vast wealth, or He wouldn’t have so picturesquely described the difficulty a rich man would have reaching the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus told us to welcome the poorest among us – not to poison and cheat each other to make outlandish profits.

Yeah, then socialism got preached (but not practiced) by hostile nations. It got mixed in with Russia’s national interests. Russians wanted to bury us and talked a communist game, so communism – socialism – seemed traitorous.

Contemporary Democratic Socialists are not evil, as our Vice-President Vance says. They’re tapping into a long Christian-based ethical tradition. They’re also not dangerous to “Democrats.” They’re speaking the terrible secret both political parties don’t want us hearing: that both, despite definite differences, have participated in the disequalization of our once nation. With them alternating or sharing control of out nation during the past century, this debilitating inequality grow on their watch?

They all make or acquiesce in the many governmental decisions that pave the way: tax cuts for the rich; freeing corporations from restrictions that protect our health or pocketbooks; the absolute certainty that universal health care, as practiced happily in every other nation, is simply unthinkable. Yo! That’s because vast money can be made by insurers and middle men (and middle women) that wouldn’t be available in a government run health service devoted to treating people, not profit.

Democratic Socialists are speaking some truths that vast corporate behemoths wish we wouldn’t notice. Donald Trump is personally an unfortunate president, undermining our military, our government, and our relations with other countries; but he’s part of the same circus we’ve watched for decades.

Some folks like to ask themselves what Jesus would do. Well, it’s easier to see him as a Democratic Socialist questioning genocide than wearing a MAGA hat.

                                   – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared on the 6th of September, 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper’s website, and will be up presently on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM ]

Two Vacancies and Two Appointments for the County Commission's Agenda

I called Doña Ana County Tuesday and asked a trick question: “Who is the County Treasurer?” Someone politely gave me the same information as the county website: Marisol Richardson. I asked to speak to Deputy Tresurer Eric Rodriguez.

To her credit, the county employee came back on the line and volunteered that she’d given me incorrect information “because I just didn’t know what to say.” She was extremely apologetic and highly professional, a credit to the county. I apologized too.

The question was tricky because Ms. Richardson, weeks ago, took a different job, also with the county. There has been no public announcement. As time kept passing, I figured the public should know that our County Treasurer isn’t our County Treasurer. I was calling hours after the County Commission’s regular meeting, during which none of this was mentioned. That looks bad, in a county that’s under extra scrutiny just now.

When I called Ms. Richardson, she was candid and apologetic. She confirmed the facts, took ownership of the failure to have said anything public, and said she was in the process --- that she’d written an announcement and was working with the County. She hadn’t realized she should do anything more public until other elected officials suggested she do so. She had informed the Commission. She said she had not been receiving two salaries.

Oddly, I don’t think the county is being harmed. Rodriguez was Deputy Treasurer years ago, then served two full terms as Treasurer. Term-limited, he did not run in 2024. But no one could be more capable of running this office, even as Deputy, or Acting. We talked. He wanted to assure the public that the office is functioning normally and the unusual facts I related above have not interrupted that.

The County Commission should invite folks interested in serving out Richardson’s term to apply, give those applications due consideration, perhaps interviewing the candidates at a meeting, as was done when Amanda Lopez Askin was appointed County Clerk. That’ll take time. But there’s no urgency.

It’s a bit more urgent to appoint someone to replace Joanna Ferrary as District 37 State Representative. One reason her recent resignation made sense is that, throughout the year, legislators attend meetings and hearings, gathering information for use in the next formal session. Why have Ferrary do that when she’ll not be our representative next session? Ideally, we’d appoint for these months whoever will succeed her in January; but we’ll decide that 3November. It’d make some sense to appoint Lori Martinez, the Democratic candidate. In a heavily Democratic district, she’s likely to win. But Republicans can reasonably argue that her opponent, Isabella Solis, could win. Two reasonable alternatives: (1) schedule a special meeting for 5 November to appoint as interim representative the person elected, or, (2) recognizing political realities, place three marbles in a hat. Write “Lori” on two, since she’s more likely to win, and write “Isabella” on the third, and appoint whomever chance dictates, at the next commission meeting. Appointing someone not on the ballot would be stupid.

Meanwhile, the County also should also stop letting Derrick Pacheco outsmart it. We keep trying to punish him unconstitutionally. Latest was filing misdemeanor charges for saying, “You’re treating us like a bunch of pendejos.” Courts say you can’t constitutionally punish him for that. Even the commissioners looked startled. Some attorney could get Pacheco a bunch of our county money for these stupidities.

                                                                    – 30 –

 

[The above column appeared on the 30th of August, 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, and will be up soon on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / ]

[ Further developments and further reflection have caused me to refine my opinion regarding appointing an interim District 37 Representative to serve out the remaining months of Joanne Ferrary’s term. Democrat Lori Martinez and Republican Isabella Solis are campaigning, and, on 3November, the voters will choose one to serve from January 2027 until January 2029.

If not for politics, the most sensible course would be to appoint Lori Martinez, more likely winner in November. Democrat Ferrary has held the seat for a decade. Democrats tend to prevail in Dona Ana County legislative elections. However, Republicans reasonably object that Solis could win. I initially suggested either leaving it partly to chance or waiting until after the 3November election decides who’ll take the position in 2027.

What’s changed? I continue to believe that an appointment by the County Commission of Martinez will hurt her campaign for the two-year position. A quite negarive audit, Oracle, and the county-manager situation, plus citizens getting knocked down or improperly arrested, have made the County Commission highly unpopular; and Solis is already making the possible appointment a campaign issue, although an interim appointment would follow the law and is what both parties have consistently done elsewhere. I’d bet that the bad smell of commission involvement could help Solis and hurt Martinez politically, and outweighs the ephemeral “incumbent” status Martinez would technically have.

Considering this requires considering why Ferrary’s resignation made sense: during this season plenty is getting done in preparation for the legislative session in early 2027. Hearings, information-gathering, and consultations with constituents, ideally, should continue, as it would in a non-election year; but having Ferrary do those makes little sense. Appointing some non-candidate for a month or two makes even less sense.

When I warned Martinez of the political danger, she didn’t argue, but jumped right to discussion of the specific activities she would get a quick start on. Stuff you and I wouldn’t even be very aware of. Meanwhile, Solis has disclaimed any great interest in the interim appointment, saying that little of importance is going on right now and suggesting, I think, appointment of a non-candidate. Given those two candidate responses to the situation, I cannot see (from constituents’ perspective) a better solution than appointing Martinez as expeditiously as if lawful and feasible. She’s the likely victor. She wants to do the work, even if the appointment harms her. So, go for it! Since Solis says it ain’t important, why appoint her? It should be agreed by all, however, that if Solis prevails in the election, Martinez would immediately resign the interim post and the Commission would immediately appoint Solis. (I do not know enough to know how important the couple of months’ work will be.) ]

[ That’s the fairest and most efficient course to best serve all the constituents. It follows the law. It’s what county commissions in New Mexico have consistently done. ]