Pearce Super-PAC Muscles into Municipal Election - Why?

Why is a PAC backed by Steve Pearce attacking Las Cruces candidates with misleading ads? In trying to influence the city election, why did it not even register as a PAC with the city? And why do monied interests elsewhere want to influence city council elections? 

Las Crucens should care who's mayor here. Las Crucens should care who's on the City Council. County residents, myself included, have reason to care too.

But why should oil-and-gas interests from Hobbs tell us how to vote here? Why should a super-PAC attack local candidates such as Kasandra Gandara and Ken Miyagashima?

“GOAL West PAC” has a Hobbs address. Pearce has donated some of his excess campaign funds to the PAC, and his brother Phillip is its Treasurer. 

Many citizens have recently received the PAC's mailers. 

So far, the content is pretty lame. For example, Kassanda Gandara is a mother (son a veteran, daughter in med school) who started as a PTO member fighting for her kids, and also became a social worker – but the oil-and-gas PAC calls her “a lifelong bureaucrat.” (To me, a “bureaucrat” shuffles papers. A social worker affecting people's lives, like a law enforcement officer or doctor, does something more, even if employed by the public, (As Pearce is.) Another mailer uses a funny picture of Mayor Miyagashima and talks about “lipstick on a pig.” (Las Cruces is the “pig”; the “lipstick” means comments that Las Cruces is a great place to live. Which I think it is.) The mailer blathers about “small business” without suggesting any real ideas – except that we shouldn't increase the minimum wage.

It's negative campaigning. By ousiders with money. Based on the old premise that if you repeat something long enough people will eventually believe it. And it could get uglier right at the end.

I don't much want Steve Pearce telling me whom to vote for. I don't give a rat's posterior what Pearce or his brother has to say about Ken Miyagashima. It even seems a little arrogant that no one even bothered to use the available legal methods to obscure Pearce's connection with the PAC a little, to make at least some effort to blunt the naked truth that Steve Pearce figures he can tell us whom to elect to local office.

This is the same Steve Pearce who played chicken with shutting down the government and helped cost us all billions ($1 billion in interest alone) merely to make abstract ideological points. Same Pearce who's ex-military but has a miserable record on veterans' issues. Same guy who's trying to cut back on public lands because they're inconvenient for the interests who fund his campaigns – and because he thinks government should be minimized at every turn, no matter how that harms us.

Ironically, the PAC blames Miyagashima for southern New Mexico's economic problems; but who could have done more in recent years to improve New Mexico's economy: Miyagashima (with one vote on a city council) or Steve Pearce and his ally Susana Martinez? Hi, Steve! 

If I lived in the City I'd be tempted to vote against the Pearce candidates, Miguel Silva and Eli Guzman, just to send Pearce a message. (There are other reasons.)

Guzman and fellow Chamber of Commerce endorsee Hall stiffed the Las Cruces Sun-News candidate forums. They preferred to avoid probing questions from journalists but let the Chamber (or Pearce and his big-money folks) send out misleading flyers attacking their opponents. You can't ask a flyer hard questions.

A vote for Guzman, Hall, or Van Veen is an implicit approval of running for office that way.

                                                          -30-

[The column above appeared in the Las Cruces Sun-News this morning, Sunday, 1 November, and will also appear later today on the KRWG-TV website.]
[I wrote this while traveling, and sent it in Tuesday, and of course lots has been published since then on this subject.  This is simply politics at its worst: an oil company and a few rich folks, all from far beyond the borders of our county, paying to spread misleading attack ads against local candidates here.  It's a hate-group ultimately controlled by Hobbs's U.S. Congressman, Steve Pearce, who's developing an interesting habit of trying to meddle in local politics.  Sad.  Sadder if it succeeds in outweighing the will of the actual citizens of Las Cruces.  Should add fuel to the anti-Pearce fire in Las Cruces next year; but as I recall, he lost the Las Cruces portion of the 2014 vote to a gutsy, hard-working neophyte.   Folks here generally see him for what he is already.]
[For the record: I hope Miyagashima wins re-election.  I don't always agree with him, but I've found him reasonably candid with me and I think the City is generally doing some good things -- and getting attacked viciously for it.  I like Miguel personally; but I see no reason to believe he'd be a better mayor than Ken; his charter-breaking misconduct (along with other councilors) regarding minimum wage doesn't entitle him to a promotion, and the big bucks and energy of the super-PAC and the Chamber of Commerce on his behalf suggest he'd be their mayor, not the people's.  Ms. Montoya-Ortega seems a nice lady, possibly well-intentioned, and if she indeed wants to help Las Cruces perhaps she'll get more involved in local government and politics than she has been in the past.  She has shown no experience, education, or new ideas that should excite anyone about the idea of making her mayor. 
District 1? Kasandra Gandara, whom I haven't yet met, seems the far stronger candidate than Eli Guzman, whom I've only spoken to on the phone.  Gandara has done good things as a social worker, eventually got promoted to oversee a five-county region, and started as a mother fighting for her kids' education.  Guzman is personally appealing, as a local kid teaching martial arts, but he reacted badly to the effort by city codes enforcement folks to ensure that the new dojo he was building would be safe.   Further, it's hard not to assume that based on his loud opposition to freedom of choice for women wouldn't lead him to help with efforts to initiate a local anti-choice vote along the lines of the one that wasted time and money in Albuquerque.  (I hear such an effort is likely, but don't actually know so for a fact.)  
District 2? This is the closest we have to a reasonable race.  I'd vote for Greg Smith.  Reluctantly, because his conduct regarding the minimum-wage issue was not to his credit and his failure to speak out against the recall effort more vigorously was a failure to stand up for Las Cruces when it counted.  However, he does really care about improving Las Cruces, has done some things to actually improve it, and has the energy and experience to continue making a real contribution as councilor.  Philip Van Veen strikes folks (including me, during our one brief conversation) as more thoughtful than some of the Chamber-of-Commerce candidates; but I've seen and heard nothing from him that suggests he'd be anywhere near as useful and productive a councilor as Smith has been.  It's also not clear to me that he cares about aspects of the city other than making things easier for businesses and developers, or has the experience or perspective to do much good.  Maybe.  But Greg Smith can be counted on to think hard and work hard on a variety of issues that come before the council.
District 4: Jack Eakman has the background and perspective to be a very good councilor.  If the alternative is a Tea Party denizen who loathes Obama, loves Pearce, and didn't even dare show up to visit with Sun-News journalists, there's no serious alternative.  (Voting for Gilbert Vasquez would be a wasted vote, since he'd be legally precluded from taking office.) ]

Update: Minimum Wage Machinations in Las Cruces

I suppose I should be grateful that Mayor Ken Miyagashima engineered a compromise in which the City Council won't immediately eviscerate the petition-mandated ordinance it enacted to raise the minimum wage.

But I'm still troubled.

I'm troubled by a City Councilor who says she canceled her newspaper subscription when she got elected, so as not to be influenced. This attitude reminds me of certain religious proselytizers who used to stop and chat while I gardened. They frequently recommended books to me, but when I once recommended one to them, they replied, “Oh, no. We already know the truth.”

If I were a City Councilor I'd be interested in what others had to say, particularly others whose views I didn't generally share. I'd scan “Sound Off” daily.

I'm troubled by a City Councilor who takes very questionable positions and, when questioned, doesn't respond to the substance of the question but complains he's being threatened and cloaks himself in inspirational quotations.

Does it bother you that you're the major advocate for violating the City Charter to mute the minimum wage hike, when your wife's job is to lobby government officials for the Restaurant Association, which desperately wants to keep the minimum wage down? 
 
“George Washington said, 'It's better to be alone than in bad company.'”

I think the councilor drew the distinction that his wife lobbied state legislators – and presumably had nothing to do with her employer's op-ed against the minimum wage hike here. Then it surfaced that his wife had been leading a petition drive in Albuquerque regarding tipped wages. So maybe municipalities are part of her job description.

“My only regret is that I have only one life to lose for my country.” (No, he didn't say that. Yet.) I still think he's sincere, though misguided. In his place I'd have a hard time maintaining objectivity, though from uxoriousness, not financial interest. I'd also recognize that voting on a healthy-food issue would undermine public trust.

It troubles me that when a councilor asked if the council might get sued for violating the City Charter, the City Attorney blandly assured him “No.”

Charter says “If there are enough petition signatures, enact the ordinance unchanged or let the people vote.” Councilors, acknowledging a popular majority would vote “Yes”, enacted the ordinance – while laughing up their sleeves about eviscerating it next week.

That Charter language sounds pretty mandatory. But it doesn't say explicitly that we can't immediately repeal the ordinance the people lawfully ordered us to enact.

But does the Charter provision mean anything? It's a way people can bring something to the Council's attention so the Council can use its discretion.

Gathering thousands of signatures seems excessive, for just that. And why does the Charter provision start, “The people shall have the power . . .”?

Arguing the City's position in court might work. Might. But the City Attorney dismisses casually the possibility that a neutral judge might notice how completely the City's action violated the spirit and intent of the Charter, note that even while enacting it the councilors were giggling about repealing, and order some remedy.

Do we want that kind of legal advice for Las Cruces, the kind that ignores serious risk to tell the majority what it wants to hear?

Does Las Cruces want that kind of publicity? A dozen minimum-wage workers suing a council that's playing tricks on its citizens and trying to slither through a possible loophole?

I am grateful to Miyagashima that we may not have to test conflicting legal views in the courts.
But in the long run, he did the anti-$10.10 camp the best favor it could have asked for.

                                                              -30-
[The column above appeared in the Las Cruces Sun-News today, Sunday, 2 November.]
[After I'd written this column, I finally managed to speak with City Attorney Pete Connelly.  The conversation was courteous on both sides, but distinctly unilluminating.  I noted I'd heard him answer "No" to the question about whether the City would get sued for violating the City Charter if the counselor's eviscerated the ordinance.  He confirmed that his view was that the Council had the authority to repeal the ordinance.  I asked him what, if that were so, the City Charter provision meant.  He said the City Charter was very clear that the petition-mandated activity was finished once the council enacted the ordinance, leaving the Council free to do as it wished.  I noted that gathering signatures, etc., was a lot of work, and asked whether he supposed anyone would put the provision in the Charter and not intend that the ordinance survive more than a few days.  (I referred to "getting six million signatures, and he got kind of stuck on that, repeating it two or three times in a questioning tone, so I changed my phrasing to "a bunch of signatures" or something, but I still didn't get a meaningful answer.) He told me he hadn't written the Charter.  I told him I disagreed, and thought the City would likely have gotten sued if it immediately repealed the ordinance -- and that the case would be an interesting one, not the slam-dunk for the city that he purported to believe it would be; and I asked him to imagine I argued that the charter provision would be rendered meaningless by his interpretation, and asked what he'd say on the subject if pressed by a judge.  He reiterated that in his view the City Council had the authority to repeal the ordinance if it wanted to.  Recognizing the futility of further questioning, I urged him to have a nice day, and he reciprocated.
Don't assume he hasn't anything to say.  He may be playing it close to the vest, in case the council does end up eviscerating the ordinance and  someone does sue.  He may just not like me very much, a feeling I suspect is growing common in city government just about now.  He may have been in a hurry to go home, as it was nearly 5.  He may think I might end up as a lawyer adverse to the City in this mess. Or he may realize he doesn't have a very good argument on that point.  
His view would ignore the spirit and clear intent of the Charter provision.  It would render the procedure outlined by the Charter meaningless, a nullity.
He could still argue that even so a court should not act to do justice, because of practicalities and because the minimum wage issue is political.]
[The work session on 27 October was interesting.   The councilors made a spirited defense of themselves against charges they had conspired.  I don't know that they did conspire.  I've tried to avoid making unwarranted accusations.  But they just don't get the part about a breach of the people's trust.  I'd love to hear one of them explain coherently why they have the right to ignore the intent of the City Charter.  Their legal argument is based on the apparent fact that no one thought to explicitly state the obvious.  That could win or lose in court.  But their argument that immediately repealing or eviscerating the ordinance would reasonably strike most citizens ad a breach of trust?  I haven't heard much argument, except that they were elected to use their discretion -- which is exactly what the City Charter forbade them to do in this situation.]

A Weed's View of the "Positivity Garden"

Greg Smith's recent commentary on “Tending a garden of positives: weeding out all the negatives” reminded me of three things.

One was a sign I bought a friend when we were working on a trial: “It doesn't matter how fast you drive if you don't know where you're going.”

Another was the historical incident at the start of the book Longitude.

Before we had a reliable way to determine longitude, navigation at sea was a challenge. Because a difference of opinion could lead to mutiny, the Brits made it illegal for anyone but the Captain and the Navigator even to attempt to keep track of the ship's position.

On one occasion, when the Navigator said to turn north, a sailor spoke up. He said they were well east of where the Navigator thought they were, and that if they turned North immediately they would soon run aground.

He must have believed what he said, since he knew that the penalty for keeping his own calculations was hanging, which sentence was carried out before sunset. The ship had already turned north. Early that morning it ran smack into the islands the sailor had mentioned. Almost all hands were lost, but the Captain survived long enough to crawl up onto the beach and lie there until a woman scavenging in the wreckage spotted his expensive watch and killed him.

Regrettably, Greg takes folks to task for disagreeing with him about Spaceport America and a plaza in Downtown Las Cruces. He defines the opposition as “negativity.” He implies that it's negativity for the sake of negativity, referring to “the negativity campaign” and “their overbearing negativity.” He more than implies we should simply ignore the naysayers, writing, “To ignore them is to deny them the inroads they desperately seek to establish” and that ignoring them can “contribute to the quality of life enjoyed here.”

For the record, I don't yet know enough to take a firm position on either. Regarding Spaceport America, I'm a bit of a skeptic. I thought Bob Hearn – whom I don't think of as particularly negative – raised some serious issues. When we discussed them on radio, I thought the gentleman rebutting him exuded complete confidence and provided some good answers. I'd have been interested in further discussion to hear Bob's rebuttals to those answers.

On the plaza, I'd very much like to see one, though since I'm not a city councilor I haven't weighed the costs against other municipal expenses. I think that if done right (a significant “if”) it would provide value to the community more than the financial calculations alone might suggest. It's something I think we should do, unless the costs are absurd; but I worry we'd make it too glitzy, too plastic, too perfect, too something. It can't be a plaza full of history; but neither should it feel false.

My real concern with Greg's commentary goes to the abstract concept: that negativity (defined as disagreeing with the mayor pro tem?) is inherently valueless or counter-productive. (I like and respect Greg, and doubt he meant to sound as if he wanted to squelch dissent.)

Marine navigation aside, naysayers can raise important questions we sometimes lose sight of in our haste to reach whatever we think the goal is.

Granted, some people will find the negative in anything. Granted, there will always be some citizens who define a successful city counsel meeting as one in which they got to take some real good shots at someone in power. Granted, some people will take even the most absurd position if their particular political party espouses it. (But it probably lacks grace for the mayor pro tem to say these things.)

But Bob Hearn is not that sort of citizen, and his questions about Spaceport America (which he said were designed to get people thinking about the matter, not to state a conclusion they should reach) were non-frivolous. Recent resignations by the some of the key players in Virgin Galactic may also be meaningful – or may not.

We have spent plenty of taxpayers' money on a bold gamble. I hope it pays off. But it remains a gamble so far. For citizens to question it seems pretty reasonable to me.

The argument that “Well, we're doing it, so all these questions just gum up the works” could be a good one in certain circumstances. More often it actually betrays the uncertainty of the persons speaking so confidently. If public questions or criticisms can harm the Spaceport America effort, then that effort is probably doomed anyway.

Maybe I hear Greg's words with the jaundiced ears of a columnist. Too often people make me aware of serious problems, though their jobs could be at risk if anyone knew we'd talked. Authorities tell me that everything's fine and criticisms just make people nervous. Then I dig deeper and find the problems are real.

Finally, the third thing Greg's “garden” analogy reminded me of was the well-known saying among gardeners that there are no weeds, just plants that happen to be growing where we don't want them.

                                                                    -30-
[The column above appeared in the Las Cruces Sun-News this morning, under the perhaps unfortunate title "Is City Driving Fast toward an Unknown Destination."  Although the headline is a snappy and clever reference to an anecdote in the column, which is good, it may give the impression that I was criticizing a bunch of recent decisions by the City Council.  I wasn't.  I was gently poking fun at a column by the Mayor Pro Tem that I felt was a little heavy-handed.   For the most part, I think the current city councilors, including Greg Smith, are fine people doing a fine job.
My point was and is that dissenting views and criticism have a legitimate, even an important place in democratic government.  Yeah, it's unfortunate that some folks criticize merely to criticize, or merely to hear themselves talk.  Sure, that can be frustrating to folks trying to run a city or a county.  But doesn't it kind of come with the territory?  Isn't that particularly so when the subjects are well-intentioned expenditures of large amounts of our money toward interesting goals one could reasonably doubt we'll ever reach?]