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In Senate race, NM’s future is in Balderas
Jake McCook
Why would we nominate the candidate who leads the pack with money, polling and political endorsements? Hector is one of the most well-respected candidates my generation has seen in New Mexico politics.
In the race to fill New Mexico’s open U.S. Senate seat, our voters have a unique opportunity to send a native son to Washington D.C. As a native of Colfax County who works in Washington and cannot vote in this election – or for any voting member of Congress for that matter – I am urging Mr. and Mrs. New Mexico to support the one candidate who I believe can truly represent our voices in the halls of Congress. That candidate is Hector Balderas.
By now voters are aware of Hector’s hometown roots – roots which I share and believe make him uniquely suited for the office he seeks. What other candidate knows what it’s like to grow up from the land, in a town of less than 300 people, as I did? What other candidate was raised in public housing and created a future for himself despite all odds? Which candidate will take the community values cultivated at New Mexico high school basketball games and county fairs with him to Washington? Which candidate carries with him the weekend visits from Highlands back home on I-25 or en route to the Legislature in Santa Fe to fight for his community? Which candidate can bring those experiences with him the U.S. Senate?
There is only one.
Supporting Hector simply because of where he comes from is not enough, and I know this. I also support Hector for his stalwart dedication to issues important to our citizens, and because I truly believe – and I say this as a young gringo with a brown soul – that New Mexico needs a Hispanic voice to represent our state at this moment in time. The Senate needs one as well, and we are lucky to have that voice in Hector.
For the past several years, New Mexico has had a loyal watchdog in Hector Balderas. As state auditor, he has combated wasted, fraud and abuse in government – a collective problem that has plagued our state and Washington for too long. Voters from all four corners and throughout the country are frustrated at the lack of oversight and accountability of their tax dollars. Why not elect someone whose primary job has been – on a statewide level – to do just that?
Focusing on education and job training is exactly what our congressional leaders should be doing for New Mexico’s future. But this isn’t just a campaign platform for Hector – it’s part of who he is. A product of our educational institutions, Hector will no doubt be a fierce advocate for our high schools, vocational centers, junior colleges and universities to prepare our state for the future – a future that has too often been neglected by those who know not the challenges and potentials of New Mexico’s youth. As a product of Colfax County schools myself, I can tell you it is the most important issue for my generation.
It’s our future at stake
This election is very personal and important to me, and I have been frustrated at what has been imbalanced coverage in favor of establishment candidates. With such an important election, why would we allow the incumbency factor to dictate our nominee? It’s crucial that our coverage represent the diversity of New Mexico, and that our candidates are presented on equal footing.
Much has been said about experience in this race, but I wonder, with all the disenchantment of government and politics, why would we nominate the candidate who leads the pack with money, polling and political endorsements? Hector is one of the most well-respected candidates my generation has seen in New Mexico politics. It’s our future at stake, and with all due respect to the other candidates, no one represents New Mexico’s future better than Hector Balderas.
On June 5th, this native New Mexican in D.C. won’t be able to cast a ballot for him in this race – but I hope you will.
Jake McCook is a native New Mexican working on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. He was part of the 2005 New Mexico Fellows Program class with the Department of Cultural Affairs, and later worked for Gov. Bill Richardson’s presidential campaign. He grew up on an organic farm in Colfax County and is a 2001 graduate of Maxwell High School.
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$100 billion on infrastructure = 2.5 million jobs.
Agree with you and Krugman in general, Mr. Schneider.
We need major public investment. South Korea has done it, and is bypassing the global recession and thriving.
I agree with your general premises here Mr. Goodenow, applaud your frank opinions of the atrocious Balderas campaign, and appreciate your insights into the inner working and principals running the campaign. But I still have a strong feeling that Mr. Balderas got exactly what he wanted and paid for in this sorry excuse for a campaign. After all, he wrote the checks, accepted the flawed and weak strategy, and the buck has to stop with the boss, him. He never really wanted to beat Heinrich, he wanted to be a good guy, run feel good ads about himself, play ball with the party bosses as they dictated, get his name out there statewide, and seem to be ambitious and strong without being neither. He got exactly his money’s worth here, and the contributors got fleeced if they contributed thinking he wanted to beat Heinrich.
Balderas needed an economic plan, too.
We love Heinrich’s visceral connection to the wilderness, but he needs more than that to win in November; he needs a real education, infrastructure, and economic plan.
Back in October (or thereabouts) Balderas spoke at a DFNM meeting. I asked him what he would do about unemployment. The only thing he could come up with was lower taxes for small businesses. A dreadful idea. It was if, in the fall of 2011, with unemployment holding at disastrous levels, he hadn’t considered the issue.
Of course, I haven’t seen a really good plan from any of the democrats, although I haven’t seen any as dreadful as the Republicans are proposing. Of course, an education and infrastructure plan IS an economic plan.
Here’s another statement of what we need, and what I’d like to hear from the candidates:
The solution to this problem is nothing complex — the arbitrage is sitting there in the first chart, plain for all to see. The government can borrow at 1.45%: it should do so, in vast quantities, and invest that money back into the economy itself. Take a few hundred billion dollars and use it to fix our broken infrastructure, to re-hire all those laid-off teachers and firefighters, to provide some kind of safety net for the millions of Americans who have been out of work for more than a year. Even if the real long-term return on any stimulus package was zero, the nominal long-term return would be well over 1.45%, making the investment worthwhile. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/06/01/americas-jobs-crisis/
Maybe I’m just depressed because I’m about 2/3 of the way through Krugman’s new book, End This Depression Now (Yay! Albuquerque Bernalillo County Library!), which reprises all the evidence for how incredibly bad our economic policy has been over the last decade or so – and how the Republicans’ ideas would make it worse, and the Democrats’ plans aren’t a whole lot better.
Tuesday the reckoning begins for Caroline Buerkle, Mr. Balderas’s campaign manager, and for Mo Elleithee and his team at Hilltop Public Solutions back in Washington, D.C. They have botched Mr. Balderas’s U.S. Senate campaign badly — so badly that the public image of both Ms. Buerkle and her firm and Mr. Elleithee and his firm will be badly tarnished for a long time to come.
Mr. Balderas is an inspirational leader. He showed it at the Democratic convention in March and on many occasions. But the campaign was never built around his inspirational persona.
The Balderas campaign never gave voters a compelling reason to vote for Hector Balderas over Martin Heinrich. That could have been done without running a negative campaign. There were a long list of reasons to vote for Hector over Martin. The campaign never gave us one. This is political malpractice on a level rarely ever seen before.
The campaign hid from voters Mr. Balderas’s intelligence and even almost all of his best public policy positions. His best policy positions weren’t even on Mr. Balderas’s website. The campaign was an insult to the intelligence of all New Mexicans, and Ms. Buerkle and Mr. Elleithee bear 100% of the responsibility for that.
And although Mr. Balderas raised $1 million, he only had about $375,000 cash on hand the first week of April. Mo Elleithee and his team must have fleeced the Balderas campaign and then were so inept at their work that they put out weak messages, when they were doing any work at all. Had the Balderas campaign had $700,000 on hand the first week of April, he could have won.
I do not personally blame Mr. Balderas. He gave inspirational speeches that he wrote himself and he gave one intelligent interview after another. He is the best State Auditor in America and he had all the qualities to become a great U.S. Senator. But Hector Balderas was very poorly served by Caroline Buerkle and Mo Elleithee and they cost him a winnable race.
Marty Chavez may lose the U.S. House race because of “Marty fatigue,” but no one will question the job that his campaign manager, Alan Packman, has done, and the whole Chavez campaign team. It’s been an intelligent and professional operation from beginning to end, with great messages pouring out almost daily for months. Had Hector Balderas hired Alan Packman as his campaign manager, he would have won this nomination for U.S. Senate. That has been the tragedy of watching the botched job of Caroline Buerkle and Mo Elleithee.
And people like me have been posting about all this since December. Caroline Buerkle could have changed course any time. She deliberately chose to run the campaign she ran. And the same is true of Mo Elleithee. Lots of people were posting very similar messages about the new course the Balderas campaign needed to take to win, going back several months. Caroline Buerkle and Mo Elleithee were too arrogant to listen to and act on the consensus of independent observers.
Ultimately, campaigns for the U.S. Senate are about the future of America. They are about real matters that affect are lives. And they are often historic. Ms. Buerkle and Mr. Elleithee both lack any awareness of this deeper dimension of U.S. Senate races and they both fundamentally betrayed one of the most promising leaders of our time, our generation, and our state.
To Mr. Balderas, all we can say is, Live and learn. This experience with campaign “professionals” who were not should not embitter those of us who admire you, and it should not discourage you in the future. Just pick your team much more carefully next time. Successful campaigns are built around the strengths of the leader, the candidate. That never happened in your campaign, Mr. Balderas, but you can make sure it happens in every future campaign. Your day will come. Your day will come.
Very well-written, Jake.
Hector Balderas is indeed a unique leader. He is the best State Auditor in America. And he has a real agenda for education and economic growth.
Unfortunately, his campaign manager Caroline Buerkle and his East Coast consulting firm have run an absolutely dreadful campaign on Mr. Balderas’s behalf, and Mr. Balderas has let them do it. Because of this, and because Mr. Heinirch (whose campaign hasn’t been much better) is a prolific fundraiser, Mr. Heinrich will win on Tuesday by 20% or more.
The media has barely covered the race, and barely looked at any policy differences between the two candidates. The media is interested in polling, fundraising, conflict, scandals, and mistakes. There are no journalists analyzing public policy in our state.
So we as citizens have been deprived of any real campaign by both the Balderas team and the Heinrich team as well as the media. I condemn them all for insulting us as citizens and for betraying our democracy.
Despite all this, I think that Hector Balderas is an expert on state and local government, and learning from this disaster he will go on to put together — in 2014 or 2018 — a real agenda-based life-changing campaign for Governor, and go on to be the best Governor in the history of New Mexico. Martin Heinrich has the potential for statesmanship and is a way better choice than Heather Wilson, and hopefuly Mr. Heinrich will run a campaign beginning on June 6th that is not an insult to us as citizens but that provides a real course forward for our country, including education and job training – a vital issue that Mr. Heinrich has neglected during his first 7 and a half years in public life.
We must rebuild our country’s infrastructure, assist businesses effectively, improve education and job training, cut other parts of the federal budget, and reform and simplify our taxes while raising more revenues. This five-part agenda is what will save our country from ruin.
Since there are few Republicans who can be counted on to do any of these things we need Democrats who are deeply committed to doing them. Balderas at least has the education piece figured out fairly well. Heinrich still seems to be a bit lost and not up to meeting the central national challenges of the 2010s. We love Heinrich’s visceral connection to the wilderness, but he needs more than that to win in November; he needs a real education, infrastructure, and economic plan.
I grow more than a little weary of this “brown soul” or Hispanic business. Spanish was my first language and I still use it interchangeably with English with my friends who also grew up in a generation in which Spanish was our first language. And I speak English as well as or better than most whose first language was English. I’m insulted by those who think I need special care and feeding or representation. I am an AMERICAN dammit and the culture among those whom some gringos would label “Hispanics” is American; except for those professional “hispanics” or professional ethnics who make their living off grievances. Or Dems who use it to win elections. This labeling promotes victim-hood among minorities and some take advantage. Witness Warren in MA.
For the record, I have the three most beautiful grand kids in the whole world without a doubt and they are half gringo and half my side whose ancestors came here about 400 y ago.
Mr. McCook says: ”…why would we nominate the candidate who leads the pack with money, polling and political endorsements?” And: ”Supporting Hector simply because of where he comes from is not enough, and I know this. I also support Hector for his stalwart dedication to issues important to our citizens, and because I truly believe – and I say this as a young gringo with a brown soul – that New Mexico needs a Hispanic voice to represent our state at this moment in time. The Senate needs one as well, and we are lucky to have that voice in Hector.”
That’s it? That’s all you got to differentiate Mr. Balderas over Mr. Heinrich? You think Mr. Heinrich is against education and job training? I doubt it. And how about those issues you mention that are “important to our citizens”, what would they be that Mr. Heinrich is opposed to? And since Mr. Balderas refuses to actually campaign with any vigor and distinction points against Mr. Heinrich, or even campaign at all it seems, just running feel good ads with no differentiation except ethnicity and place of birth, we are left with nothing with which to vote for in Mr. Balderas except those. And as you said, that’s not enough is it?