GOP Transparency?

RELEASE: Will Domenici Jr. Keep His Promise to File Monthly Finance Reports?

Weh and Turner Still Considering Whether to Run Transparent Campaigns?

ALBUQUERQUE, NM – More than a month after Pete Domenici Jr.’s campaign said that disclosing its campaign donors monthly “is just no problem” because “we want more transparency into campaign contributions,” the campaign continues to run in the dark, failing to disclose it’s donors or campaign expenditures. GOP candidate Allen Weh is still “considering” disclosing his campaign contributions andDoug Turner has said “maybe” to running an open and transparent campaign.

“The Republican candidates for Governor like to talk about openness and transparency, but when given an opportunity to walk the walk, the majority of GOP candidates continue to run their campaigns in the dark,” said Scott Forrester, DPNM Executive Director. “Everyone is left wondering what these candidates are hiding?”

The Facts:

Domenici Jr. Campaign Promised Bi-Weekly Or Monthly Finance Reporting. According to Pete St. Cyr, “After we originally published our blog we received an email from campaign coordinator Doug Antoon, who clarified the campaign’s plan for financial reporting. ‘I would like to shoot for semi-monthly or bi-weekly if we can handle the paperwork and have the people available to post everything on that timetable. But monthly is just no problem,’ Antoon wrote. ‘We want more transparency into campaign contributions, not less.’” [Blog, What’s the word with Pete St. Cyr, 1/17/10]

January 2010: Weh Campaign Said He Was “Considering” Voluntarily Releasing Campaign Finance Reports. According to the Heath Haussamen blog, “Republican gubernatorial candidate Allen Weh says he may join other candidates who have chosen to voluntarily release campaign finance reports this month. ‘We’re considering it,’ Weh spokesman Christopher Sanchez wrote this morning in an e-mail. He had no further comment. Weh joins Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Turner in not giving a definite answer (Turner said ‘maybe’ earlier this week) to the question I’ve been asking about whether gubernatorial candidates would voluntarily release a finance report this month for the fourth quarter of 2009. Weh is the last gubernatorial candidate to provide some kind of answer.” [The New Mexican Independent, 1/21/10]

Turner Said “Maybe” To Reporting Campaign Finance Early. According to the Heath Haussamen blog, “Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Turner doesn’t have plans to release a campaign finance report to the public until the next one is required on April 12 – but he’s also not entirely closing the door on doing it sooner. ‘I would imagine we’ll report in April when it’s appropriate,’ Turner told NMPolitics.net’s Peter St. Cyr…Turner was speaking at a tax protest outside the Roundhouse that he held with former Gov. Gary Johnson. ‘Maybe we’ll do it earlier,’ Turner said of releasing a finance report.” [Blog, Heath Haussamen on New Mexico Politics, 1/19/10]

Turner Said He Had No Resistance To Reporting Campaign Finance Early; Said He Would Self-Fund Significant Part Of Campaign. According to Heath Haussamen’s blog, “Meanwhile, three other gubernatorial candidates — Democrat Diane Denish and Republicans Susana Martinez and Janice Arnold-Jones — have already gone beyond what the law requires in terms of campaign finance transparency, and Republican candidate Pete Domenici Jr. says he plans to join them. ‘We don’t have any resistance to that,’ Turner said of releasing reports more often than the law requires. ‘It’s just that we haven’t been focusing on following every single campaign on, you know, who’s proving that they’re more transparent than the other.’ ‘I have started off this campaign acknowledging from the beginning that I’m self-funding a significant portion of it, and I will continue to self-fund significant portions of it even while I’m raising money,’ Turner said. ‘I’m raising money from oil and gas industry. I’m raising money from businesses that care about the future of this state. And when we report, we’re going to report and everyone will know about it.’” [Blog, Heath Haussamen on New Mexico Politics, 1/19/10]

New Mexico Still "Solidly Democratic"

This is an article originally published 2/1/10 on the NM Independent. It is written by Matthew Reichbach.

A recent poll shows that although the Republican Party has made a small gain in partisanship figures, New Mexico still remains one of the states with the most self-identified Democrats. New Mexico,Gallup finds, is one of 23 states (plus the District of Columbia) “that can be classified as solidly Democratic.”

The numbers include Independents who say they lean toward either the Democratic or Republican Party.

The Democratic advantage in party identification dropped from 14 percent to 13 percent. This ranks New Mexico as the 16th most-Democratic leaning state. Four of the top five states are from New England (the fifth is Hawaii).

In the 2008 elections, the entire party’s Congressional delegation was Democratic for the first time, thanks to the retirement of longtime Republican Senator Pete Domenici and the resulting fallout.

The results came from all the polling conducted by Gallup in 2009.

According to Gallup, “The margin of error for most states is ±2 percentage points, but is as high as ±4 percentage points for Delaware, Hawaii, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and the District of Columbia.”

The Economic Crisis and Populist Revolt at Boiling Point

***This blog post is a result of the work of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research***

SURVEYS FOR DEMOCRACY CORPS AND NPR PUT AMERICA'S POLITICS AT A CRUCIAL MOMENT

With President Obama delivering his State of the Union Address tonight, we wanted to make sure you had our interpretation of this key moment based on a Democracy Corps and Center for American Progress national survey conducted right before the Massachusetts Senate election and a National Public Radio bipartisan poll conducted with Glen Bolger of Public Opinion Strategies right afterwards. We take these developments very seriously, but we also want to offer perspective and set out major steps that can produce a very different future.

The upset in Massachusetts was the culmination of yearlong trends that reached their boiling point even before these voters gave Ted Kennedy's Senate seat to a Republican. Voters are increasingly consumed by unemployment and want their leaders to address that priority, yet the leaders in Washington seem polarized and gridlocked, pushing a health care bill now defined by special deals rather than its benefits and the reforms that voters support.

As you will see, this is reflected in disillusionment with incumbents, Democrats, and the Democratic Congress, even as Republicans remain unreconstructed. There is a populist and conservative revolt against Wall Street and financial elites, Congress and government, centered among independents. Democrats and President Obama are seen as more interested in bailing out Wall Street than helping Main Street. Stir in demoralized Democrats and energized Republicans and you reach a boiling point.

The big question is whether this mood, all too reminiscent of 1994, will be controlling in November. Or will voters see a different kind of politics, priorities and progress over the next nine months?

Before Massachusetts, there was some evidence that key indicators and sentiment had stabilized since November and that, perhaps, the environment is at a low point for Democrats – bad timing for a special election. Despite the bleak mood, there is some evidence in both polls of an uptick in optimism about the economy.

Our analysis of these surveys suggests a number of things that Democrats can do to move America to a different place:

1. Pass health care and explain it anew.

2. Get the spotlight off of Congress.

3. Turn to jobs and focus relentlessly on bringing the economy and small business back.

4. Act on reforming Wall Street.

5. Take visible action to cut spending and reduce the deficit.

6. Get the economic narrative right.

7. Sharply define the Republicans and the real choice in the election.