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This is Fronteras: A Changing America.

I'm KC Counts.

Thank you for joining us.

Democrats across the country won big in the midterms.

And New Mexico was no exception.

Local commentator and community radio cartel general manager Walt Rubel joins us to talk about it.

And what mandates voters are sending those Democrats into their elected positions with.

Well, so nice to see you back here at KRWG.

Thank you for being with us.

Well, thanks for inviting me back.

Well, I thought I'd start with, you know, the word mandate because it's something we heard a lot over the 2024 election.

And so I think if we could characterize a few mandates that Democrats are going into office with, it would probably start with affordability.

How do you see that playing a role in this election?

I in the election or in what come well, in the election, I think affordability was everything.

Well, no, I take that back.

Affordability, corruption and the Iran war.

Those three were a pretty difficult trifecta for the Republicans to get around.

and but certainly that is one of the mandates moving forward.

How do they do that?

I think they start with health care.

they end the Iran war.

I think there will probably be a government shutdown before there's even a change of Congress, because there's a funding bill coming up on the Iran war.

Democrats certainly feel like they have a mandate, to end that.

And I don't know if Republicans got that message or not.

We'll find out fairly soon.

and how much of a role do you think data centers might have played in people's choices?

I think that was certainly in the national election.

It wasn't a huge thing in Texas.

I think it was very big.

I think it hurt Greg Abbott a lot in New Mexico.

I don't think it played a huge role for us because we voted for there wasn't a big change in New Mexico and for Democratic run states.

That was kind of business as usual.

But for states like Texas, data centers were a huge issue.

and that is still yet to be resolved.

I don't think this is going to be the end of data centers by any means, but I think there are going to be new requirements when it comes to water and and electricity energy.

I think, it won't be just come in and spend a ton of money and get your way.

I think there will be a lot more regulations around that.

And certainly these decisions are often made more on a local level.

And, by both Republicans and Democrats, as you know, was done here locally in Dona Ana County.

so we'll get to the county commission later.

And how that shaped up, of course, that being a big issue locally.

but I wanted to move on.

you mentioned corruption, and I thought that was, an interesting topic to just to spend a little time on because it certainly doesn't belong to one party or the other.

No, it absolutely doesn't.

but you're talking about a mandate.

I think their mandates I hope, on both the state and national level, no question about the national level.

the two bills that I'm going to be looking for on those two different levels on the state level, now that we have passed the constitutional amendment giving legislatures legislators pay.

I think there needs to be a little bit of accountability that goes along with that which was not included in this constitutional amendment.

I think the place to start there is the issue of conflict of interest, when it comes to voting.

And so we're not even talking about money in that.

We're just saying if you have the obvious example this year was medical malpractice, where the head of, the Senate Judiciary Committee, Joseph Cervantes, Isabel, practice attorney, I don't want to pick on him, but that's just such an obvious example.

But it's all throughout the legislature.

And so I think at the state level, that's what's needed there at the national level.

I think the Congress needs to pass a bill preventing themselves from trading stocks.

It would be nice if they could include the president in that.

I don't think there's going to be any checks and balances against the executive office.

And until two years from now, and we get a new president.

But certainly when it comes to Congress, they should pass, new rules for themselves, starting with a ban on trading stocks.

I think.

Well, let's get back to New Mexico on the same topic.

some other examples come to mind.

Recent examples like Andrea Romero and Andrea Reeb.

Right.

Who's just now coming back into office, but both attorneys and, some questionable conflicts of interest there.

What are your thoughts?

Well, it's just endemic.

It is just part of the system.

and I know I have been, really banging the drum for paid legislatures for more than 20 years now.

For a long, long time.

Ever since I first went up there and an extra session that there's 30 and 60 day sessions is not adequate as well.

So I think this was the first step.

But in terms of corruption, you know, I think just my sense is that, the the Ethics Commission, the oversight there is it seems like it's fairly adequate to me.

It's just the problem is that there is so many inherent conflicts of interest that it's not even corrupt.

It's just part of the system that you have school teachers voting on school raises and you have.

That's just one obvious example, but I, I, I just remember my first year there and I'm sitting through a committee meeting and there's a guy who owns a company that runs school busses, and they're going out, and he's on the education committee.

And every year when the budget comes up, he'd be, you know, we need to remember our school busses and make sure.

And so, I mean, that is just such a baked in part of the process that you said that was your first trip up to the legislature.

That was that was memorable, like more than 20 years ago.

I was, you know, and so that's been an issue for so long.

And the Mexico legislature professionalizing the legislature, of course, we come to this moment.

It'll be 2029 right before legislators actually get paid.

Right.

So there is some time to maybe do some work between now and then.

Are you expecting anything in the upcoming legislative session?

Boy yes, but in terms of bills being introduced, I am, whether they get passed or not, I don't know.

I think they're very reluctant.

well, I don't think I know they're very reluctant to put any kind of restrictions, any kind of additional restraints upon themselves unless there's pressure coming from the outside.

And right now, at this point, at least locally, I don't get get the sense that there is, I guess since these legislators have served for so long as volunteers.

So of course, most have a full time job outside of the legislature.

And that's why those conflicts come up, right?

It would be very difficult, I think, for someone who's been serving and plans to continue serving to say, well, now I need to give up my full time job.

Now that I'm getting a full time salary, it will, and there will definitely be a transition there.

But what it will do is it will open the door immediately for more people to be able to run.

right now you have, you know, a few groups of people, you have the self-employed, you have the retired, a lot of retired people.

So it's way older than the population in general.

and you have advocates, people who work for, you know, social justice groups who want, you know what, pay your salary, go up to Santa Fe and advocate for us and educators because for the same reason, they want to go up and get and get larger budgets.

So that's kind of it.

You either have to be wealthy, retired, or working in one of those other sectors.

And if you're just, a young person, well, Bill, Bill McKinley would be a great example.

A guy who goes to Harvard comes back ready to go into government and work to help the people.

But he can't make a living.

He can't support himself doing it.

And so he has to go find something else to do.

But he's just one of many examples over the years.

Yeah, indeed.

So as far as constitutional amendment amendments go, that was the fourth one.

So we'll kind of work our way back okay.

Sure.

I don't think we should leave that topic just yet.

let's talk about the decision on the salary and making it a median household income.

versus kind of the individual income.

Do you do you see wisdom in that?

I do, I will say this, that I, I advocated for this thing forever.

I was disappointed by the TV ads where they were just dishonest.

They made it seem like we're already paying the legislators.

And if you give us if you pass this, they'll only get paid what the average median person gets paid.

That's deceptive.

I mean, that's that's not making the argument.

I think they have a very good argument to make go out and make the honest argument.

And they didn't do that.

They they tried to do well.

Maybe they did deceive the voters.

It passed.

So they got there regardless.

It did it did pass.

And was that something that you were surprised to see after all these years?

No, no, I really thought the state was ready for it.

I, I think, like you said, after all these years, there's been a lot of discussion about it to the point where, you know, the same points have been made over and over and over again.

Okay, now let's do it.

And and so like I said, I hope this is just the first step.

Because if they do this to then stop, that's not going to be nearly enough to get our legislature where it needs to be.

I mean, it's just ridiculous that we have 30 and 60 day sessions and we have these antiquated laws that were made for when farmers had to get home and ten to the crops.

I mean, so many of our laws still revolve around how things were in the early 1900s.

I won't even get into the anti donation clause and all of that.

Well, if we have a little time.

Yeah, I, I we can certainly get into that.

But anyway, I hope this is the legislature has a lot to do, to modernize and get up to where its peers are in other states, in my opinion.

Right.

Well, well, let's move on to another constitutional amendment.

And that was, for the list of, of suggested regions that are going to be going to the governor.

obviously became a huge issue, and no doubt has been another one of those issues that's been kind of plaguing institutions for decades.

It has.

I remember when Bill Richardson got elected and he demanded that all the regions, give him a soft signed letter of resignation or he wouldn't even consider them.

so this has been a fight that's been going on a long time.

But I think the situation with doctor Shepherd at, Western New Mexico really was kind of the last straw where it seemed like he was, you know, taking these lavish trips and, not being very, respectful of the taxpayers money.

and I think this was a change that that needed to happen and that, hopefully 99% of the Regents, I think, do a terrific job.

but I don't think it's a bad thing that we take a little bit of the politics out of it.

Maybe, hopefully that'll be part of the result of this, because that is a big part of it.

it's a lot of times those are given out as sort of favors, for donors or for people who are friendly to the campaign.

And so as far away as we can get far removed from that kind of stuff, we can get, I think the better.

Now, New Mexico has taken some steps to make voting a little more accessible and easier, for more people, including, of course, the first semi-open primary back in June, which, showed, a significant increase in the number of people that took part, of course, as expected.

And another one is in this constitutional amendment to bring school elections, or at least not to mandate that they're held separately for Partizan elections.

Right.

And I think that's a good thing, too.

I, I worry a little bit.

I mean, I understand why that rule was there in the first place, because I worry that if you put the school elections on with the president and the mayor and everything else, that they'll just get overlooked.

but I don't know if that should be a mandatory thing.

I mean, I voted for the amendment, so I supported it, but I do understand kind of why it was on there in the first place.

And I hope that there will be some thought given into, you know, how we this doesn't like you say, it doesn't mandate it, that it does happen either.

It just allows for it.

And that's probably a good thing.

What would you say was the benefit of keeping them separate?

Like I said, just the idea that they got the spotlight all to themselves so that their arguments and their debate didn't get drowned out by the the bigger races that people were paying more attention to.

indeed.

All right.

So let's talk about that First Amendment.

And so over the years, so many laws passed by the legislature just go away.

Right.

And we refer to that as the pocket veto.

The governor takes no action, so nothing happens.

And I think this one was probably long overdue.

Absolutely, absolutely.

so all of this says this doesn't restrict the governor's powers one bit.

Governor can still veto anything he or she wants to veto.

They just have to give us a reason.

That's not asking too much.

especially when you look at some of the effort that goes into it.

Well, the system up there is crazy when you're going 60 and 30 day session, so much gets crammed into the end.

And I look at a bill, the lobbying bill, Jeff Steinborn got through the legislature that would have required them to to list the lobbyists on the home page of the bill so that when you look up that bill, you get to see who's paying on which side and to have that go away without even an explanation, I think is wrong.

I think, you know, she should retain the power to veto it if she wants, but at least tell us why.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, let's move on to, some other topic areas, including, you know, what surprises you might have had on election night?

Well, boy, this was the end of a ten year surprise.

I mean, I'm going back to the 2016 election, when I was still at the Sun News and we were so certain that Hillary Clinton was going to win that we had four headlines that we could choose from because it was going to hurt, and everybody had to do cookie cutter, and nobody could be unique and different.

Everything had to be the same.

That's okay.

So we had four headlines to choose from.

Three of them had Hillary Clinton winning.

So every Ganette newspaper in the country ran the same headline because it was the only choice we had for Donald Trump.

And it was kind of a derogatory headline.

I forget exactly what it was, but it certainly wasn't celebratory.

And so and I just remember being slack jawed and 2016, after the Access Hollywood tape came out, that's disqualifying that my entire life has been disqualifying.

And to see him survive that.

You knew we were entering a new era.

I was just like slack jawed.

I just did not.

To this day, I do not understand.

How did that happen?

Why was that okay?

Why did the voters look at that and say, oh, it's just locker room talk.

I'll go along with that.

So to see that, I, I assumed that at some point in time, all of that would come crumbling down.

But to see it happen so magnificently, so thoroughly, so completely.

yeah.

Yeah.

To see Texas, to see every single statewide position in Texas, to see Texas go blue, Texas solidly blue.

I think that was probably one of the biggest surprises on election night.

Right to Mississippi.

Is is on the verge of electing a Democratic senator?

no.

I the repudiation I better than that I dreamed of.

I don't want to seem giddy here because that's so partizan and I don't want to be Partizan, but I just Donald Trump has been a disaster.

And if that's Partizan, that that's then that's how I feel.

But well, locally, I think there might have been some surprises in terms of some seats that also flipped.

Yeah, right.

But it affected everything.

It absolutely affected everything.

And so but but those were never safe seats.

The like Rebecca Dow seat was not a safe seat.

the seats that flipped here tend to go back and forth that are on the fringes because we really don't have solid Republican districts in this part of this.

Well, something else that has tended to go back and forth is the governor.

Yes, governorship.

And so, because of the national wave, I think maybe, certainly not surprising that, Deb Haaland will serve as the next governor of New Mexico.

But it's something that New Mexicans have done.

pretty much every eight years, right?

That's right.

So, so what do you see moving forward for Deb Haaland in terms of her biggest challenges when she takes the seat in January?

Well, I don't think they've changed anything.

I look at, Governor Lujan Grisham, obviously the thing that frustrated her most was public safety.

I mean, she called a special session to try to get them to do something.

And they came back, met for ten minutes and went home.

she could never get the Democrats to go along with toughening sentencing laws, and she could never get the Republicans to go along with toughening gun laws.

And so she was stuck there spinning our wheels for, you know, and so I think that is something that still needs to be addressed.

But whoever Deb Haaland, I was gonna say, whoever we know who is going to be, she's going to address that same problem.

one area that I hope we had her on, on community radio and she, she opened the door to the idea of taking a look at universal health care.

Yes, we've we've made that step when it comes to child care.

Well, we made it legislatively.

We certainly haven't got it up and running yet, but we are in the process of trying to do that.

and we were the only state in the country after the big beautiful bill passed all of these health care cuts.

We were the only state in the country to come in and backfill on all of that.

And despite all of that, we still had a 24% increase in the be well and and premiums.

And so I, I have just come to the conclusion a long time ago that, the Affordable Care Act took us a step in the right direction, but it funneled so much money away from health care providers and to health care corporations that do nothing but paperwork, that I would really love to see New Mexico give it a shot.

Be bold.

Try to be the first state in the nation that puts together something that ensures health care to every resident.

Will.

The fact that the legislature is now made up of a super majority of Democrats help to that end?

I think so, but the legislature has always been quirky.

you don't have, a, filibuster except for the last day of the session.

And so really, if you have a one vote majority, that that's all you need.

But that's not how it works.

It tends to work with regions of the state working together as blocks to take care of their unique needs.

And so you, you build partnerships and friendships that way.

Democrats will certainly have the ability to, to, to put through anything they want.

But I think there's still going to be that same divide between the urban and the rural and between the, the old kind of more conservative Democrats and the newer progressives that are closer and, not afraid of the word socialism.

Well, one of the interesting things about health care and rural communities is that they are so much more vulnerable.

Yeah.

to these cuts, how do you think that settles with, what tends to be more Republicans that come from those areas on this issue?

That's a very good point.

I mean, they are absolutely seeing with their own eyes the devastation that is happening to the rural health care centers all over the state.

certainly there that you have to accept the fact that they need help.

And, there's there's just a lot that needs to be done.

I think we took a good step in terms of medical malpractice last year, but there's so much more that needs to be done in terms of attracting doctors and health care providers.

and I think groups like patients primarily are laying out a good roadmap that I hope, people will follow on health care.

But we are just very, very disadvantaged, because of our remoteness, because of our rural ness, and because of our poverty.

and so it's it's going to be a struggle.

Yeah.

Well, let's come back to the Dona Ana County Commission now, group that was dealing, with Project Jupiter.

Right.

for now, over a year, and certainly the way the deal was done, you know, soured residents, they've been speaking out loudly at county commission meetings since.

And Daisy Maldonado, wins the seat for district one on the Dona Ana County Commission.

Let's talk a little bit about how you've watched that story progress.

Well, yeah, I should probably start by saying that Daisy was a co-host on, Speak Up Las Cruces, the show I do on community radio.

So, for, you know, I've known Daisy for a long time.

she was, the head of the, empowerment Congress.

Thank you.

which we don't hear about a lot in Las Cruces because they dealt with issues in the South County, Sunland Park, the water issue there, with the crew, and and she left that job under.

I don't want to say too much about it, but because the project trooper was.

Well, we can say there was a lawsuit that Empowerment Congress got on to, under the Community Action Agency.

That was not necessarily a welcome move.

That's correct.

And so that separation happened following that.

Yeah.

That's correct.

That's correct.

But there's no question that Daisy has spent a lifetime advocate advocating for the people who are going to be most impacted by Project Jupiter.

So we know where her her cards are on the table.

And, I really believe that that was a big part of why she got elected by the the majority that she did.

I think I am not completely against data centers.

I have resigned myself to the fact that AI is coming and that these things are going to happen, whether we like it or not.

And then quantum computing.

Yeah, that is a whole nother show.

That is.

And not by but but I guess what I'm saying is they're going to happen, but they have to be constrained.

There have to be, guardrails and to see what Project Jupiter is doing, where they promise to provide their own energy.

And now they're saying, well, maybe we'll go after El Paso Electric after all.

they seem to keep changing the rules in the middle of the game, and there never was a thorough vetting at the beginning of the process.

And that is the most frustrating thing to me.

We had the commissioners on the Wednesday before the Friday vote and kept asking them.

It was, Shannon Reynolds and, Manny Sanchez and kept asking them, why can't you just delay this?

Why why do you have to steam the all and Sunland Park?

City Council had just taken a vote that week saying, please delay this.

And they never had a good answer.

They just said, well, what?

We have to do it the, the, Industrial Revenue Bond Court says we have to do it this day.

Well, you're the ones who wrote the IRB.

You can make that date whenever you want.

That's your choice.

Well, it'll be interesting to see how that council or how that commission shapes up.

I want to because we're running short on time now, just talk a little bit about district three and Willy Madrid, a former state representative who we held forums and candidate interviews, and that was someone that we could never get to respond to our invitation, which is historically, pretty much par for the course.

I was glad we had that same experience.

Right.

So, at the end of the day, he handily won, that district three seat.

Well, that district, Shannon Reynolds, when they did redistricting, he made it so that every district at least touched Las Cruces.

And so that district has a piece of Las Cruces.

But that's a South County district.

And Willie Madrid is a South County guy.

when he was running for the state legislature, some time he would talk to us, and sometimes he wouldn't, but he would, you know, typically call in and he just doesn't spend a lot of time in Las Cruces.

I don't think he cares a lot about Las Cruces.

and I think, you know, the people who voted him in were the people who he does care about.

All right.

Well, with a couple of minutes, we have left maybe even less.

I just like to offer you the opportunity to share some final thoughts on the big picture or the small pictures, something maybe that we didn't get to over the course of the last half hour.

Well, I think the big picture is the the ball is now in the Democrats court.

I think, there are a lot of expectations that, and they have made a lot of promises in this last election.

And so hopefully the Republicans won't be complete obstructionists, and hopefully the Democrats will start this thing by reaching out a hand and and not a fist.

And, you know, maybe I'm being pollyanish here.

It sounds wishful, it does.

It does it does.

But at least we we at least we do get a fresh start.

I mean, there is that, the Trump era is over.

It is, you know, we will have him for the next two years.

But that time is done.

It's with thousands of years of Native American history in New Mexico.

Our first Native American governor.

That is true.

That is true of the Deb Haaland era in New Mexico is just beginning.

She comes in with tremendous credentials, and we're all going to be pulling for her.

All right.

Well, Walt Rubel general manager of KTAL Community Radio and local commentator, which you hear on KRWG FM on Wednesdays most often.

Thank you so much for spending this time with us.

Oh, thanks for having me.

It was really great to have you and thank you for watching.

And you can watch all our local programs at KRWG.org, where you can also sign up to receive the Friday News Wrap, our award winning weekly newsletter that helps you catch up on our local coverage for the week.

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