Well, it looks like Congressman Pearce is not going to take the career path I laid out for him. That’s unfortunate, not because Steve would be a bad Junior Senator, but because he could have accomplished so much more as New Mexico’s next Governor.
Speaking of the Governor, it looks like that House of Cards Governor Bill Richardson built is falling apart everywhere we look. In the Albuquerque area that the Governor’s really expensive train is costing more and more with each passing day:
When reporters pressed him on plans for funding the Rail Runner, he was noncommittal about where the money will come from— repeating it would come from state and federal funds.
One powerful lawmaker wondered if earmarking state dollars to operate the Rail Runner might harm other state programs.
“I want to see where they find the money, what programs they take it from,” said Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, and chairman of the Legislative Finance Committee.
Sixty percent of the state budget goes to education, 25 percent to health and seven percent to corrections, Smith said.
“Until people sit down and think about it, it gets people off his back,” Smith said of Richardson’s comment. “But he is acknowledging that it does need money. They’ve never acknowledged that before. Now we are just down to finding out what pot it will come from.”
As if this was problematic enough, the Governor’s other expensive investment, that Spaceport experiment, has also run into quite a few hiccups:
The state won’t allow Doña Ana County to delay the collection of a spaceport sales tax, county officials said Friday.
There’s a chance the county could take legal action to keep the tax from being collected.
The county commission passed a resolution Wednesday to delay collecting the tax until proper framework was in place to spend it. But the state taxation and revenue department notified the county Friday that the action wasn’t valid, despite saying earlier that it was, said County Commission Chairwoman Karen Perez.
What does this all have to do with Steve Pearce entering the US Senate race? Well, I believe these financial woes are just a taste of what is to come. Which means that although there has been a national tide against Republicans, I expect we will not see that replicated in New Mexico come the 2008 general election cycle. Sure, we’re going to see a spirited race for the open US Senate seat, but I believe in the general election, we’re going to see the Senate and Congressional seats that are up for grabs remain in Republican hands. And, early polls in the first Congressional District seems to support that.