All the news you missed, but with a twist
Not every big story gets a thick, dark headline. Sometimes important news slips by almost unnoticed. This leads to puzzlement and then questions. For instance … Is there a law requiring Santa Fe County government’s executive team to pay the cost of last week’s special election in which 70 percent of voters rejected an increase in the gross receipts tax?
No, but it wouldn’t matter anyway. A short-term insanity defense might be plausible for county commissioners who raised the tax rate in June, then asked voters to increase it again three months later. Their motto seems to be tax you, tax me and double-tax that fellow behind the tree.
Has Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham of Albuquerque already won the June 2018 Democratic primary election for governor?
Of course she has. A rock-solid source — Lujan Grisham herself — says it’s so.
In another solicitation for money last week, Lujan Grisham repeated the stunning news of her victory months before the polls opened: “Earlier this summer, Donald
Trump pledged his ‘full support’ to Steve Pearce, a tea party Republican who’s running against me for governor,” she wrote.
Most people are under the impression that three other Democrats are seeking the gubernatorial nomination. Lujan Grisham has dispelled the notion that she has to win a primary election to face Pearce, the lone Republican candidate for governor. By anointing herself as the nominee, she has saved her party the time and expense of staging those boring debates that dutiful voters force themselves to watch.
Wayne Johnson, a Republican who’s running for mayor of Albuquerque, once tried to publicly shame a Democratic state representative because her 18-year-old son had been charged in a murder. The defendant was freed months later when prosecutors discovered he was innocent. Will voters worry about Johnson’s snap judgments?
Not especially. Johnson is so far back in the pack that neither a Lujan Grisham-esque declaration nor a speedboat could carry him into the runoff.
The forthcoming movie Marshall, about Thurgood Marshall, the first black person to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, opens next month. Did Marshall attend Lincoln University, an institution that many people haven’t heard of, because he was a rock-ribbed advocate of school choice?
Yes, Marshall made a conscious choice to study at Lincoln University. He could have chosen Morehouse, Cheyney, Morgan State or dozens of other historically black colleges and universities. But he was resolute. Lincoln was for him.
Marshall’s home-state public school, the University of Maryland, didn’t admit a black student until 1951, more than a quartercentury after Marshall selected Lincoln. This, of course, played no part in his decision. His advocacy for students making their own choices never wavered.
Colin Kaepernick took the San Francisco 49ers to a Super Bowl. Now the 29-year-old quarterback is out of pro football. Will no team owner sign Kaepernick because he knelt last season during the playing of the national anthem?
Undoubtedly. This has to be a case of political blacklisting rather than recognition that Kaepernick would be no better than a backup on nearly every team.
It’s true that ultra-competitive National Football League coaches employed Leonard Little after he was convicted of manslaughter in a drunken-driving case and Michael Vick after he was released from prison for organizing dogfights. Tens of thousands of people signed petitions urging the Pittsburgh Steelers not to hire Vick, and that was just two seasons ago. The Steelers employed Vick anyway. This was so controversial that team owners must have made a secret pact to lose rather than to give Kaepernick a six-figure job for holding a clipboard while wearing a baseball cap.
Now that the New Mexico Supreme Court has followed your stupid suggestion and won’t require Santa Fe to use rankedchoice voting in next year’s city election, when will it take effect?
The smart money says rankedchoice voting will begin in Santa Fe after Gov. Lujan Grisham accepts an offer to be vice president on the 2024 Democratic ticket.