Apodaca runs as outsider
Businessman’s pitch: Don’t expect those who have been running the state to turn it around
It is a long way from sitting on the board of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce to running for governor as the standard-bearer of many Bernie Sanders’ supporters in the state Democratic Party.
Jeff Apodaca has traveled that path in a whirlwind year. Now he is trying to position himself as the consummate outsider and the most formidable primary opponent for U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
The congresswoman may seem at times like she’s got the nomination for governor all sewn up, with endorsements and the piles of campaign donations. But Apodaca, like the running back he once was, is trying to break through.
Apodaca has made it a selling point that he is not a career politician, and that he brings a freshness to the race not found with Lujan Grisham or the other Democratic gubernatorial contender, state Sen. Joseph Cervantes.
“The congresswoman and the state senator have over 50 years of political experience combined,” Apodaca said. “It’s time for new ideas.” And he’s got ideas. Talking to him can be dizzying as he offers up a flurry of facts and figures and bold claims, such as his promise to create 225,000 jobs.
Apodaca’s overall pitch comes down to this: New Mexico ranks last in so many respects that voters should not expect the same people who have been leading the state in one way or another to turn it around. That will take business acumen and reforms, he says.
His opponents counter that Apodaca’s promises show a basic misunderstanding of government and the issues. Moreover, plenty have argued that the state has already been hobbled by a newcomer, having taken a chance on Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, whose previous experience in politics was as a district attorney.
Survivor
Born in Las Cruces, Apodaca went to high school in Santa Fe while immersed in politics. His father, Jerry, was a state senator and then governor from 1975 through 1978.
Jeff Apodaca gained local prominence in another way: through football.
He was part of the 1979 Santa Fe High School team that won a state championship. But Apodaca was sidelined during that 13-1 season with cancer — a rare soft muscle sarcoma.
He underwent chemotherapy to beat the disease, then played football at The University of New Mexico.
After graduating from UNM in 1986, Apodaca launched his career in the media, working at KOBTV in Albuquerque. He went on to New York City and later Los Angeles, working for big brands in media, from AOL to CBS.
Apodaca later became a vice president at Entravision, which operates Spanish-language radio and television stations around the country.
He also had rocky relationships with some of his employers. Court records show he sued AOL and KTLA-TV in California. He says the suits were over money owed to him. And as recently as 2016, Apodaca sued Entravision in New Mexico for defamation, wrongful separation and retaliatory discharge, among other claims.
In the latter case, Apodaca disputed allegations that he had fabricated expense reports and made inappropriate remarks during a golf outing. The case ended with an out-of-court settlement.
He returned to New Mexico about nine years ago, and has created a foundation that benefits the UNM Children’s Hospital as well as the UNM Cancer Center. It has provided scholarships for young cancer survivors.
Apodaca has personally donated about $100,000 and raised about $1 million, according to his campaign.
In 2015, the UNM Board of Regents tapped Apodaca to serve on the board of Innovate ABQ , a nonprofit corporation developing a 7-acre property into a research and business park. He sat on the board of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, too.
A long, winding run
As the race for governor began to take shape last year, Apodaca at least seemed to offer something different. All the other major candidates were longtime politicians.
Lujan Grisham launched her campaign in December 2016. The lone Republican in the race is U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce. State Sen. Cervantes was aiming for the job from the state Legislature.
Apodaca embraced his status as the outsider. He said he talked with prospective candidates for governor and came away unsatis- fied that any of them would do much to change a state with high unemployment and poverty rates.
The status quo is not working, Apodaca says. He calls state government dysfunctional, and says a politician is not going to fix it.
At first, it was hard to tell exactly what that meant. Was Apodaca a progressive? Was he appealing to the older Democrats who might remember his dad’s term as governor?
Apodaca rejects binary leftright labels. He backed legalizing recreational marijuana, saying he used cannabis for medical reasons while in treatment for cancer. And he called for raising the minimum wage, but based on experience.
His campaign received backing from more old school Democrats in places such as Santa Fe. And Apodaca’s support for legalizing marijuana piqued the interest of more youthful voters. Some big names from the entertainment industry cut four-figure checks for his campaign, too, such as actor and producer Ted Wass.
At the end of 2017, Apodaca took to the airwaves before any other candidate for governor with an ad pledging to use some of the state’s $17 billion land grant permanent fund to create 225,000 new jobs.
Apodaca has referred to the permanent fund as a “rainy day” account, and in a December interview he made a case for using 5 percent of the money for infrastructure, job training and other initiatives. But now he says he is not proposing tapping the fund. That would require a constitutional amendment.
He says instead that his idea is to invest more of the fund into New Mexico. That would provide an economic boost, he contends.
His pledge to create 225,000 jobs has raised eyebrows, however. So large a number would require the number of workers to increase at a pace New Mexico has not seen in decades, if ever.
Lujan Grisham has called Apodaca’s proposal unrealistic.
“I don’t see any details in his plan that would show you how you get there,” she said.
And activists who have been pushing for years to free up more of the permanent fund to pay for early child education have said Apodaca does not understand how the fund works.
Regardless, the ad revealed a populism that would become a bigger part of Apodaca’s campaign.
Apodaca’s campaign accused Lujan Grisham’s supporters of breaking rules leading into the state nominating convention and effectively stacking the event in her favor.
Apodaca wasn’t the only one making such accusations. Longshot candidate Peter DeBenedittis had similar complaints.
The accusations reopened a rift in the party that has not been so wide since Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid in 2016.
Then Apodaca and DeBenedittis teamed up. DeBenedittis endorsed Apodaca and Apodaca put DeBenedittis on his campaign payroll as a spokesman. Apodaca also donated thousands of dollars to help DeBenedittis pay down campaign debt.
Apodaca embraced key points of the progressive’s platform, such as a $15-an-hour minimum wage. Some in the party accused Apodaca of effectively buying off DeBenedittis.
The race gets ugly
An anonymous ad campaign on Facebook attacking Lujan Grisham and other Democrats sprouted up about that time.
The American Federation of Teachers, which endorsed Lujan Grisham, filed a complaint against the Facebook group, New Mexico Democrats for Democracy, after the organization took a swipe on Twitter at the union’s local leaders.
“This sounded like a repeat of the Facebook-driven dark money smears that marked the Republican playbook of the 2016 election,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said.
Apodaca also sued Cervantes for defective petition signatures in an effort to knock him off the ballot. Apodaca lost in court.
Apodaca’s campaign took a full-contact approach befitting a football player, which threatened to turn what had been a staid race for governor into a brawl.
For others, though, the election was shaping up as an overdue referendum on the party’s direction and leadership.
“A lot of us were really upset about the outcome of the election at the national level,” said Brett Kokinadis, a Santa Fe entrepreneur.
Kokinadis described himself at one point as an adviser to Apodaca and ended up helping create that initially anonymous Facebook ad campaign.
“This is the cycle New Mexico needs to work on cleaning up corruption within the Democratic Party,” Kokinadis said.
What attracted him to Apodaca?
“Everything is facts and figures [with him],” he said. “… We don’t need stories. We need real ideas.”
Like his opponents, Apodaca is proposing to end PARCC testing in the public schools. And he is calling for reallocating 8 percent of the Public Education Department and state’s administrative funding to classrooms.
If Apodaca were to win the nomination on June 5, it would be a remarkable upset.
Parts of the Democratic Party’s base — from Conservation Voters to Equality New Mexico to Planned Parenthood and teacher unions — have lined up behind Lujan Grisham.
While Apodaca has argued her platform is too timid or out of touch, many in the party also know what they are getting with a woman who has served in Congress and state government.
Apodaca has ended up with an unlikely coalition of old school Democrats and progressives disaffected with the party’s leadership.
Still, observers say that this year’s electoral math might not be so simple.
“The angst and anger against politicians and the status quo is real, but just being a nonpolitician isn’t enough,” Nathan Gonzales, editor of the newsletter Inside Elections, said as the campaign developed.
As for whether Apodaca can get the nomination, he long ago dismissed Cervantes and said it was possible.
“The sense I get,” he said months before the nominating convention, “is that it’s down to me and two people — me and the congresswoman.”