Independents bring competition to legislative races

If past elections in New Mexico since, oh, 1912 or so, are any indication, independent candidates for the state Legislature probably won’t make much of a mark in this year’s election. That being said, there are a couple of interesting indie candidates for the House this year who deserve our attention.

I’m talking about former Santa Fe school board member and longtime real estate agent Jarratt Applewhite, who is running against Democrat Matthew McQueen in District 50, and former state Rep. Treciafaye “Tweeti” Blancett, who is running for retiring Rep. Nick Salazar’s seat in District 40.

I’ve known and respected Applewhite for well over 30 years. He’s always struck me as intelligent, honest, affable and — one of my favorite qualities — witty. The self-described high school dropout told me in December when he announced he was running, “I’ve said for years I was a recovering politician. I guess I’ve fallen off the wagon. But I’m running as a nonpolitician.”

The 67-year-old Lamy resident is running on three issues: “repairing gerrymandering” by taking the once-a-decade task of redrawing boundaries for elective office out of the hands of the Legislature; opening primaries to independent and third-party voters; and easing restrictions on independent and thirdparty candidates to get on the ballot.

I don’t disagree with any of those ideas. However, I’m not sure how you could accomplish those goals — basically wresting the hen house security contract from the foxes — when the Legislature is controlled by Democrats and Republicans. I’m sure that Applewhite and the group Unite New Mexico (which is backing both Applewhite and Blancett) would say the solution is electing more indie candidates.

I’ve never met and never talked to Blancett. Most of what I know about her is via the glory that is Google.

The sixth-generation rancher, who represented a northwestern New Mexico district in the House years before I started covering the Legislature, is a former Republican. But unlike most Republicans I know, she made a name for herself, in the early part of this century, by battling oil companies, including one run by a major GOP money machine, the Koch brothers.

“I’m a Republican and a capitalist,” she told People magazine in 2002. “I’m not against oil and gas companies.”

That article, which noted that Blancett campaigned for George W. Bush in 2000, said,

“At first Tweeti had no quarrel with energy companies, who have provided jobs in the local community. But over the past decade or so, she says, many became more concerned about turning a profit than respecting the land. Two years ago, she charges, Burlington Resources let salt-ridden water from a well leak onto her property for months and neglected to reseed after drilling, while another company, Koch Exploration, failed to respond to complaints about a saltwater disposal pit. (Burlington says it reseeded but that drought conditions killed the grass; Koch says Blancett’s complaints are unjustified.)”

Blancett, who lived in Aztec and now lists Eagle Nest as her residence, took her case to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in 2004. (I searched in vain on YouTube for that episode).

In 2013, the “cowgirl grandma” told the Farmington Daily Times, “This is an age-old story about the big guy bullying the runt and getting away with it because he can. State agencies can’t enforce their own regulations, the courts are overrun with powerful corporate lawyers, and even when the data is presented that pollution has occurred, the big players can simply ignore you and get a free pass from the very people who got campaign contributions from them. You’d think it’d wear me out, but it only makes me mad.”

It probably would have helped both Applewhite and Blancett if they were running against opponents who were a little more villainous. But they’re not.

The soft-spoken McQueen, a House member since 2015, has earned a reputation as a decent, conscientious lawmaker without a hint of scandal. Blancett’s opponent, Joseph Sanchez of Alcalde, is a political newcomer who won a three-person Democratic primary in June. He’s an engineer with Los Alamos National Laboratory and a former CEO of Jemez Mountains Electric Cooperative. (For fun, he’s a member of famed Northern Mexico band The Blue Ventures.)

But even though these contests don’t boil down to a struggle of good vs. evil, I think it’s good to have competition in legislative (and other) races. About half of the 70 House seats feature no competition at all in the general election (and several of those seats had no primary competition either). So here’s hoping we get more independents running in future elections.