New Mexico Democrats, facing an uphill battle to take the Governor's chair and a scrappy battle ahead to retain control of the state House, have one bright light to look at. Dem attorney general candidate Hector Balderas will report this week that he has $800,000 in cash in his campaign account. That will be far more than that of his GOP foe Susan Riedel. National money could come in to give Balderas a hard time--as it has in past AG contests--but with that kind of early money he will be more than able to defend himself. . .

On the Guv trail, the Martinez campaign released an internal poll conducted June 24-26 of 600 likely voters that shows her leading Dem Guv nominee Gary King 54% to 38%. A poll released here last week and conducted by Bruce Donisthorpe of BWD Global for the state GOP on June 10 and 11 had the race at 53% for Martinez and 40% for King.

(Speaking of Johnson, who became famous or infamous for advocating for drug legalization while serving as governor, he just announced he is heading up a marijuna products company. Hmm. Wonder of he gets free samples?)

Neither Guv poll is independent from the partisan fray, but both make sense in an historic context. Gary Johnson, the last popular incumbent GOP Governor, secured re-election with a 55% to 45% win over Martin Chavez. That's probably about as good as it gets for a Republican in a Democratic state.

The bad news for King is that he is at or below 40 percent. The good news is he appears to have bottomed out. The Martinez poll comes amid a month long nonstop TV attack on King. More attacks will serve to keep him from growing, but it's unlikely he will sink further.

And it is this kind of news that is going to have to break through if King and the Democrats are going to start chipping away at Martinez's lead:

. . . Prior to the recession in 2008, the state’s labor participation rate--working-age people who are employed or actively looking for jobs--was almost 61.5 percent. In 2014, it was slightly above 54 percent, below historic lows. . . Another measure of the economy is the U-6 rate, or the rate of people who have stopped looking for work or are underemployed. Some economists say it is the real measure of a state’s unemployment rate. Between the second quarter of 2013 and the first quarter of 2014, New Mexico’s U-6 rate was 13.4 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

INDY INCLUSION

Here's one to keep on your political radar for 2016:

ABQ attorney Edward Hollington has filed a lawsuit in District Court on behalf of David Crum aimed at allowing non-party-affiliated voters access to New Mexico’s primary election ballot. . .Currently, 19 percent of the state’s registered voters, or 240,741 individuals, are registered as “Decline to State” or DTS. They are prohibited from voting in the state’s primary election. . .The lawsuit would allow for those voters currently registered as DTS to request a major party ballot at the polls during the primary election. They could then vote for the Democratic or Republican slate of candidates of their choice.

THE BOTTOM LINES

Here's a must-read for followers of the NM Spaceport on why the long delay in getting into suborbital space:

As the differing paths taken by Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and XCOR Aerospace show, there’s no single reason to explain the long delay in commercial human suborbital spaceflight. Sometimes it’s the technology, sometimes it’s the financing, and sometimes the companies working on these vehicles are not in as great a hurry as the advocates and enthusiasts anxiously awaiting their flights. . . .

Conservation Voters New Mexico (CVNM) announces that Victor Reyes is the group's new political director. Reyes recently worked fundraising for the Alan Webber Governor campaign.

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(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2014. Not for reproduction without permission of the author