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Wednesday, May 02, 2018

Cervantes Starts Digging At MLG In The Big Game Of Catch Up; Nicks Her Over Debates, Plus: Turmoil On Campus; Leading Professor Exits NMSU And Dubs School's Regents "Incompetent", And: AG Balderas Takes A Hammer To The UNM Stonewall 

He relies on an old standby in his first effort to take Michelle Lujan Grisham down a notch but Joe Cervantes has to start somewhere if this Dem Guv race is going to be something other than watching paint dry. So he nicks the frontrunner over her shyness over debating:

It is completely unacceptable, though not surprising, that Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham is ducking debates. This past Saturday in Silver City she was a no show yet again for a scheduled forum. It isn’t the first time. She has actually withdrawn from scheduled debates when she had already confirmed she would attend. Grisham seems to think that slick mailings and expensive TV ads are all it takes to win New Mexico voters. Don’t the people of New Mexico have a right to a serious discussion of the issues? 

MLG's camp pointed out she has appeared with Cervantes and her other challenger Jeff Apodaca, even if sparsely: 

This isn’t the first campaign where candidates struggling to gain any sort of traction resort misrepresenting the facts. Not only has Michelle already participated in several public forums but she’s committed to several more including one last night in Doña Ana one in Santa Fe, and a statewide televised debate on KOAT. It’s clear our campaign is only picking up more momentum as we get closer to the first day of early voting —Tuesday we released our first radio ad, we are on week two of a six figure television ad buy. . . 

That KOAT face-off stands out because so far it is the only statewide TV debate slated. It is set to air May 20 at 6 p.m.

Cervantes has a TV buy up of $175,000 while Apodaca is below $30,000. That could quickly move Cervantes into second place. Once there, Cervantes would have to decide how hard to go after Lujan Grisham.

OUT WITH NO BS

Peach
Talk about taking a whack at the boss on the way out the door. Dr. Jim Peach, a noted NMSU economic professor familiar to blog readers for being on our exclusive list of "No BS Economists," has had enough of the Las Cruces campus and what he sees as a bunch of political hacks posing as the school's Board of Regents. He's retiring and true to form it's no BS from him on why:

In more than 40 years in the academic world, I have never seen a more incompetent board." Peach condemns the future of the institution under the Regents’ leadership, saying it will be detrimental to this “great institution.”

“The regents have trashed the university publicly and repeatedly while their job is to guide, foster, and promote the institution. The regents have attempted to micro-manage the university but lack the knowledge and expertise to do so,” the letter reads. “At best, the regents are numerically and logically challenged.”

Governor Martinez appoints the Regents at NMSU as well as UNM and the states other universities. When NMSU Chancellor and former Governor Garrey Carruthers was forced out of his Chancellor's position by the NMSU board it was widely seen as a Martinez power play. Carruthers is still on the job as a search continues for a new chancellor.

MORE HIGHER ED WOES

Will the next Governor break the gubernatorial habit of making the top universities political playgrounds? Something needs to happen. The news:

A recent decline in enrollment at New Mexico public colleges outpaced nearly every state in the nation. An association of state higher education agencies says enrollment dropped by nearly 5 percent at New Mexico public colleges for the school year that ended in June 2017.

Tuition that is too high for a low income state and the brain drain of students to surrounding states would seem to be two chief reasons for that disturbing trend.

And the beat goes on. . . Attorney General Balderas is getting a whiff of the rancid smell that floats above UNM, although he is too polite to describe it in those words. Instead he labels it a "pervasive culture of silence." The normally patient Balderas has been stonewalled so badly in his investigations touching upon the UNM Athletic Department and the school's personnel practices that he is threatening legal action to loosen the closed lips. He also calls for an improvement in "the tone at the top."

Well, the longtime Grand Political Wizard of UNM, David Harris, has finally announced his retirement and will depart this year. That could change the tone. Why his powerful position and his responsibility for what has happened there has never really been brought to the fore in the news is quizzical.

The new UNM president, who has worked at mostly normal places like Florida State University, already seems stunned by the culture that has been fostered at UNM. Good luck to Hector and her.  We can already hear the emails at our Harvard on the Rio Grande being deleted.

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(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2018
 
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