The Governor needs to clear her higher education "moonshot" with Senator John Arthur Smith, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, or else she will be kept earthbound on her proposal to provide free college tuition to New Mexicans. That's what happened when she joined the charge for a constitutional amendment that would provide more funding for early childhood. Smith stopped her advance cold.

The free tuition plan is projected to cost just $25 to $35 million a year because it kicks in only after students use their state lottery scholarships, federal grants and other support. With Santa Fe running out of vault space to store the billions in surplus funds gushing in from the oil boom, that kind of recurring spending increase should be a snap for even Smith and the fiscal hawks to approve. But Smith is still hesitating:

Smith. . . said he will want to know how the state plans to pay for the scholarship in years when oil and gas revenue declines. “The devil is in the details of all wonderful programs. The temptation is even more encouraging when you get oil and gas revenues. But if those revenues disappear, you need to sustain that effort,” he said. “My knee-jerk reaction is that I want to know more about the details. … All in all, it’s a wonderful idea, but the devil is in the details. And my committee wants to know how do we pay for this on a sustained basis.”

That raises the question of when the Fourth Floor is going to get a "Smith Strategy?" You have a Governor who won election with 57 percent of the vote looking increasingly hogtied by one lawmaker.

Experts agree the most urgent education need in New Mexico is for more early childhood education. That "moonshot" seems stalled until MLG gets some new astronauts in the Senate.

MEDIA BEAT

An addendum to our report on how disaster befell KOB-TV as the station was knocked out by technical glitches just as President Trump was arriving in ABQ Tuesday.

We blogged that KOAT was the only broadcast station to provide live coverage of the arrival. They were the only one of the legacy news stations--KOB, KRQE snd KOAT--to provide coverage. However, coverage was broadcast on the Fox affiliate--channel 2--owned by the same company as KRQE. We did not give that much consideration because it does not have a stand alone news operation and is not promoted or known to viewers as a "go to" station for major news.

KRQE has been pushing news events (political debates, the presidential visit) to the Fox station rather than airing them on legacy station and CBS affiliate KRQE where ad revenue can be lost when news events interfere with regular programming.

KRQE/FOX anchor Dean Staley disagrees:

Hey Joe, If you don't consider FOX a major broadcast channel, you might reach out to the Dallas Cowboys, the Denver Broncos, the rest of the NFL, Major league baseball, the Simpson's and the viewers of our 9 p.m. news on FOX. Those people exist. On some nights there are more people watching our 9 p.m. news  on FOX than KOB and KOAT's 10 p.m. audience. That's the local FOX station. 

Do you think KOAT added a 9 p.m. newscast on some back channel because our FOX audience is insignificant? You can dismiss the viewers if you want to because of some dated notion of "legacy" broadcasters, but they have been watching our FOX New Mexico news product for more than a decade.

Thanks, Dean. But what about KRQE viewers? Weren't they "dismissed" in favor of shoving the presidential visit to Fox?

Fox is a major channel for sports not news. KRQE is a major channel for news. That's why it has CBS This Morning, the CBS Evening News, 60 Minutes, Face the Nation and its own serious news department with news blocks throughout the day. For major news events viewers naturally look to KRQE, not its little sister Fox. That's why KRQE dropped the ball by not broadcasting the presidential visit live, even as it provided its usual solid coverage on its regularly scheduled broadcasts.

LONGEST-SERVING?

The first headlines on the death of State Senator Carlos Cisneros, 71, called him the "longest serving" senator. We went with that, but it's incorrect. He is the second longest serving. And he was not "elected" in 1984 as we initially blogged. He was appointed to a senate vacancy in July 1985. The longest serving senator today is Stuart Ingle of Portales who was elected in 1984 and began serving in January 1985.

THE YEAR WAS 2008

'08 Blog Obama At UNM

Trump drew a respectable crowd to his Tuesday evening Rio Rancho rally, with news reports saying 8,700 were inside the Santa Ana Star Center and 1,500 more watched on screens in the parking lot.

While respectable it was far from a record-breaker. The largest crowd for a political rally in state history was set by Dem presidential nominee Barack Obama in 2008. He drew 40,000 to UNM's Johnson field, a record that stands today and may for decades to come.

What a year that was here. New Mexico was one of the most important swing states in the nation then, attracting constant attention from Obama and his Republican rival John McCain.

There was also an open NM US Senate seat and incredibly all three congressional districts became open as Reps Udall, Wilson and Pearce all sought the senate seat. What a year. I don't think I ever worked so hard or liked it so much. It was that way for so many in politics that year.

There was even a jazz song for Obama for "swing voters,"' titled "Taking it back with Barack, Jack." We found it in our archives and since this has been a presidential week here it is for your enjoyment and reminisces.

The year was 2008. I was there and that's how I remember it.

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(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2019