It was a pretty glaring error for us to say George W. Bush beat Al Gore in NM in the 2000 prez contest. We were probably thinking of how on the national level Bush lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College and took the election. In 2000, NM went for Gore by a mere 366 votes.

From Las Cruces, Sal Ceballos, wife of a former Dona Ana County clerk, writes:

Gore was up by about 5,000 votes on Election Night until Bernalillo County figured out that a computer glitch had prevented counting of thousands of ballots. After the problem was fixed, Bush was winning by 17 votes. Then Dona Ana County discovered that someone had read 620 absentee votes for Gore as 120 votes.

We blogged of the 2000 prez race in breaking the news that former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, brother of W, will be featured at a fundraiser for Gov. Martinez at the swank Las Campanas country club near Santa Fe. Reader "Just Call Me Steve" commented:

Is a goal of this visit to go after the Hispanic vote? I'm sure that is going to work out real well for them as we all know Las Campanas Country Club is a great place to meet Hispanics in New Mexico.

WE'RE NOT IN KANSAS

A number of sharp eyed readers noted that the invitation we posted to the Bush fund-raiser sent out by Gov. Martinez's campaign was printed in Kansas--not New Mexico. One of them wrote:

I loved that the Susana's Las Campanas invite shows it was "Printed By FedEx Wichita, Ks." What? The campaign couldn't even spend $10 in New Mexico ...?

A Republican reader says never mind the out-of-state printed invite, Martinez is making economic progress. They sent this:

New Mexico now has the lowest effective tax rate for manufacturers--once tax breaks are factored in-- among nine Western states. . . The study is a follow-up to a 2011 report in which Ernst & Young found New Mexico had the highest effective business tax rate in the country before accounting for incentives. Manufacturing accounted for 7.2 percent of New Mexico’s total gross state product in 2012, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. Gov. Martinez’s office said the new study shows recent changes to the state’s tax code have made New Mexico more economically competitive.

Now we wait for these low tax rates to bring the promised jobs. And we wait.

OUT OF THE BUNKER

ABQ Mayor Berry finally emerged from the bunker to talk about the storm raging over the mishandling of the APD investigation into the death of 9 year old Omaree Varela. He called the death "sorrowful" and will form a task force to develop ways to address cases such as Omaree's. The internal investigation by APD into Omaree's death continues as questions swirl about the two 911 calls the abused boy made prior to his death in which his mother is charged. Here's a long video interview with Berry and the paper's report. One question: Will that APD investigation include the APD command staff and Chief Allen Banks?

Readers comment on Berry's appearance on the three major networks:

Omaree Varela was murdered December 27, 2013. 41 days later Mayor Berry comes out from his bunker and makes a statement. He is going to spend $50,000 and start up a task force. Doesn't he have any ideas? And just what will $50,000 get us?  It seems he is just tossing money at something that he doesn't have a clue what to do with. He wants to go beyond accountability and create a better system. Well, at least he said the word accountability. He doesn't know what a better system is so with $50,000 he will bring in "experts" to help him. Honestly, this is mainly an APD issue. He runs APD. Please, will someone tell him this? 

Another reader writes:

Mayor Berry didn't crawl out from his rock/vacation and take an interest in the child's case until he finds out that there's APD involvement, lapel cameras and a 911 tape. Now the guy finally takes an interest weeks after the incident and rather than bring this community together and make sure some heads roll-- he announces that he will put together a task force. Immediately? No, when he gets a new police chief and it could take more than a year. And he might make the APD chief the head of the task force! 

 Any other mayor worth a damn, would gather up community leaders, stand behind a podium and let the community know this won't stand. He should have said that whether APD was involved or not. Instead, he sheepishly suggests that he'll bring in some experts (maybe) and who knows what they will find out. He says we may find APD is the best at child welfare or our approach is antiquated. What? This guy's got the spine of a jellyfish.

Even worse, in several points in the interview he tries to suggest this isn't an unusual issue, it happens in Oklahoma, Texas and around the world. That this issue isn't exceptional to New Mexico. Really? I think everyone who's watching this train wreck knows that New Mexico has a problem with how they treat children--from poverty to abuse to nutrition, we score among the worst. The governor and the mayor showed their true stripes on this issue-they are happy to ignore it and avoid responsibility/blame as much as possible. Sleepwalking through their terms in office.  By the way, speaking of weak leadership, where's the city council on this issue?

Now, that's what we call a pair of Alligator strikes.

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