The state is seeing some star power as the campaign gets into high gear. Former Vice-President Mike Pence is the latest big name to make plans to visit, setting an October 6 fund-raising stop in Roswell on behalf of GOP gubernatorial nominee Mark Ronchetti, according to our Roswell sources. 

They report the Pence fund-raiser at the SE NM hub will cost $5,000 a pop, a high price for regular folk but a yawner for the deep-pocketed oil boys who populate the city of 48,000.

Ronchetti previously had Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis campaign for him at a Carlsbad rally and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, a rising national GOP star, is reportedly including a NM stop for Ronchetti on his mid-term tour. 

The visits put Ronchetti in the limelight but his opponents are taking him to task for the events, pointing out that he campaigns as a political "outsider" but is surrounding himself with the ultimate insiders. 

Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, no stranger to the Land of Enchantment, was on the trail Monday for northern Dem US Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, stopping at the ABQ Indian Cultural Center to discuss the northern fires that recently ravaged historic amounts of acreage. The fires also left big bills in their wake and Pelosi pledged continued federal support for those impacted. 

Fernandez's latest TV spot steers away from the controversies of the day and touts her work on northern water issues. The ad connects her with the land and people of the north even as her new district dips into several conservative southern counties. That's where her GOP opponent, Alexis Martinez Johnson, will score points, but the heart of the district is still El Norte. 

Jane Fonda

There are stars and superstars and Jane Fonda is in the latter category or very close to it. 

The legendary actress and activist is in Santa Fe Wednesday and Thursday conducting two fund-raisers at local homes on behalf of Dem Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard who was starstruck in announcing the visits: 

Garcia Richard, seeking a second four year term against Republican Jefferson Byrd, has had a low-key tenure as commissioner. While pursing renewable energy she has avoided loud clashes with the oil and gas industry whose exploration on state lands the land office supervises and which has been so financially beneficial to taxpayers.

As for Fonda, she would easily make a list of the "World's Most Interesting People."

Over the summer we ran across her autobiography from 2005. Its frankness about her life--including her real and imagined shortcomings--made for a real page turner as she delved into her multiple roles---two time Academy Award winning movie star, workout queen, pioneer feminist, political activist and wife and mother.

Locals will note her write-up of her visit to the UNM campus in 1970 following the Kent State Shootings to protest the Vietnam war. She also covers without hesitation her hyper-controversial trip to North Vietnam in '72.

Fonda is no carpetbagger in New Mexico. She lived for years on a ranch east of Santa Fe where she says she recovered from her divorce from media mogul Ted Turner who today is the largest landowner in the state. Fonda sold her 2,300 acre estate in 2015 that had a list price of $19.5 million. 

In recent years she has continued her indefatigable work habit through acting but has been just as focused on climate change, engaging in civil disobedience to drive home its urgency and authoring a book on the pressing topic. 

Fonda at UNM 1970

She had three marriages, one of which was to Tom Hayden (from '73-'90), the intellectual and social and political activist who rose to prominence in the 60's. She writes that they connected very much politically but in the end not emotionally. 

Her brother, the late Peter Fonda, also an accomplished actor, had a breakthrough role in Easy Rider, the counterculture film he co-wrote and much of which was filmed in the Taos area.

The father of Jane and Peter, Henry Fonda, an FDR Democrat, was a major film star who planted the acting seed with his children.

Earlier this month Fonda, soon to be 85, announced she has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma-- a highly treatable cancer. 

Critics of Fonda often get lost in disagreement over her politics--especially Vietnam--but if viewed in totality you discover a fascinating life almost too fully lived, often magnificently and sometimes desperately, but always with passion and a self-correcting compass.

Despite age and illness her journey remains one in progress and still lived vicariously by students of both politics and life. 

On last Thursday's blog we mistakenly said that the abortion issue was breaking for the "nonwhitehouse party" which would mean the Republicans. We meant to say that the issue was breaking to the Dems--the party currently controlling the White House.