Sec. Haaland

Those backing and hoping that Sec. of Interior Deb Haaland will launch a 2026 campaign for Governor could lose some bragging rights for their favored candidate should she enter the Guv fray:

If Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are elected this fall, not only would a woman of color lead the country for the first time, but a Native woman would govern a state for the first time in U.S. history too. Peggy Flanagan, the lieutenant governor of Minnesota and a citizen of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, is poised to serve as the state’s next governor should Walz step down to accept the role of vice president. Her rise to power has been watched closely by Indigenous peoples in Minnesota and across the country who see her as a champion of policies that positively affect Native Americans.

Flanagan would fill the unexpired portion of Walz' term which ends in 2026. If she sought election and won she would  then become the "first elected" Native American woman governor. If Haaland ran and own in 2026 she would then be the co-owner of the title.

That's not a position Haaland is unfamiliar with. When she was elected to the ABQ congressional seat in 2018 she became the first Native American woman elected to the US House but it was an accomplishment she shared shared with Kansas Rep. Shaurice Davids who was elected at the same time. 

The AP reports: "Thirty-six state women lawmakers nationwide who identify as Native Americans were elected to office in 2023, a record, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University."

WEATHERMAN WINDFALL

Ronchetti

If the legal fees don't take too much, former TV weatherman Mark Ronchetti will make up a good part of the $223,000 a year salary he has missed making since leaving KRQE in October 2021to pursue a run for governor.

An ABQ judge ordered Ronchetti's campaign media firm--Go Big Media--to pay him $386,000 in damages for announcing too early in 2021 that Ronchetti was running for Governor in 2022. 

Full court order here.

That web site announcement made him an official candidate and federally-licensed KRQE had to take him off the air before he was ready. He had to pay the station $40,000 for an early termination of his contract.

Parts of the order from Judge Lisa Ortega Chaves seemed over the top. For example, she wrote:

It is incomprehensible and inexcusable that Defendant, responsible for handling political campaigns would be ignorant of the requirements to maintain the confidentiality and security of individual pages of a campaign website. 

How so, Judge? When that same firm in 2020 leaked prematurely the news that Ronchetti was going to run for US Senate? It seems more incomprehensible that Ronchetti would use them again. Also, campaigns are not run by brain surgeons. Mistakes are more common than the Judge seems to be aware.

Ronchetti's lawsuits aren't done. GOP attorney Matt Chandler has filed a suit against an auto company that Ronchetti is accusing them of selling him a defective 2003 Land Rover. (Lawsuit here.)

Since losing the Guv's race Republican Ronchetti, now 50, has been doing a podcast on politics, his TV career an apparent victim of his political ambitions.

THE BOTTOM LINES

In a first draft Monday we had Sen. Pete Domenici winning re-election in 2008. His last re-elect was 2002 and that was when the last Republican in NM was elected to the US Senate.