I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
When it comes to gathering enough $5 contributions to qualify for public financing in the Albuquerque mayor’s race this year, a nail-biter of an effort by two candidates is about to come to an end.
The deadline for turning in the required contributions from 1 percent of the electorate — which is about 3,280 people — is tomorrow, and both GOP state Rep. Richard Berry as well as former state Senate President Pro Tem Richard Romero, a Democrat, are pretty much there.
The city clerk’s office worked through Saturday to stay on top of verifying that the contributions turned in last week actually come from registered voters.
As of late Saturday afternoon, Romero had turned in 4,034 contributions, and Berry had turned in 3,462. The clerk is in the process of verifying the contributions, but with an error rate of 12 percent, Romero is pretty much over the hump. Berry’s error rate 10 percent, so he has just a little further to go. Both candidates will likely continue to collect contributions straight through to the Tuesday deadline.
Once the deadline passes, the clerk’s office verifies that each candidate turned in enough contributions from registered voters. The candidates are also required to turn in their final “seed money” reports. The seed money could be collected in sums of $100 or less from Jan. 1 through to March 31st.
Once the clerk certifies that the candidates meet the requirements, they will get a distribution on Friday of $1 per registered voter in the city, minus the seed money they collected. That means each will get between $300,000 and $328,000.
After Friday, they also still have to turn in petition signatures from 2 percent of the registered voters in the city. The signature gathering is already under way, but if for some reason one of the candidates couldn’t meet the late April deadline for the signatures, they’d have to give the public funds back to the city.
Mayor Marty Chavez has already turned in enough $5 contributions and petition signatures to qualify for public financing, but he hasn’t formally declared that he’ll be running for mayor again. Nonetheless, he’ll be qualified to receive that big chunk of public change on Friday, along with the other two.
