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.
New Mexico’s businesses could be among the biggest winners from the state’s new law to cap campaign contributions, representatives of the business community said.
“If you are not politically attuned, and most of the business community can’t be … we always don’t know what we should be giving,” said former GOP state Sen. Diane Snyder, who is the executive director of American Council of Engineering Companies-New Mexico. The organization represents engineering firms and the engineering industry.
On at least one occasion during this year’s 60-day legislative session, Snyder told state lawmakers publicly that her members “get shaken down all the time, all the time. My members, I can tell you horror story after horror story after horror story.”
Snyder made her remarks about an ultimately unsuccessful bill that would have banned contributions to political candidates from state contractors.
But on Friday Snyder acknowledged that the new contribution limits law will go a long way to reduce anxiety businesses sometimes feel when trying to figure out how to play the game of politics.
“It will help us in the sense of knowing that is the max we can give,” Snyder said.
New Mexico, somewhat belatedly, joined 45 other states to limit campaign contributions this week when Gov. Bill Richardson signed legislation to cap contributions. The law takes effect Nov. 3, 2010.
Currently any individual or business in New Mexico can give unlimited amounts of money to a political candidates.
Under the new law, individuals cannot give more than $2,300 during a primary election cycle and $2,300 during general election cycle to a non-statewide candidate, including a state lawmaker.
An individual could give $5,000 per primary election and $5,000 per general election to a candidate for statewide office, such as governor or attorney general.
A limit of $5,000 over the same period would apply to political committees. That cap on committees is the same for political parties.
While good-government organizations such as Common Cause were lauded for their efforts in pushing for contribution limits, a sometimes unheralded ally was New Mexico’s business community, whose representatives doggedly lobbied state lawmakers through this year’s session.
“For the business community, open, transparent government is good government, and good government is good for business,” Terri Cole, executive director of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, said Thursday at a bill-signing ceremony at the state Capitol.
“We want this state to be the most competitive it can be, and the only way we can do that is to have a solid foundation of good government in this state, and we think transparency and strong ethics laws help do that.”
Cole said later that the “last thing a business wants to be expected to do is to hand over a lot of cash for access. That is not appealing. It’s not the way they want to do business. They want to be able to understand the rules, follow the rules, put their deals together, make their presentations on those deals and have them succeed based on the merits of the deal, not based upon how much money they have to give to something in order to feel as though they give a shot at it.”
She went on, saying, “Business people will do business in states that don’t require it before they come to states that do require that. It’s not a requirement that is blatant necessarily. It’s a very subtle operating style.”
Campaign-contributions legislation had faced serious opposition in previous years, partly because legislators wondered why the legislative branch was included when it was Richardson who collected eye-popping contributions. On occasion the governor saw $75,000 and $100,000 contributions go toward his election and re-election campaigns.
Richardson said Thursday he didn’t think it was unethical to accept big contributions when that was the law in New Mexico.
The push for reform gained momentum this year because of three separate investigations, including a federal inquiry into the business practices of Richardson’s administration. Two state probes, meanwhile, are looking into the operations of a defunct housing authority run by a friend of state House Speaker Ben Lujan and trying to find federal election money that went missing during the tenure of former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron.
Former Senate President Pro Tem Manny Aragon also entered a guilty plea to federal corruption charges in October.
