Janice Arnold-Jones announces run for governor

State Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones announces her 2010 bid for governor. (Photo by Marjorie Childress)

ALBUQUERQUE – State Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones officially announced yesterday to about 200 people in Albuquerque that she’ll run for the Republican Party’s nomination for governor in 2010.

In her campaign kick-off address, Arnold-Jones emphasized three issues: connectivity, ethics and education.

Arnold-Jones is known for webcasting committee meetings during last year’s state legislative session despite being asked not to do so by House leaders.

The four-term Albuquerque Republican said yesterday that she “took a camera — actually, schlepped a camera — I took a camera to the Legislature so New Mexicans could participate in their government.”

She said as governor she would exert pressure for more openness in the Legislature, because people have “the right to know.”

She said she’d pressure the Legislature to open its meetings to the public, to implement the “wide use of technology” to provide access across the state, real-time tracking of bills, and “the full and complete vetting of legislation, including detailed cost analysis and revenue source expectations.”

And, she said, if she’s elected governor her cabinet meetings will be “accessible to the public on a regular basis.”

Arnold-Jones took direct aim at the administration of Gov. Bill Richardson in rolling out her ethics platform, a package she said is necessary because New Mexico lacks “principled leadership,” which is causing a “moral train wreck”:

For the past seven years, we have had unbridled spending, an absentee governor, and numerous highly paid political appointees in positions of power and authority who were often ineffective, incompetent, or both.

Proposals she put forward included mandatory ethics trainings for state employees, whistleblower protections and high standards to reduce both the appearance and reality of conflicts of interest. She did not mention certain ethics proposals championed by many, such as an independent ethics commission.

Arnold-Jones spent considerable time on the issue of education, saying that the state is home to premier research institutions and the highest per capita number of PhDs in the nation, and yet “knowledge has been systematically withheld from our children.”

She didn’t give many specifics about how she’d improve education in New Mexico. Instead, she said,it’s about attitude, expectations, and “believing in ourselves.”

She also stressed “connectivity” — encompassing renewable energy, smart-grid technology and communications infrastructure. She said that “engaging and enabling private enterprise” would result in better energy transmission infrastructure, telephone and Internet access, roads and cell phone coverage.

Renewable energy sources like wind, solar power are “terrific,” she said, but they mean nothing if the electricity generated can’t be moved to the market.

Arnold-Jones is the third person to formally announce a run for governor. She’ll be competing in the Republican primary with Doña Ana County District Attorney Susanna Martinez. On the Democratic side, so far only Lt. Governor Diane Denish has said she’ll run.