Martinez Provides Explanations for Vetoes

Susana Martinez
SANTA FE – Today, Governor Susana Martinez vetoed legislation that would re-draw district lines for the New Mexico Senate, the New Mexico House of Representatives, and the Public Regulation Commission – as well as a stand-alone bill that would have split a single Bernalillo County precinct. Only the redistricting map for the Public Education Commission which involved a bipartisan compromise and broad support was signed into law. Inexplicably, the legislature failed to pass a redistricting plan for the U.S. House of Representatives.
Governor Martinez provided detailed explanations for her veto of each bill, outlining some of the specific problems that call into question the fairness, appropriateness, and even constitutionality of the measures that were sent to her desk. With respect to the House of Representatives redistricting plan, the legislature’s own demographer admitted that the plan intentionally over-populates districts in Albuquerque, while under-populating certain rural areas. He explained that keeping rural districts on the lower end of the population deviation allowed leadership in the House and Senate to preserve the number of districts in those regions. According the Governor's statment, Democrats used this strategy to avoid moving a Democratic district in north central New Mexico, which has not kept pace with state-wide population growth, to the Westside of Albuquerque and Rio Rancho, areas that have experienced explosive growth. Martinez called the Democrats tactics "manipulation of population deviations, a tactic that has been found to be unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court."
The Martinez press release went farther: "Such a plan does not demonstrate appropriate regard for the “one person, one vote” principle, as it dilutes the voting strength and representation of a significant number of New Mexicans, and in some cases, leaves high-growth areas over-populated, which will guarantee the increased dilution of representation in those areas for years to come. In both chambers, the House plan had bipartisan opposition.
The Senate plan suffers from similar flaws. When the sponsor of the Democrats’ Senate redistricting map presented the plan in the Senate Judiciary Committee, she was asked directly if the proposal was fair, balanced, bipartisan, and reflected an attempt to compromise. Her response was, “I would prefer not to answer that” - a strong indication of the Democratic majority’s effort to pass a partisan map that reduced political competition and rejected any attempts to compromise. Moreover, in packing population into Republican districts and under-populating Democratic districts, the map not only allows for the creation of more Democratic districts, but the population disparity also ensures that the votes of some New Mexicans will count more than others, depending upon where they happen to live.
The Democrats’ redistricting plan for the Public Regulation Commission was another example of a partisan plan that does not fairly address changes in population over the last decade. Despite the fact that the central goal of the redistricting process is to provide for equal representation by creating districts of nearly equal population, the PRC map creates a district that has 35,000 more residents than another district. In a plan with only five districts, there is no justification for such extreme population deviations.
“The purpose of redistricting is to fairly equalize population among districts to ensure that New Mexicans have an equal voice in their representation,” said Martinez. "Unfortunately, the Democratic leaders chose to pack thousands more New Mexicans in the districts of certain areas – including Albuquerque and its fast-growing Westside in the House plan – to avoid creating new districts that would provide New Mexicans with the representation they deserve. That tactic is clearly unconstitutional and I have no choice but to veto these plans. Despite our best efforts to develop a compromise, Democratic leaders have refused to negotiate and have chosen the courts over compromise – and that’s their costly decision.”
SB 41 would have split a precinct, providing for the separation of the Mesa del Sol area from Isleta Pueblo. The legislation represents an unjustified end-run around the Precinct Boundary Adjustment Act, an existing law which provides a mechanism for the secretary of state, boards of county commissioners, and county clerks to adjust precinct boundaries as necessary. Moreover, it is an example of politicians attempting to pick and choose their voters rather than allowing voters to choose their representatives and senators. In this case, the rationale for splitting the precinct even relied on projections about growth in the precinct – not actual growth. Full veto messages for each bill can be found on the Governor’s website at:
House Map -
PRC Map -
Senate Map-

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Fox News Fifteen Years Old and Here to Stay

Jim Spence
Fifteen years ago the fledgling Fox News Network was launched. It’s presence on the television scene was rather inconspicuous at first, mainly because few cable systems carried the signal. All but the most casual observers soon realized the Fox approach to reporting news was much different than it was at the Big Four (NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN). Fox soon began to claim only its coverage was, “Fair and Balanced.” “We report you decide,” was another catchy slogan the network repeated over and over. The inference of such provocative slogans was a not so subtle slam at the huge bias in the reporting approaches of all of Fox’s television news industry competitors. The slogans at Fox News went un-noticed at first. However, as time passed, slowly but surely, Fox began to gain momentum and score ratings victories and all of that changed.
Bernard Goldberg
Five years after the Fox launch, Bias, a 2001 a bestselling book served as a revealing expose. Eventually the book severely damaged the reputations of CNN, CBS, ABC, and NBC. For many these former icons of news would never be perceived as unbiased neutrals in news reporting again. The author of Bias was Bernard Goldberg, a former veteran CBS newsman. Goldberg provided compelling firsthand testimonials of the deep biases towards Democratic Party candidates that had been pervasive in the broadcast news media for many years. Goldberg asserted rather convincingly the notion that a Democratic Party bias had a dramatic impact in the nature, tone, and actual content of evening news that was being packaged and presented for mass consumption at CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN. The Emmy Award winning Goldberg attracted disdain from some in the offended camps. However, he helped shift the attention and the discussions of consumers towards all of the ways the bias was influencing television news.
Long before the fifteenth anniversary of the launch of the Fox News Network, or the publishing of Bias, it became obvious that the news consuming public was hungry for an alternative to the typical television news media productions that Bernard Goldberg spoke about. Fox News was already quietly well on its way to positioning itself as the primary beneficiary of America’s hunger for an alternative.
The formula at Fox News is actually pretty simple. Instead of a steady dose of heavily tilted presentations that portray the so-called conservative views in a bad light, conservatism is treated with genuine respect at Fox. And in this approach the vast majority of news program hosts at Fox News Channel, which runs 24 hours a day, tend to demonstrate just the opposite bias of their counterparts at CNN, CBS, NBC, and ABC. Like it or not the Fox News Channel, with its conservative viewpoint has beaten the big boys at their own game of bias. And now Fox News is the biggest of the big boys in news. On its fifteenth birthday it is pretty clear that Fox is thriving and Fox is here to stay.

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