New Mexico Officials Get to Work Stumping for Gov. Richardson as Caucus Approaches

DES MOINES, Iowa— After a long list of phone calls to potential Iowa presidential voters, New Mexico Transportation Secretary Rhonda Faught can recite her political sales pitch by heart.

"Hi. I'm Rhonda Faught," she says in her best phone voice when asked for an example. "I'm calling on behalf of Governor Bill Richardson ... and I would love to talk to you about some of the great things the governor is doing in New Mexico. Do you have a minute?"

Faught is among the scores of New Mexicans— many of them high-level Richardson state appointees volunteering on their own time— who have converged upon Iowa to crank out phone calls, bang on doors and do anything they can to boost Richardson's Democratic presidential bid in the final days leading up to Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses Thursday night.

The Richardson campaign has said 300 of the so-called "Road Runners" left New Mexico last week for Iowa, and more continued to pour in Sunday— a sunny day that nonetheless featured temperatures in the 20s and a heavy, moist sort of cold that had a way of sinking deep into the bones.

At times, it seemed like a person couldn't toss a campaign button down a Des Moines sidewalk without plunking one or two New Mexico political types in the Midwestern cold.

Former Albuquerque mayor and current state natural resource trustee Jim Baca— he's here. So is state Public Safety Secretary John Denko.

And though the Richardson camp refused to provide the Journal with even a partial list of Richardson Cabinet members now in Iowa, other well-known New Mexicans spotted or reported to be in Des Moines, or who are on their way, include ...

Sorry ... You'll have to click the link to read the names (watch a short commercial video then enter the site to read the article). However, they all deny that Richardson put pressure on them to campaign for him. Right, and I have a NYC bridge for sale, cheap, too.

BTW, NMDOT Secretary Faught is in charge of that financial black hole known as the Rail Runner, which is chewing up to a half billion dollars of state funds to construct and operate commuter rail for a few thousand passengers per day and fare box recovery of less than 10 percent. Meanwhile, needed highway repairs and expansion get put aside due to lack of money. That money could be put to use to make safer the stretch of I-25 between Bernalillo and ABQ that sees tens of thousands of vehicles per day and has not been upgraded since original construction in the 1960's. I believe delaying reconstruction is a deliberate ploy to force people to use the north-south train, though it doesn't go to anywhere except downtown and most businesses are located east toward the mountains.

NM Ping

If you want on or off the NM Ping list, please FReepmail me.

Access to the ping list is available to anyone by going to my FR home page.

Dave, You're a day early....tomorrow is when most folks like to sleep in ;)

"Working for the governor, as a Cabinet secretary, I have a story to tell about the things we're doing in New Mexico," Faught told a reporter, saying that makes her and the others particularly effective salespeople.

Excuse me, I have to go vomit.

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