Free Republic

Businessman Louie Sanchez remembers growing up in a trailer in the South Valley where he said he learned the value of hard work. It’s those working class roots he wants to emphasize when he launches a bid for the U.S. Senate on Monday. Sanchez will join a growing Republican field that includes former New Mexico State University professor Gavin Clarkson; anti-abortion advocate Elisa Martinez; and Albuquerque contractor Mick Rich in the race to replace Democrat Tom Udall, who is not seeking reelection to a third term. U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján and accountant Andrew Perkins are seeking the Democratic nomination....

The shale-oil tsunami that has flooded New Mexico with a wave of petro dollars in recent years may be receding somewhat as U.S. production faces its first significant decline since the gushers began nearly eight years ago. Signs of trouble are showing up in major basins around the country, with a significant drop in drilling rig activity and sluggish growth this year compared with the spectacular bursts of production in recent years that has transformed the U.S. into the world’s No. 1 oil producer.

I called former covert CIA operations officer Valerie Plame in Santa Fe last week to ask if I had reason to be anxious about the way something that in the context of history is so minor – an assassination in Serbia, a small civil war in Ukraine – can spin so out of control. “Other than the annihilation of the human race through miscalculation or mistake?” she replied. “Yes, the summer has been full of terrible news. This is an issue that because it is so big and truly existential in nature, we tend not to be able to absorb...

When Amanda Berg heard reports that President Donald Trump mocked the accents of the leaders of South Korea and Japan at a recent fundraiser, it brought back painful memories from her childhood. Berg, a Korean American who grew up in Fort Collins, Colorado, recalled kids doing the “stereotypical pulling at the eyes and the mocking accent.” It made her feel like she was a foreigner in her own community. Berg, a registered Democrat, is among a growing and crucial bloc of Asian American voters leaning further to the left in the age of Trump, and his stunt, reported by the...

I’ve always thought there must be a special place in this world for women who call other women bitches. And now I’ve found it. It’s the New Mexico Governor’s Office. And I’ve always wondered if there is any place on the planet where people call other people “retard.” There is. It’s on the communications staff of the New Mexico Department of Human Services, which serves developmentally delayed clients. We know this thanks to a Mother Jones magazine story that included leaked email exchanges and sound bites from debate preparation sessions while Susana Martinez was running for governor in 2010. There...

A scathing profile of Gov. Susana Martinez published in the politically liberal magazine Mother Jones – featuring 4-year-old recordings of Martinez and her campaign staff cursing about her 2010 election opponent and criticizing public school teachers as overpaid because they have summers off – touched off more political skirmishing in New Mexico on Wednesday. Martinez attacked the 5,000-word article as a “desperate” liberal media assault and asked campaign supporters in an email for financial help to fend off political attacks in her re-election bid. Several Democrats seeking their party’s nomination to oppose her in November used the article to blast...

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington chose New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson for a dubious distinction Wednesday, naming him to a list of the nation's most unethical and incompetent governors. Richardson's office called the Washington, D.C.-based group's report on him "ridiculous" and cited the Journal as the culprit for his inclusion. "Governor Richardson has led the way for ethics reform in New Mexico," said Richardson spokeswoman Alarie Ray-Garcia. "It's also difficult to take it seriously, since it relies almost exclusively on the Albuquerque Journal as its source." The CREW group cited Richardson, a Democrat, for using state investments to...

Hit by some of the financial problems that have plagued other newspapers around the country, the Albuquerque Journal has laid off seven newsroom staffers and made other changes to save money, Journal publisher T.H. Lang said Thursday. Among those losing their jobs was Journal business reporter Tamara Shope, who was told about the layoffs Wednesday night after she filed a story and was walking to the parking lot. "An editor told me he had terrible news," Shope said. "Seven people were being laid off, and I was one of them. He said it was because I was the last person...