DPBC Celebrates Pride with DPNM, YDNM, and WSD | |
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Grab your most colorful gear, your wildest hats and sunglasses, and your most comfortable walking shoes!
The Bernalillo Dems, the Young Democrats of New Mexico, and the Westside Dems will be joining in to bring Democratic energy and fun to DPNM’s ABQ Pride Parade float!
Please join us for a day of honoring and celebrating our LGBTQIA+ community!
- June 10th: 8:30 am – 1 pm
- Gather for the parade: 8:30 am
- Parade: 10 am-11 am (approx.)
For details regarding the meet-up location, please register here.
If you prefer not to participate in the parade, you can register to help staff the table at Balloon Fiesta Park instead!
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Help Friends and Family Register to Vote with Voterizer | |
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June is Pride, and what better way to show off your pride than by making it easier for people to register to vote? Here's how — with an assist from Voterizer:
- Click the image to the right and download it to your phone. If that's not working, you can also download the full-size image here.
- Set the image as your phone's lock screen. Here are the instructions for Android phones and for iPhones.
- Whenever you come across someone who needs to register to vote, confirm their registration, or update it, take out your phone and have them scan the QR code in the image. (As long as they fill out the electronic forms themselves, you don't need to be a Voter Registration Agent.)
The best way to support Pride is by ensuring Democrats keep winning at the ballot box so we can push back against the Republican's totalitarian, anti-LGBTQ policies. So, download the image today and make sure every eligible voter you know is registered to vote!
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Explaining Albuquerque's Public Financing System | |
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Early voting for the Albuquerque City Council elections begins in 126 days. For the next month or so, you’ll likely see candidates requesting signatures and $5 contributions so their campaign can qualify for public financing from the city.
Since this system differs from other cities, let’s look at how public financing Albuquerque-style works.
What is Albuquerque’s public financing system?
Put simply, the public financing system allows candidates for Albuquerque’s municipal government to run using government funds instead of seeking private contributions.
To qualify, candidates must demonstrate their viability by collecting signatures and $5 contributions from registered voters. Once candidates qualify, they’re given access to funds equalling a dollar per registered voter in their district (for city council candidates) or $1.75 per registered voter in the city (for mayoral candidates.)
Why would a candidate pursue public financing?
There are a few different reasons. First, not all worthy candidates have access to wealthy donors. By choosing public financing, they may receive what they need to run a viable campaign without needing to cavort with a donor class whose views and needs may differ from the general electorate.
Second, even if a candidate has access to wealthy donors, by choosing public financing, they demonstrate independence. Instead of behind beholden to the whims of special interests, candidates can focus their time and efforts on the voters.
Third, publicly financed candidates have a history of winning their elections. While we shouldn’t confuse correlation with cause, every candidate who won their election to Albuquerque’s municipal government in 2021 received public financing.
How do candidates qualify for public financing?
City council candidates must receive $5 contributions from 1% of registered voters in their district. For 2023, that means candidates need to receive at least the following number of eligible contributors to qualify for public financing:
- District 2: 381
- District 4: 403
- District 6: 333
- District 8: 446
(It should be noted that city council candidates also have to collect 500 signatures from registered voters in their districts to appear on the ballot. Mayoral candidates must receive 3,000 signatures from registered voters in Albuquerque to appear on the ballot.)
How long do candidates have to collect contributions?
City council candidates can collect qualifying contributions from 8:00 am 155 days before the election to 5:00 pm 120 days before.
That means, in 2023, candidates have from June 5 to July 10, 2023.
How much money do candidates receive?
City council candidates receive $1 per registered voter in their district. (Mayoral candidates receive $1.75 per voter.) If their district has fewer than 40,000 registered voters, the candidate will receive $40,000.
In 2023, candidates will receive the following amounts for public financing:
- District 2: $40,000.00
- District 4: $40,262.00
- District 6: $40,000.00
- District 8: $44,577.00
(Some candidates may receive less if they receive “seed money” contributions from private donors.)
In the case of a runoff election, publicly financed city council candidates will receive either $.50 per voter in their district or, if they have fewer than 40,000 registered voters in their district, $20,000.
Do candidates keep the $5 qualifying contributions?
Technically, no. All $5 contributions are deposited into the Open and Ethical Elections Fund. However, this fund is then used to distribute financing to qualifying candidates and cover the administrative and operational costs of the public financing system.
Can publicly financed candidates still receive private contributions?
Yes, though there are both individual and aggregate contribution limits. Additionally, candidates that collect “seed money” contributions will have the total sum subtracted from their public finance distributions.
For example, if a District 2 candidate receives an aggregate amount of $8,000 in “seed money,” they would only be eligible to receive $32,000 in distributions from the public finance funds.
Wait. What is “seed money”?
Essentially, “seed money” is a donation made from a private donor that enables candidates to start collecting qualifying $5 contributions.
Candidates can receive “seed money” contributions during the exploratory period — between 191 and 156 days before the election — and the public financing qualifying period.
In 2023, these are the limits for seed money contributions:
- Council District 2: $250 (individual limit), $8,000 (aggregate limit)
- Council District 4: $250 (individual), $8,052.40 (aggregate)
- Council District 6: $250 (individual), $8,000.00 (aggregate)
- Council District 8: $250 (individual), $8,915.40 (aggregate)
Should candidates use this explainer as a guide for their campaigns?
No. This article offers only a brief explanation of some likely questions voters may have about the system. To ensure you’re complying with the Open and Ethical Elections Code, consult a legal expert or reach out to the city clerk’s office.
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How the Government Benefits Us | |
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Barreling down the Interstate in their Toyota Tacoma, stereo blasting radio music, gun in place in the rack inside the pickup cab’s back window, the freedom-lover approvingly spots a sign, “Don’t Tread On Me.” They pull off the highway into the right lane of a local street, cruise through the green light at the first intersection, and pull into a fast-food restaurant. “Thank goodness the government can’t touch me,” they mouth, “who needs the government.”
What’s wrong with this scenario? Who needs the government? The answer is: We all do, in many ways. If there were ever a time when Ronald Reagan’s pronouncement, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” were true, it is not the present time – probably hasn’t been true since at least the War of 1812.
Let’s look at that fictional first paragraph. Where would we be without the government?
- Interstate highways were an invention of the government, begun by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his administration in the 1950s. There is no doubt that there were abuses in the Interstate highway system: for example, ugly growths such as the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco or the freeways that divided or destroyed neighborhoods, usually of marginalized people, as in New Orleans or Albuquerque. But our gun-toting cowpoke probably wouldn’t want to dynamite all of those fast roads.
- That radio program they’re listening to – just their kind of music. Wait, how can they tune the dial to something they like? Because the government (the Federal Communications Commission) sets standards for transmission and assigns a frequency.
- That local road they’re driving onto – wasn’t that built by local government? Can they even imagine the chaos if each property owner built their own segment of road to hook up to that highway? (An anecdote: Some 60 years ago, Baltimore County, Md., and Baltimore City agreed to widen a road passing from one into the other. The process underwent a sudden stop when it was found that Baltimore County was adding a lane to the west side of the road and Baltimore City was adding its lane to the east side of the existing road. Without government, how could any group of citizens have built that road in the first place? Someone needs to set specifications, even if, in this case, they made a mistake.
- They’re driving on the right side of the road. Wait a minute: Why? What if they hail from England or just prefer driving on the left – why not, if there’s no government to set the standard that even cowpokes drive on the right?
- Taco Betty’s, where he stops, is just off the road. It serves a mixed clientele, old and young, Democrats and Republicans, black, white, and brown. That in itself is a government function, assuring that businesspeople will not discriminate against a given ethnic or racial group. But our mythical cowpoke buys tacos that he can rightfully assume are tasty and safe. “Tasty,” he says, “I can tell that myself right away! I don’t need any government to tell me that.” True about the tasty part, but not about the safe part: That restaurant has been inspected by a government agency. The restaurant’s food processing and refrigeration standards are up to par, and it’s very unlikely that Taco Betty will see an outbreak of food-borne disease.
I’ll hope to write more about where the government “intrudes” (in some people’s view) or “benefits us” (in my view) as we live in a post-caveman existence.
The point is that we need to elect those who are determined to make government work – for all of us – rather than to condemn government as “the problem,” or to have government work only on those projects that meet one person’s grudging definition of “essential.” That’s why we need to elect Democrats, to work to get Democrats into positions where they can make a highly positive difference for us. And maybe then the Democrat-led (not NRA-led) government can do something about that cowpoke’s gun.
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5 Things We Read, Watched, or Listened to This Week (June 6th Edition) | |
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If you’d like to share an article, book, podcast, video, or another piece of media that impacted you, email us at info@bernalillodems.org with a link and a quick note about why you want to share it.
1. “When Did the ‘F*ck Your Feelings’ Crowd Get So Triggered?” The Daily Beast
Pull quote: “The more nebulous the term 'woke' became—even people who’ve written books about it can’t seem to define it—the more concepts it turned into inherent evils. Gradually, over the last three years, defining anything as 'woke' created a permission structure for losing one’s entire shit about it at the drop of a hat."
2. “In a deep red Florida county, a student-teacher revolt shames the right," Washington Post
Pull quote: "Meanwhile, Alyssa Marano, a math teacher who has resigned, rejected the oft-heard charge of LGBTQ indoctrination of students. 'No one is teaching your kids to be gay,' she told the room. 'Sometimes, they just are gay. I have math to teach. I literally don’t have time to teach your kids to be gay.'"
3. “Supreme Risk: An interactive guide to rights the Supreme Court has established — and could take away," ProPublica
Why you should read: An interactive article digs deep to show which of the conservative Supreme Court justices support removing which rights — including those that would alter the fundamental fabric of liberal democracy.
4. “Inside the Meltdown at CNN,” The Atlantic
Pull quote: "At one point during the [Trump town hall] pregame show, when the words 'SEXUAL ABUSE' appeared on the CNN chyron, one of [CEO Chris] Licht’s lieutenants phoned the control room. His instructions stunned everyone who overheard them: The chyron needed to come down immediately."
5. “Opponents, supporters of affirmative action on whether college admissions can be truly colorblind,” CBS News
Pull quote: "Race is just one aspect. I wasn't accepted to Yale because I'm Black. I was accepted into Yale because of all the other things that I am as a person, of which I'm also African American."
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Candidacy Period for CD2 SCC Open through June 16 | |
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A quick reminder: The DPBC will be holding an election in the next couple of weeks to fill open positions for the State Central Committee in Congressional District 2.
The candidacy period is open now. To self-nominate or view the official DPBC Call, head to our website.
Timeline:
- Declaration of Candidacy period: May 26, 2023 – June 16, 2023
- Ballots sent via email and text message: June 19, 2023
- Voting closes: June 25, 2023, 8 pm
- Public live ballot counting via Zoom: Tuesday, June 27, 2023, 1 pm (Link to Register)
Election results will be published on our website on June 28, 2023.
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Public Financing to start—support Joaquin Baca for D2! | |
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Kickoff hosts: NM Secretary of Education Arsenio Romero, Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen, Senator Katy Duhigg, AMAFCA Director Debbie Stover, Debbie & Matt Angel, Alanah Avelin, Apryl Begay, Juan Certain, Nolan Curley, Neal Greenbaum, Clara & Clark Hardgrave, Mariah Harrison, Patti Harrell Hoech, Alicia Lueras Maldonado, Barbara Maddox, Cristina Mercedes Rodgers, Carolyn Meyer, Doug Montoya, Jake Ralphs, David & Clara Sais, Steve Salem, Ken Sears, Adam Silverman, & Victoria Van Damme
Music by Keith Sanchez & Buddhafunk
Tacos by Chef Javier from El Cotorro
Learn more about Joaquin and his vision for ABQ. We’ll be accepting $5 contributions, petition signatures, and providing volunteers with a “Friends & Family for Joaquin” packet. We would appreciate your help!
Echoes Brewery
313 Gold Ave. SW
87102
https://goo.gl/maps/ejZAnEAUq99euFYx9
https://www.facebook.com/events/6298817540197405?ref=newsfeed
joaquinforabqVOLS@gmail.com
https://www.joaquinforabq.com/get-involved
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THREE More $5 Events for Joaquin Baca/District 2! | |
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Santa Fe Ave SW, from 5:30pm-7pm.
Learn more about Joaquin and his vision for ABQ. District 2 voters can give $5 at: https://cleancampaign.cabq.gov/joaquin-j--baca
joaquinforabqVOLS@gmail.com
https://www.joaquinforabq.com/get-involved
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11th Annual Senator Michael Padilla Job Fair | |
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June 14, 2023 - 10am - 2pm
You are invited to participate in my 11th annual job fair. This is a free event. Results have been amazing every year!
Our family, friends and neighbors need jobs. I want to help you find your next top team members! Register for this free job fair today. This job fair is for W2 employers only and is a free public service I have provided for eleven years. Register here.
Please help me spread the word by forwarding this email. Our largest job fair featured 126 employers and had over 5,500 job seekers. This job fair attracts potential employee candidates with a wide array of skillsets.
Job Fair provided by Senator Michael Padilla. Funded by Michael Padilla for State Senator, Sylvia Molinar, Treasurer.
Harrison Middle School
3912 Isleta SW
Albuquerque, NM 87105
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West Side Dems - Monthly Meeting | |
Help us grow our social media presence | |
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Our social media team has been working hard since January 2023 to create eye-catching, informative TikTok videos about Democratic accomplishments in New Mexico. These videos are pushed to other platforms, including Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
We've gained 328 followers thus far, but we need to reach 1,000 TikTok followers in order to improve page functionality. You can help!
- Click on the video to check out all our awesome content
- Give us a follow!
- Share with your networks
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Go-to websites for BernCo politics | | | | |
