How many votes will Gov. Bill Richardson take from Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama when New Mexico Dems go to the polls Feb. 5?
Probably some big part of 5,000 is our conjecture.
The New Mexico Democratic Party sent out about 5,000 absentee ballots, starting in December. Some pundits suggested Bill would have gotten a huge part of the party turnout if he had stayed in the race. But he pulled out January 10, probably after some of those absentee ballots had been mailed in.
Plus, he's still on the ballot for walk-in voting Feb. 5. Voters who've been asleep this past week just might mark him in.
So, a news angle we'll be following on Tuesday night is the vote for Bill, and how much it may subtract from the remaining two candidates.
KSFR 101.1 and KSFR.ORG streaming live will carry election returns beginning at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 5, with Bill Dupuy at the news desk, Dan Gerrity at a local watering hole popular among local politicos, and national coverage from Public Radio Interactive.
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Problematic New Mexico vote:
First the idea that the turnout was totally unexpected is ridiculous. The Dem party officials here were asleep at the wheel. Last friday Obama came to Santa Fe for a rally, and instead of 500 people, 10,000 tried to come; only 5600 could get in, the rest were turned away after all major roads to the location were stuck with bumper to bumper traffic not moving for 3-4 hours.
Someone might have noticed that.
Or simply asked around, we all knew turnout would be huge, like every other primary this year..
What's more, polling places were open only from 12 noon to 7pm, a major difficulty for working people, especially with kids.
Also, only a fraction of the voting places were open, forcing most people to try and figure out where they were supposed to vote. The Rio Rancho site, which didn't finish voting until well into the night, grouped together 39 precincts.
To cap it off, state employees, and the state is the largest employer in New Mexico- were not given any time off to vote.
Add in yet another blizzard (the National Guard has been called out in the north), and altogether voting yesterday was hardly routine.
What was our governor Richardson doing on the Sunday before the vote? Watching the Superbowl with Bill Clinton.
So it looks like the old democratic establishment here- led by the Governor, paid little attention to what was about to happen, and had no interest in facilitating a huge increase in voter participation. I lay that at Richardson's doorstep.
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