One Woman's Viewpoint

Last Friday I was wrapping up my week, writing plans and reports for clients, finishing calls, when a missed call popped up from a familiar number – a friend I hadn't spoken with for a while. I got through my virtual in-box and called my friend.

We caught up for a few minutes and then he got to the point – he needed the link to my last column and the NM In Depth story that spawned it. He wanted to track the partisan caucus PAC in-kind donations – the money hardest to track. We talked a little bit about the sheer volume of it, then I asked, "you didn't take any of it, did you?"

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

A divided country offered a huge surprise in national elections, delivering the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives to Donald Trump and the Republicans. A gerrymandered New Mexico delivered all three Congressional seats and one Senate seat to the Democrats, where just over two-fifths of voters are registered with that party.

The Republican victory wasn't a tidal wave. But in today's polarized times, a popular vote win of 51% plus 277 electoral votes seems massive. President Trump has posted his best results yet. American voters have spoken.

America is stable. But we have serious problems.

I have been letting my moderate-ness show more in recent months and especially in recent weeks in pointing out the disappointments of the two presidential platforms and the relative insignificance of the occupant of the White House against the might of the powerful American economy.

This election matters.

A collective gasp was heard Oct. 25 when The Washington Post declined to publish an endorsement for President of the United States in the 2024 election. It quickly came to light that the Post's owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, ordered the endorsement, already written endorsing Democrat Kamala Harris, pulled. That same day, Republican candidate Donald Trump met with Blue Origin executives. Blue Origin is Bezos' space company.

If one were to take their news solely from the presidential candidates, it could be believed that the U.S. economy is on the brink of collapse. New home buyers will require a $25,000 down payment from the government. Restaurant waitstaff must be freed from the burden of taxes on their tips. American workers and companies must be protected by tariffs on foreign goods. And so on and so on.

The reality is rather startling. The American economy, as it has been for the last 30 years, is a global marvel. According to the International Monetary Fund, in 1990, the United States made up approximately 2/5 of the gross domestic product of the world's wealthiest nations, the group known as the G7 nations. Today, more than half of the G7 GDP is American.

Following local news over the long weekend was much like any other. "Shooting." "Shooting." "Officer-involved shooting." Living in the East Mountains – the semirural communities dotting the Sandia and Manzano Mountains east of Albuquerque – many of us think we can access the amenities of the state's largest city without suffering from its ills: the traffic, the homelessness and the violence.

But we can't escape big city problems here in the mountains. On Oct. 13, deputies from the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department responded to a call reporting gunshots in Tijeras to find three members of a family dead along with the family dog and a young man covered in blood explaining he was trying to bury them.

Reconnecting is up to us.

Early voting for the 2024 election began in New Mexico this week. No matter who becomes our next President, more than 40% of the country will have voted for someone else. Put another way, no matter whom you vote for, nearly half the country is voting for the other candidate.

Here's the tough part about three successive cycles of close national elections: the issues remain the same and the arguments become more and more personal. Attacks against the candidates and grossly negative campaigns are a given. What is genuinely detrimental to our national character is that these smear campaigns aren't just targeting candidates anymore. We're going after their supporters, too.

I am writing this column from another state where I am currently undergoing a course of medical treatment. When this medical issue arose earlier this summer, I was told flat out by my Albuquerque primary care provider that getting a consult to this particular specialty in New Mexico’s largest city would take a year. So here I am in Minnesota.

We have all felt the pinch as health care providers have left our state. Think New Mexico, the state’s leading non-partisan think tank, just released a new report on the issue. According to the report, more than one in three New Mexico counties no longer have hospital-based maternity care, meaning expectant mothers must take to the open highways to deliver their babies safely in a hospital.

The Israeli pager attack was many things. Terrorism wasn’t one.

Boy, did Israel really put their foot in it with their latest offensive against Hezbollah. Specifically targeting only Hezbollah militants via their pagers and radios to minimize collateral damage – what could the IDF have been thinking?

That seems to be exactly the tone that various international bodies are taking in response to the technologically astonishing synchronized pager and radio attacks against Hezbollah members in Lebanon Sep. 19 and 20. Israel has not openly acknowledged responsibility for the attack, where Hezbollah members’ personal tech devices exploded at a simultaneous signal on two consecutive days, but a U.S. official has confirmed that Israel notified the U.S. about its responsibility for the operation.