The Alibi’s 2006 Election Guide

It’s a brutal, ruthless place. Tangles of campaign rhetoric wind down the sides of looming billboards smeared in dirt and detritus. The mind’s a blur—thousands of sound bytes and buzz words swarm around you, infest your senses, aiming right for your moist mucus membranes. Mossy paths are grown over with too many baffling instructions; at times it seems too daunting to go any further. It’s survival of the fittest, or the richest.

Now that you’re provided with the information you need to make educated choices at the polls, how do you find said polls? What do you need when you get there? And how do you determine if you’re even registered? Relax, dear readers, we’ve done the work for you.

The Alibi endorses: Patricia Madrid

Job Description: The federal representative for New Mexicans living in the first Congressional district. Drafts and votes on legislation.

The Alibi endorses: Bill Richardson

Job Description: Executive head of New Mexico. Enforces state laws. Appoints state officers. Prepares state budget to present to the Legislature.

The Alibi endorses: Lorenzo Garcia

Job Description: Audits and monitors financial affairs of every state agency.

The Alibi endorses: Neither

Job Description: Oversees the statewide election process, including maintaining lists of registered voters, evaluating voting machines and certifying precinct boundaries. Regulates lobbyist activity. Manages campaign finance reports. Second in line of succession to the governor.

The Alibi endorses: Jeff Bingaman

Job Description: One of New Mexico's two representatives in the U.S. Senate. Drafts and votes on federal legislation.

The Alibi endorses: Jim Baca

Job Description: One of the more powerful offices in the state. Governs the management of state lands, which affects wildlife, townships and public education, as most of the revenue from the office goes toward New Mexico schools. Whoever holds the office next will have imperative decisions to make on what our state does about energy production.

The Alibi endorses: Gary King

Job Description: New Mexico's chief legal representative. Writes advisory letters and opinions. Prosecutes and defends cases in upper-level state courts.

The Alibi endorses: Darren White

Job Description: The top law enforcement official in the county. Oversees and manages more than 400 employees.

The Alibi endorses: James B. Lewis

Job Description: Manages banking services for state government and invests short-term funds for local governments and tribes.

The Alibi supports

There are four constitutional amendments on this year’s ballot. We support all of them and recommend you do, too.

The Alibi supports

For better or worse, culture is a commodity here in New Mexico. Municipalities such as Santa Fe, Taos and even Silver City have done much to capitalize on their cultural strengths. This has improved the quality of life of city dwellers in countless ways, both tangible and intangible. Albuquerque, unfortunately, is still struggling to catch up.

The Alibi supports

There are six requests for local bond authorizations and three for state bond approvals. We support all of them and hope you will, too.

PDF or iPod Note

In the print edition, we had a “Clip-Out” guide, but we think you’ll agree such paper-centric concepts don’t play very well on the web. Instead, we offer both a print-it-yourself PDF or a text file you can unzip and copy to your iPod’s Notes folder (your ‘Pod must be in hard disk mode). So cyber!