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Poll Shows Republicans May Pick up State Senate District 28; State Senate Watch: New Mexico Democrats May Face Losses due to their Vicious Primary Battles; (This is the first of a planned Series we will do on Competitive Legislative Races this Fall.)

09/10/2020

Democrats ousted five of their incumbent state senators in their June primary. We predicted three of those. "Assuming the challengers' campaigns are competently managed," we expected that Senators John Arthur Smith, Clemente Sanchez, and Gabriel J. Ramos would be defeated.  They were. We were sort of neutral on Mary Kay Papen and Richard Martinez's chances, but kind of expected them to survive. They didn't.

Senate District 28, Background

Several of the Democrat challenger campaigns were indeed run by highly competent, proven winners. The SD 28 race, encompassing all of Grant and Catron Counties, as well as almost all of Socorro County, saw incumbent Gabe Ramos easily dispatched by Democrat Siah Correa Hemphill. And Hemphill's guiding light was one of the Democrats' most experienced and most successful advisers to the Hard Left of the party, none other than the notorious Neri Holguin.

We note this with the greatest of respect—if you are a Democrat, and you have voted more than once or twice in a manner that, say, Rachel Maddow, would not approve of, well...you'd better hold your breath to see if you get a challenger. If you do, and it's a hard-Lefty...and if he or she hires Holguin, well...get ready to clean out your office. 

Here's the thing: the parties are more polarized than ever—and primaries bring out the most polarized voters. The majority of Democrat primary voters generally hang on every word uttered by Maddow or anyone at MSNBC or CNN.

And Ramos, who had never faced the voters, had been appointed to replace former Senator Howie Morales who had just been sworn in as lieutenant governor. All three county commissions sent up Ramos' name, much to the vocal displeasure of Governor Grisham and her fellow "progressives." In short, Ramos found himself out of step with the Democrat base.

All the enthusiasm in the Democrat Party, including in New Mexico, is on the far Left. Just look at the result in SD 28: 4,809 to 2,970, a 62-38 crushing defeat for Ramos. Hemphill raised almost $127,000, spent about 95 grand of that, while Ramos spent almost the same amount, about $96K, after raising about $112,000. 

Funding was not the issue. It was messaging. And once it was established that Hemphill was part of the Bernie Sanders-AOC-Green New Deal-anti-Second Amendment-Abortion on Demand coalition, Ramos and his advisers could simply not match the Holguin-Hemphill team. You're either in lockstep with the modern Democrat Party, or you're not. And if you're not, well, sayonara!

While most observers are zeroing in on the JOhn Arthur Smith district (SD 35), there are a total of five seats that should be followed closely. In addition to SD 28, and SD 35, there is the Clemente Sanchez seat (SD 30), the William Tallman seat (SD 18), and the John Sapien seat (SD 9). All of those should be won by the Republican candidates PROVIDED there are competent campaigns and sufficient funding. 

Senate District 28 Poll and General Election Outlook

In Senate District 28, the Republicans have nominated James "Jimbo" Williams to face the Democrat nominee Siah Correa Hemphill. Here is a poll we have come across from less than two weeks ago. It was conducted by Remington Research Group out of Kansas City. It is a nationally reputable polling firm, which, incidentally, was the earliest to predict that Trump would win Ohio in 2016.

The poll surveyed 422 likely general election voters in Senate District 28.

Q1: What is your opinion of Michelle Lujan Grisham?

Favorable: 50%  Unfavorable: 38%  No opinion: 12%

Q2: What is your opinion of James Williams?

Favorable: 23%  Unfavorable: 15%  No opinion: 62%

Q3: What is your opinion of Siah Correa Hemphill?

Favorable: 31%  Unfavorable: 26%  No opinion: 43%

Q4: For whom would you vote for President if the election were held today?

Donald Trump: 42%  Joe Biden: 52%  Undecided: 6%

Q5: In Senate District 28, the candidates are Republican James Williams and Democrat Siah Correa Hemphill. If the election were held today, for whom would you vote?

James Williams: 42%  Siah Correa Hemphill: 42%   Undecided: 16%


The survey was conducted from August 26 through August 28, 2020. 422 likely General Election voters participated in the survey. Survey weighted to match the expected turnout universe for the 2020 General Election. The Margin of Error is +/-4.9% with the normal 95% level of confidence.


This was the initial baseline poll. It was not a "push poll," or one in which descriptions of the candidates were used to influence the voters' responses. Those facts being the case, the results show that Hemphill is surprisingly weak, running a net 10 points behind Biden. 

Hemphill does have the advantage of being from Silver City, so she's a resident of Grant County, which has 61% of the voting power in the district. Williams has a disadvantage, at least on paper, of being from a much smaller community. He is from Quemado (population 228) which is in Catron County, which has only 10% of the voters in the district.

Still, Hemphill is on the extreme Left of both the Democrat Party. She identifies with entities like Antifa and Black Lives Matter that are the engines of the nationwide riot and looting culture. She has changed her tune in the wake of the primary—with the addition of both independent and Republican voters now in the general election mix.

With Ramos out of the way, Hemphill has removed all of the hard Left rhetoric from her personal appearances, campaign literature, and social media postings. She is going to try to win the general election as a "moderate," something she is decidedly not.

How much the traditional New Mexico Democrats will be put off by her actual political leanings is unknown. But there could be considerable resentment of the kind of campaign she ran in the primary. And the traditional moderate base of the New Mexico Democrat Party, which has been largely Hispanic, may harbor some resentment toward yet another outsider largely supported by outsiders in Silver City (people who have moved in from California and elsewhere over the past 15 years or so) trying to take over the party.

In any case, the results of the poll should be very encouraging for the GOP.


 

Email us (at nmpj@dfn.com) with your feedback, comments, questions, and ideas.


Intelligent Political Discourse—for the Thoughtful New Mexican

 

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National Issues

National Issues

Democrats

2016 Presidential Campaign - Democrats

Republicans

2016 Presidential Campaign - Republicans

Jeb Bush gets religion.

"They said he got religion at the end, and I'm glad that he did."  — Tom T. Hall. The Year Clayton Delaney died.

Well, it's official.  Jeb Bush has changed quite of few of his positions on illegal immigration.  The single most significant is that he no longer endorses the "path to citizenship" for those who came here illegally. 

This is, after all, the key portion of any proposal aimed at "reforming" our existing illegal immigration situation.

No sensible citizen can see any point in trying to deport between 12 and 16 million people currently living in America illegally.  And no candidate for any office that we know of supports that.  What the average American wants is for the country to "get a handle on it."  They want it stopped, our borders secured and future illegal immigration prevented.  It is a national security issue.

The Path to Legal Status

The only way to accomplish the above goals, is to identify current illegal immigrants, get them accounted for, have them documented, and placed on a path to legal status.  Neither they nor their children or spouses should live in a state of fear or anxiety.

But a path to "citizenship" is not the right course.  It is not morally or legally correct.  A merciful and compassionate nation can provide the safeguards of legal status without sending the message to the rest of the world that all you have to do is cross our border and you will eventually get to become a citizen, thus circumventing the legal framework scores of millions of Americans have followed, honored and respected.

If someone who is granted legal status eventually wants to become a citizen, that person should have to return to his or her country of origin and wait in line like 20 million people around the world are doing at any given time.  Failing that, America will forever send the signal that anyone in the world can "jump the line," and that there is no reason at all to obey our immigration and naturalization laws.

We Like Jeb Bush

We are glad Jeb Bush has learned this lesson.  He is a fine speaker, and can eloquently explain his positions on complex issue.  If he were not named "Bush" he would be an actual top tier candidate—in all that that title would entail, including likelihood of acceptance and support of and from the American people in the primaries, and in any theoretical general election.  

We also recognize that he already is a de facto top-tier candidate because of his fame and his fundraising.

If he were to be the nominee of the Republican Party we would heartily support him and endorse him.  We hope, however, that he is not, as he does not give the center-right coalition the best chance of winning.

Media Watch

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Movies, Television, Pop Culture

  • Movies, Television, Pop Culture
    Selma   ????? We have now seen the Oscar-nominated movie Selma.   Our earlier allusion to criticism that sounded as though it was in an Oliver Stone category for historical fabrication is some...

Sports

Sports

The Major League Baseball Playoffs are not realistic, and destroy the actual meaning of the sport. 

Major League Baseball is unique in this respect—its postseason is markedly different from the way the game is played normally.  No other major league sport suffers from this flaw.

Not that much is wrong with baseball. In some respects it's the most well thought-out sport there is.  The "perfect game" many aficionados say.

But the Major League Baseball postseason experience is unique in the world of professional sports, and not in a good way. 

In fact the playoffs are flawed in such a way as to detract from the sport itself and diminish the game and what it means to be the world champion of the sport. 

Among the Big Four team sports of North America: football, hockey, basketball and baseball—and all the 122 professional major league teams competing in the NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB respectively—it is in baseball alone that the postseason turns the sport itself on its head and makes it reflect something that it is not.  This article will explain why that happens and why it is wrong-headed.

 

Background on the The Frequency of Play

The 30 teams in both the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association teams play a very similar schedule.  On average, each team has a day off between games, sometimes two days off.  Though there are back-to-back games, they are relatively infrequent.  NBA teams play between 14 and 22 back-to-back games a season, and for the NHL it usually ranges between 9 and 19. The NFL has a full week between games, the exception being the new Thursday games that each team plays once, leaving them only four days' rest once a year.

But baseball players play every single day.  Ten days straight, then a day off, then seven more games, then a day off, then ten more games.  Typically a baseball team plays 27 games every 30 days.  For the NHL and NBA it would be 14 per month, and for the NFL the number would be 4.

 

Getting to the Playoffs:  It's a grind

In all four sports, getting to the postseason requires a total team effort—in fact an all-out total organizational effort.  Teams must be deep, have bench strength and the capability of moving players in and out of the lineup, and on and off the roster, who can take the place of key players who go down for an injury, or who have to miss games for whatever reason.  While this is true of the other three major sports as well, it is most certainly even more of a concern for baseball teams because of the sheer volume of games in which a team must field a competitive lineup.

Each league's regular season* is a marathon, not a sprint.  NFL teams play for 17 weeks, 16 games.  The NHL has an 82-game season over six months, paralleled by an NBA season of 84 games over the same timeframe. Baseball is the biggest marathon of all—a true test of resilience and endurance—162 games usually starting around the beginning of April and finishing about the end of September.

NHL teams carry 23-man rosters, of which 20 can be active for any particular game.  The NBA is similar, with 15-man rosters of which 13 can be on the bench for a given game. In the NFL, the teams have 53 players on a roster, but only 46 can suit up on game day.  In Major League Baseball, teams have a 25-man active roster, and all 25 are at the park every day.

 

The Postseason Playoffs:  Sport by Sport

The National Football League:

Of the 32 teams, 12 qualify for the playoffs.  The playoffs are conducted in the exact same manner as the regular season.  Each team plays once a week, the exception being that the four top teams get the first week off.  For a typical qualifier to reach the Super Bowl, the team must play three consecutive weeks.  At that point both remaining teams have two weeks off before the Super Bowl.

In short, the playoffs, with a game each week, reflects the same means of advancement as is present in regular season grind.

The National Hockey League: 

16 of the 30 teams qualify for the postseason.  The playoffs are conducted in the exact same manner as the regular season: a game, a day off, a game, a day off, a game, a day off, and so on.  Just as in the regular season, there are occasionally two days off.  But the playoffs require the same stamina, the same approach as that required to make the playoffs.

 

The National Basketball Association

16 of the 30 teams qualify for the postseason.  The playoffs are conducted in the exact same manner as the regular season: a game, a day off, a game, a day off, a game, a day off, and so on.  Just as in the regular season, there are occasionally two days off.  But the playoffs require the same stamina, the same approach as that required to make the playoffs.

Major League Baseball

10 of the 30 teams qualify for the postseason.  (Although four of those teams qualify only for a one-game do-or-die play-in game.)

Here is where all similarity to baseball ends. 

Unlike the other three sports whose playoffs mirror the test of the regular season, and whose conditions are the same as the regular season, Major League Baseball playoffs in no way resemble the sport itself.  In hockey, basketball and football, the teams win playoff games and reach the pinacle of the sport in exactly the same way that they qualify to try to do so. 

Not so in baseball.  They are two entirely different concepts.  Teams make the playoffs only because they have depth, five-man pitching rotations and can play day-in and day-out at a high level.  But the baseball playoffs suddenly become a kind of "all-star" game within each team's roster.  MLB playoffs are conducted in a way that more closely follows the NBA and the NHL.  Teams have enormous numbers of days off. 

Here's the key point:  No Major League Baseball team could even qualify for the postseason if they played the same way during the regular season that they do in the playoffs.  None.

In the regular season Major League Baseball teams have to use a 5-man starting rotation, with pitchers pitching every 5th day.  There are not enough days off to have even a four-man rotation, let alone a team with three pitchers.  Even the best team in baseball using only a 4-man rotation, would wear them out, and most likely end up with a record of something like 66-96, or 70-92—and that would be if they were otherwise teh best team in the sport.

 

The 2014 Baseball Postseason is Typical

As examples, last year's World Series teams the Kansas City Royals played only 15 games in 30 days, and the San Francisco Giants played only 17 games in 30 days.  The 12 to 15 days off in the non-baseball fantasy world of the MLB postseason, means that teams can turn to three pitchers and give all of them plenty of rest.  But it isn't the way baseball really works.

At one point, the Royals had 5 consecutive days off, and the Giants had 4.  This never happens in the regular season.  Even the All-Star break is only three days.  Very rarely is there anything beyond a one-day break, and even that happens only a couple of times a month. 

What this means is that neither team used the team that got them to the playoffs.  (The NFL, NBA and NHL teams ALL used the very same teams that got them to the playoffs.) 

Baseball teams use a three-man pitching rotation in the playoffs.  Sometimes, they essentially opt for two pitchers only—conceding the likelihood that some of their games are going to be lost—when their third-, or rarely fourth-best pitcher has to face one of their opponents' two-man or three-man rotation members. 

Imagine an NFL team using only one running back and three wide receivers, instead of rotating through their roster in the course of a playoff game—or using only 4 defensive backs and 4 linebackers, instead of rotating 8 or 9 DBs and 6 or 7 linebackers?  In hockey, would a team use only two or three of their forward lines?  Would an NBA team use only the starting five?  They would never make the post season if they tried to present that product to their fans during the regular season.

Those are the equivalents of what Major League Baseball sets up every fall.  No other sport drags its playoffs out in such a way as to completely change the playing field—completely change the dynamics of its game.

Why Does Baseball Do This?

MLB does this because the TV networks want to drag out the games so that they can try to have one game each day  This requires an unnecessary staggering of games, and creates the phenomenon of 15 off-days in a month.

What about travel days?

What about them?  Baseball has travel days constantly.  A team may play in Chicago one day and in Miami the next, or in New York one day and Phoenix the very next day.  Travel days as a routine part of the game are again, a phenomenon of television, and stretching out the playoffs.

In years past, travel days were employed only when necessary. The famous "subway series" games were played on seven consecutive days.  Why?  Because there was no "travel day" required to go from Brooklyn to the Bronx.  Today, they would put in artificial travel days.

Even fairly long train trips didn't necessarily matter.  The 1948 World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Braves was played in six consecutive days, October 6 & 7 in Boston, October 8, 9 & 10 in Cleveland, and October 11 back in Boston.

This reflects actual baseball, the way the teams play day-in and day-out, and the kind of unique test that baseball presents to its athletes, its managers and management, and to its fans.

In the modern world of charter planes, teams fly from coast to coast to play games on consecutive days.  The artificial "travel day" should be eliminated so that teams can play in the playoffs in the same way that got them there in the first place.


*All these leagues also have pre-seasons and training camps, which add an additional 6-8 weeks to each player's year.


Email us with your feedback, comments, questions and ideas. 

Religious Issues

Religious Issues

  • Religious Issues
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