Want to know why this page isn’t updated often? Because Valencia! isn’t interested in editorializing.
This page is for reader comments and, thus far, we haven’t received too many. If you’ve got something to say, please send it in so we can get this page active.
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Also, we’ve been working to get two or three monthly columnists lined up. We’ll keep working on it. Want to write monthly? Let us know. Any genre works. We’d love to have a food critic who can visit restaurants around Valencia County and give us their opinion.
Can anyone explain why so many news outlets are covering the story of a two-year-old Belen boy who wandered away from home while his father was showering?
Doesn’t seem newsworthy.
It would be great to find out why KOAT — complete with a live shot, — KOB and the Valencia County News-Bulletin (in tomorrow’s paper) all mention the innocuous case.
The coverage includes interviews with Belen police officials — all on a day when the more important story might be that a Belen police officer got into a wreck that could cost the City of Belen lots of money should a lawsuit be filed by the driver of the other vehicle.
A Valencia! reporter, driving home from a meeting just after 8:20pm tonight, saw two young children stopped by Belen police in Reinken Avenue’s median. Both rode their bikes into the middle of the busy four-lane roadway in front of the Diamond Shamrock gas station.
Think these two wandering kids will be on the news tomorrow?
Smear campaigns aren’t common in Valencia County, but it seems one has popped up recently in Tome, and of course, at issue is the county hospital.
Two weeks ago several pro-agriculture, anti-hospital signs were vandalized, sprayed with paint. Now someone is pushing a flyer in the Tome area, trying to drive a wedge between the community and a few citizens involved in opposing the hospital.
A smear campaign starts with an accusation. In the case of the Tome smear campaign, the primary accusation is that several citizens are abusing their access to the Thome Dominguez de Mendoza Community Center to plot their opposition to the hospital and raise funds for their efforts. The accusation, by its nature, is a loose mix of fact and opinion, that way it’s accurate enough to be believed by its recipients. In other words, it’s true the citizens are using the community center, they’re talking about the hospital both during public meetings at the center and privately elsewhere, and they’ve received donations for their efforts, though not through any formal fundraising. The opinion is that the citizens are abusing their access. The loose facts are used to back up that opinion.
The second step in a smear campaign is to decide the mode by which it’ll be pushed into the public sphere. The most common smear campaigns in Valencia County occur before elections. They’re called whisper campaigns, where one person says, “Did you know such and such candidate did this and that,” which starts a chain of private conversations spreading the meme. The Tome smear instead uses a flyer to get the message across.
The third step in the smear campaign is actual distribution. This is the point at which the campaign leaves the control of the accuser, to the accuser’s benefit, because he or she doesn’t want it traced back to the source. In the Tome smear campaign, the accuser quietly distributed the flyer in strategic locations where it would be seen. From there, the flyer is distributed by recipients unaffiliated with the accuser. Plus, discussion of the accusation occurs, as more and more people see or hear about it.
Finally, the smear campaign reaches its end when — or if — the media finds out about it to report on it, or if the media never reports on it, when the chain of distribution by the recipients stops. The media is usually too late to affect the outcome of the campaign. The smear thoroughly spreads throughout the community, the accusation sinks in, and only then does the media get to offer any clarification. The media is unable to trace the source of the campaign because it’s anonymous to begin with, it’s distributed only initially by the accuser with recipients taking possession of its distribution soon after, and it’s been in the possession of too many people. No smear campaign is linear, starting at Point A (the accuser) and heading straight to Point B (the media). If so, it’d be easier to find the accuser. Instead, it goes through twists and turns to get from one to the next.
In elections, smear campaigns are effective because elections often hinge on swaying one or two percent of the vote. But in the context of the county hospital project, which now depends on a decision from the Court of Appeals, there is no effect on the outcome of that decision.
Some might say public support for the anti-hospital group could be negatively impacted, but the only reason to want to affect public opinion is to affect the county commission’s decision-making, and the commission, for now, has ceded all control of the issue to the court and a private nonprofit, both of which don’t have to concern themselves with public opinion.
And just like the trouble the media has finding the source, so too does law enforcement. While the Tome letter doesn’t appear to have anything criminal or indisputably libelous in it, its possible connection to the sign vandalism makes it evidence, and that’s probably why the letter sits in the Valencia County Sheriff’s Department’s official file for the vandalism investigation.
Ken Wright of Bosque writes in about a Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD) controversy, where the MRGCD has at times sent out a newsletter prior to an MRGCD election highlighting the accomplishments of certain board members up for reelection:
There is a tradition that diminishes the status of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District.
Prior to each election the district puts out an expensive, color glossy that is expensive to mail. The post offices have their trash cans filled with them after the customers get the item out of their PO box. The district “newsletter” has low credibility and is not often news. When it is used just prior to a board election with some propaganda about chosen incumbents and never mentioning the election, the taxpayers see the value of their taxes diminished. It must be that the MRGCD doesn’t want candidates or most ratepayers involved.
I ask the board to not send out any of this junk mail, particularly till after the election on June 2.
Contact your board member(s) or the main office at 505-247-0234 and ask to end this waste of your funds.
The issue came up at the recent MRGDC meeting in Belen, where Wright publicly asked the board not to send out the newsletter.
Valencia! published an article late last week explaining how the Valencia County Commission seriously questioned whether or not to give Sheriff Rene Rivera just over $1,000 to help in a murder investigation.
We tried to write the article in a way that showed how strange the debate was. While you’d think the county commission would quickly approve such a small amount of money for an investigation into a double homicide, in front of the public last week, the commission turned it into a full debate.
The commission, at moments and with Commissioner Georgia Otero-Kirkham as the exception, almost looked like it was prepared to deny Rivera the money he needed. They bombarded him with questions, forcing him to explain his investigation process, as if there was no trust that he — an elected official no less important — knew what he was doing.
Ken Wright, a farmer from Bosque, writes in about the conservancy district’s Monday night meeting:
The Board of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD) ventured out to meet about 125 people in Belen on April 27th. “Items From The Floor” has been moved to near the start of the meeting and about ten farmers brought up the serious problems they face and gave their solutions. The seed has been planted, let’s see if the board can follow thru and solve them.
This rare out of Albuquerque meeting was suggested by Eugene Abeita, the board member that represents the district at large. Luckily the rest of the board thought it was a good idea. Thank you to the board for working together.
There will be an MRGCD election on June 2 to pick two Bernalillo County seats, and one each in Sandoval and Socorro. Any one that is a property owner in those counties between the east and west hi line ditches can vote. Tract size doesn’t matter and both owner and spouse (if named on the deed) can vote.
Monday’s meeting was positive for at least one reason: The MRGCD board listened to what farmers had to say about their land and their efforts to irrigate it. The comments weren’t positive, because farmers are having trouble getting the water they need, but the board listened.
Valencia! reported this week that the Valencia County Action Commitee (VCAC) and a related group calling itself Citizens for Change placed a new large sign calling for a four-lane Highway 47 and a bridge across the Rio Grande, between Los Chavez and Tome-Adelino.
VCAC also has been intimately involved in fighting to get the county hospital built and is responsible for the pro-hospital signs around the county.
What VCAC managed to do this week with its new push for the four-lane Highway 47 and bridge is shift the hospital debate away from an argument for healthcare to a debate over development.
It’s the worst decision the pro-hospital movement could have made, because now the hospital opposition is reframing the debate. Up to this point, the pro-hospital movement, which includes VCAC, has successfully painted the plaintiffs who filed the hospital lawsuit and their supporters as anti-hospital and, by implication, anti-healthcare. But the debate was reframed this week, with the anti-hospital locals transforming themselves into a pro-agriculture movement, with the help of the ill-conceived four-lane and bridge attack on the historic community of Tome-Adelino.
Should this new pro-agriculture movement stick with its message and target that message to the agricultural communities, they could successfully sway more public opinion against the hospital.
Public opinion might not matter so much soon, however. The New Mexico Court of Appeals is “ready” to schedule and hear the county hospital appeal.
Commission Chairman Pedro Rael verbally attacked local journalist Julia M. Dendinger last week. The Valencia County News-Bulletin reported it this week. The commission called an emergency meeting and Rael got a bit testy:
“I want to verify that this is truly an emergency because Ms. Dendinger with the News-Bulletin turns us into the AG’s office every chance she gets,” Commissioner Pedro Rael said. “I am also requesting that another reporter cover these meetings since she brings an atmosphere of hostility to the meetings.”
It’s sad to see Rael do that at a public meeting. Elected officials shouldn’t be attacking journalists, who are the purveyors of information in a free society. Journalists are also tasked with holding officials accountable by asking questions, which is what the News-Bulletin has done when asking the New Mexico Attorney General questions about the legality of county actions.
The News-Bulletin has shown courage by publishing Rael’s accusation — “atmosphere of hostility” — in the paper. It must have the courage to continue publishing everything that happens at county commission meetings.
Keep up the good work, and don’t let them hold you back. Elected officials try to intimidate to keep the truth from being reported, and it’s sad to see it happening in Valencia County.
Monahan said of potential gubernatorial candidates, including Attorney General Gary King:
If King doesn’t run and actor Val Kilmer demurs, who else will go? Insiders say Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez does not seem as probable a candidate as a few months ago.
While there will be some detractors, Valencia County would be thrilled to have a local as governor. It’s time for Sanchez to work an offensive, if he’s inclined to run.
