According to the poll, 53 percent of those surveyed disapprove of Richardson's job performance. Only 41 percent approve. In late January the numbers were 47 percent approving and 50 percent disapproving.
For much of his six years in office, Richardson's approval rating was above 60 percent. As recently as May 2007, when he was running for president, his approval went up to 74 percent in the SurveyUSA poll.
The governor's bad poll performances began last month after he withdrew as President Obama's Commerce secretary nominee because of the grand jury investigation of an alleged pay-to-play scheme.
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I am 99.9% sure Gov. Richardson will be vindicated by this Federal Grand Jury. He would be Commerce Secretary by now, if they had finished their investigation in 2008, but didn't and a new one had to be convened for 2009.
ReplyDeleteMost of this media storm is exactly that: journalists on their high horse bashing him, and this is more the pattern nationally than it is in New Mexico. I went to the press conference Jan.5 when he made the
announcement, and so did you, Steve Terrell, and it was clear that he was doing so not because he had been forced to, but more so as not have any cloud hanging over his Senate confirmation.
This is really kind of tragic. In due course, all will be revealed, but it will be hard for Bill to rebuild the stellar good will and high approval ratings that he had before this stuff.
Personally, I know that he is way too smart
to even consider doing something illegal, and so I believe is Richardson's chief of staff at that time, David Contarino, but that is not to confer the same legal benediction on Michael Stratton, the guy from CDR who was calling the Investment Council numerous times, asking for CDR to get the job. Maybe that was Okay, in the Stratton was a Lobbyist for them (and also at the same time, for the world's largest poisonous food additive manufacturer, Ajinomoto of Japan, maker of both aspartame and monosodium glutamate), and Stratton did a number of what I consider ultimately far more terrible things behind the scenes to kill an EIB hearing on aspartame, to "rearrange" and then dump the Governor's prior support for creating a New Mexico Nutrition Council, etc., real
harm to the health of every New Mexican, for what? a corporate client half way around the world in Japan? Wonder how many hundreds of thousands of dollars Stratton got for that? (This goes on to this day with different names and different clients, as Ajinomoto is now represented in the Legislature by Richard Minzner).
However, I still remain sure that Richardson will be vindicated as somehow being "above it all." Maybe it is knowing pretty well; maybe it is faith in someone who almost always seems to have had the best interests of New Mexico at heart.
Where does he go from the Governor's Chair? My guess would be lots of corporate boards of directors. I just hope before he leaves office, he will appoint s Nutrition Council Task Force by Executive Order, something I asked him to do in 2003 and 2004, before he picked up the battle cry of getting the junk food out of the schools, and then get a Nutrition Council bill through the Legislature.
Personally, I think each of the 50 states needs a new Cabinet Secretary for Nutrition and Consumer Protection, particularly New Mexico, one with real powers of enforcement and research, with a few bucks behind them. Legislators love to spend the Tobacco Settlement monies, but few seem as yet to recognize this equation:
1990'S BIG TOBACCO SUITS =
2010'S BIG ASPARTAME/BIG JUNK FOOD SUITS.
Maybe the light will go on in the brightest bulbs first, to that effect, and someone other than me will talk with our Attorney General, Gary King, who has a Ph.D. in Chemistry, after all, about doing something important legally about an almost universal food additive like aspartame that is metabolized as methanol then formaldehyde.
I just learned today that the parents of the elementary and middle school children in British Columbia Canada forced the Education Ministry to ban Aspartame in those schools; high schoolers still will get it in their so-called "choices," but way less than the school kids in New Mexico ingest it presently because some real bimbos in the Public Education Department think Diet Sodas are the way to keep them from becoming obese.
I asked the PED Education Secretary, Dr. Veronica Garcia, about this once, why it was, and she said something about how she "could never break the law." I still don't understand what that has to do with not poisoning New Mexico school children with this infernal neurotoxic carcinogen. Do you?
Stephen Fox
Consumer and Political Editor
New Mexico Sun News
Santa Fe