Editor,

Good news that Jerry Ortiz y Pino will be on the June ballot.
The corporate lobbyists’ stranglehold on almost every legislative process in New Mexico extends to many administrative functions like the Environmental Improvement Board. Consumer protection legislation in New Mexico is doomed to fail or be subject to corporate manipulation.
Unchecked corporate power remolds “populists” into corporate stooges. This ugly picture gets uglier the more you see it year after year. Junk food companies and neurotoxin-food-additive makers hire top lobbyists to kill bills like the one to create a New Mexico Nutrition Council, with its envisioned mild powers to question FDA approval of so many chemicals in our food. Similarly, liquor lobbyists make sure “DWIers” are guzzling more booze and back driving on our streets, relatively unpunished, resulting in weekly deaths occurring in our “Land of Enchantment.”

New Mexico urgently needs a governor and a lieutenant governor able to guide the vessel of state around this mess. A little less than 20 percent at the recent nominating convention went for Sen. Ortiz y Pino’s lieutenant governor candidacy, but thanks to thousands of New Mexico Democrats for signing Jerry’s second round of nominating petitions. He is on the June ballot. Jerry comes out of two professional realms: health care and education. He is no corporate or political hack.

His bills have been on the cutting edge of progressive throughout his senate career, benefiting the lives of all New Mexicans.
I not only apprise New Mexicans of the silent but brewing corporate catastrophe in the frequently crippled Roundhouse, but as a remedy, ask you to vigorously support Sen. Ortiz y Pino. Never has the lieutenant governor’s job been more important. No one in my 41 years in New Mexico has ever been more qualified to hold this position.

Stephen Fox
UNM alumnus