On October 16, the US Department of Justice and City of Albuquerque (City), New Mexico, filed a joint motion seeking court approval to terminate certain portions of the consent decree covering the Albuquerque Police Department (APD). The joint motion follows the independent monitor’s 20th report, which was also filed on October 16, which concluded that the City and APD have reached 99% Operational Compliance the highest level of Operational Compliance ever achieved by APD. The federal monitor’s report indicates that APD’s compliance level reflects significant achievement in critical areas such as completing timely and high-quality use-of-force and misconduct investigations. These accomplishments take place against a backdrop of a 37% reduction in APD’s use of serious force in the last four years and 100% compliance in the Primary and Secondary Compliance levels

The joint motion asks the court to terminate 31 consent decree provisions with which APD has fully complied for at least two years. The provisions cover a range of topics, including:

• Use of electronic control weapons (commonly known as Tasers);
• Crisis intervention.
• Crisis prevention and

It is the third joint motion the parties have filed in the last year seeking to terminate a total of 183 paragraphs of the consent decree which amounts to 67% of the enforceable provisions of the settlement agreement.

APD has made substantial change in reaching compliance with provisions of the consent decree the parties seek to terminate, including:

• APD has properly trained all officers on using Tasers to ensure that officers only use these weapons when lawful and necessary.
• APD has trained specialized officers to respond to behavioral health crises and deployed those officers across the department. Albuquerque has also created a new agency called Albuquerque Community Safety to send trained mental health professionals to 911 calls involving behavioral health issues. Through these two initiatives, Albuquerque is working to ensure that people get the help they need.
• APD has improved supervision across the police department, ensuring that officers receive the guidance, direction and support they need to be effective and comply with the law.

Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said this in a statement:

“Our joint motion to terminate additional provisions of this consent decree demonstrates that the Justice Department has come even closer to its ultimate goal of ensuring constitutional and effective policing in Albuquerque. … Real reform is not only possible, but evident in Albuquerque. Since this consent decree went into effect, the Albuquerque Police Department has made significant and sustained progress in implementing policing practices that respect civil rights and promote public safety. We have seen a 37% decline in use of serious force over the last four years, and continue to move reform efforts forward. The Justice Department will continue to work with the City and its police department toward our shared goal of constitutional and effective policing—the community deserves nothing less.”

U.S. Attorney Alexander M.M. Uballez for the District of New Mexico said this in a statement:

“This partial termination proves that the hard work of the men and women of the Albuquerque Police Department and the persistent advocacy from the community are achieving real results.  Where the existence of a consent agreement is a symptom of dysfunction, every paragraph terminated is evidence of progress. Effective policy, operational observance of those rules, and persistent compliance with reform have set up APD for success. The sustainment period which follows termination will ensure that APD delivers the police department the people of Albuquerque deserve.”

The link to the quoted news source is here:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-and-city-albuquerque-new-mexico-seek-partial-termination-consent-decree

20^{th th} FEDERAL MONITOR’S COMPLIANCE REPORT FILED

It was on November 14, 2014, the City of Albuquerque, the Albuquerque Police Department and the United State Department of Justice (DOJ) entered into a stipulated Court Approved Settlement Agreement (CASA). The settlement was the result of an 18-month long investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) that found that the Albuquerque Police Department engaged in a pattern of “excessive use of force” and “deadly force”, especially when dealing with the mentally ill. The DOJ investigation also found a “culture of aggression” existed within the APD. Department of Justice investigators reviewed 20 fatal shootings by Albuquerque Police between 2009 and 2013 and found that in the majority of cases the level of force used was not justified because the person killed did not present a threat to police officers or the public.

The Court Approved Settlement Agreement mandates 271 police reforms, the appointment of a Federal Monitor and the filing of Independent Monitor’s reports (IMRs) on APD’s compliance with the reforms. There are 276 paragraphs in 10 sections within the CASA with measurable requirements that the monitor reports on. The ultimate goal of the settlement was to implement constitutional policing practices  and it was  aimed at making sure police officers follow policy and don’t use excessive force and deadly force.

The link to the 118-page CASA is here:

https://documents.cabq.gov/justice-department/settlement-agreement.pdf

20^th Federal Monitors Report Filed

On October 16,  2024 Federal Court Appointed Monitor James Ginger filed his 20th report. The 20th Independent Monitor’s Report covers the time period of  February 1, 2024, through July 31, 2024. The report is 72  pages long.  It is the shortest report filed to date with the previous reports averaging about 300 pages.  The link to read the entire 20^th  Federal Monitor’s report is here:

https://www.cabq.gov/police/documents/final-imr-20.pdf

The 20^th Federal Monitor’s Report found that APD continued to sustain a 100% Primary Compliance rate, continued to sustain a 100% Secondary Compliance rate and increased Operational Compliance from 96% to 99%.

Under the terms and conditions of the CASA, once APD achieves a 95% compliance rate in all 3 identified compliance levels and maintains them for 2 consecutive years, the case can be dismissed. Originally, APD was to have come into compliance within 4 years and the case was to be dismissed in 2018. However, because of delay and obstruction  tactics by both APD management and the police union to implement in full the reforms, a 5 year delay resulted.

COMPLIANCE LEVELS EXPLAINED

The 3 compliance levels are explained as follows:

PRIMARY COMPLIANCE

Primary compliance is the “policy” part of compliance. To attain primary compliance, APD must have in place operational policies and procedures designed to guide officers, supervisors and managers in the performance of the tasks outlined in the CASA. As a matter of course, the policies must be reflective of the requirements of the CASA; must comply with national standards for effective policing policy; and must demonstrate trainable and evaluable policy components.

SECONDARY COMPLIANCE

Secondary compliance is attained by implementing supervisory, managerial and executive practices designed to and be effective in implementing the policy as written, e.g., sergeants routinely enforce the policies among field personnel and are held accountable by managerial and executive levels of the department for doing so. By definition, there should be operational artifacts such as reports, disciplinary records, remands to retraining, follow-up, and even revisions to policies if necessary, indicating that the policies developed in the first stage of compliance are known to, followed by, and important to supervisory and managerial levels of the department.

OPERATIONAL COMPLIANCE

Operational compliance is attained at the point that the adherence to policies is apparent in the day-to-day operation of the agency e.g., line personnel are routinely held accountable for compliance, not by the monitoring staff, but by their sergeants, and sergeants are routinely held accountable for compliance by their lieutenants and command staff. In other words, the APD “owns” and enforces its policies.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The 20^th Federal Monitor’s report contains the following succinct summary of the 72-page report:

“The 20th monitor’s report shows that APD continues to work to implement the requirements of the CASA fully, and the work has been shown in our analyses of their compliance process. During this reporting period, APD continued to meet CASA requirements. That work has moved the CASA compliance levels to rates higher than all previous reports. Primary compliance stands at 100 percent. Secondary compliance also is at 100 percent. Operational compliance stands at 99 percent.  These compliance levels are the result of focused executive-level commitment to compliance. As with any system, however, these processes require careful oversight of process, review, and reinforcement.

Although disciplinary practices have improved substantially, we have observed incidents in which Internal Affairs Professional Standards (IAPS) and Internal Affairs Force Division (IAFD)  sustain charges against a member, only to find it “exonerated” or “unfounded” by the Pre-Determination Hearing (PDH) officer. This may be an issue reflective of the substantial policy and process changes within APD.  [The monitor’s team] suggest that APD perform a substantial review of the current process and assess the cause of this intervention of external forces that change IAFD and IAPS findings.  APD has developed a proposed solution to deal with these processes, which we will assess fully in IMR-21.

We continue to note that CPOA appears to be understaffed, and this understaffing continues to result in excessive workloads and missed timelines for investigations. We do note that the City has funded additional positions for CPOA investigators. We suggest that the CPOA Director and the City’s Human Resources Department work together to fill these positions so that CPOA investigations can be completed within the timelines established by the CASA.”

https://www.cabq.gov/police/documents/final-imr-20.pdf

The 20^th Federal Monitors Report Concludes with the following one paragraph Summary at the end:

“During this reporting period, APD continued to meet CASA requirements. That work has moved the CASA compliance levels to rates higher than all previous reports. As noted, Primary Compliance stands at 100 percent. Secondary Compliance also is at 100 percent. Operational compliance stands at 99 percent. These compliance levels are the result of focused executive-level commitment to compliance and demonstrative of the hard work by the City of Albuquerque.”

APD BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION SCANDAL IGNORED

It was on Friday January 19, 2024 that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed search warrants and raided the homes of 3 Albuquerque Police officers and the home and law office of prominent DWI criminal defense attorney Thomas Clear, III.  All 6 of those targeted with a search warrant are allegedly involved in a bribery and conspiracy scheme spanning a decade to dismiss DWI cases.

Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman ordered the dismissed 196 DWI cases because of the scandal due to the main witnesses’ credibility being called into question which in all the cases are APD officers. A total of 9 APD Police officers have been implicated in the scandal and 7  have resigned during the Internal Affairs investigation, one is on paid leave  and one has been terminated.

One by one, the accused Albuquerque police officers have been turning in their badges and resigning  rather than talking to Internal Affairs investigators about an alleged public corruption scheme involving DWI cases. The FBI and the DOJ  is investigating the allegations as a criminal matter. U.S. Attorney Alex Uballez has said the probe focuses on alleged wrongdoing by “certain” APD officers and others. No one has been charged in the case. The FBI’s investigation is ongoing. In both 19th and 20th Federal Monitor’s, there is absolutely no mention of the DWI bribery and conspiracy scandal.

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

The blunt truth is APD was expected to be found in compliance after the 19^th Federal Monitors report came out saying APD fell 2% short of being in full Operational Compliance but at 100% Primary and Secondary Compliance.  What called into question if APD would finally reach compliance was the Department of Justice and the FBI investigation into allegations that DWI officers took bribes to miss court dates which led to hundreds of pending DWI cases being dismissed by the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office. The APD Officers reportedly worked with prominent criminal defense attorney Thomas Clear, III, and his paralegal to get the cases dismissed.  Six of the nine officers implicated in the scandal have resigned from APD declining to be interviewed by APD Internal Affairs. No federal charges have been brought against any one over the scandal and the Department of Justice and the FBI say the investigation is ongoing.

It turns out that the biggest scandal of APD corruption did not even merit and acknowledgement nor a mention by the Federal Monitor in his 19th or 20th progress reports. What is truly disgusting and down right pathetic is that for the past 10 years APD management and the entire APD department was supposed to be the  under the watchful eye of the Department of Justice, the Federal Court and a Federal Monitor, yet the bribery and conspiracy scandal to dismiss DWI cases ostensibly went totally undetected by the Federal Monitor over the last 10 years during which occurred.

Under Secondary Compliance, the Federal Monitor and his so-called team of experts were required to review supervisory, managerial and executive practices and the enforcement of policies among field personnel and how they were held accountable by management and executive levels for wrongdoing. No doubt the monitor will argue it was not his job to ferret out scandal, nefarious or illegal conduct of APD officers other than use of force, but that sure damn well was the responsibility of the Department of Justice. The public perception is that the DOJ reform process really has not accomplished much other than making the Federal Monitor a wealthy man.

Excessive use of force and deadly by APD is what brought the Department of Justice to this City in the first place and damaged APD’s reputation to an extent. The reforms were an attempt to restore public confidence to an extent. There is absolutely no doubt that APD’s reputation has been trashed to a major extent because of the bribery and dismissal scandal. APD is viewed by many as again having just another bastion of “dirty and corrupt cops” who have brought dishonor to their department and to the department’s professed values of “Pride, Integrity, Fairness and Respect”. 

This is so even before any criminal charges have been filed against anyone, before anyone else is fired from APD and before any action is brought against the police officers involved for government corruption and criminal conspiracy to dismiss cases working with a prominent criminal defense attorney.  Should the criminal defense attorney be charged and convicted of the crimes, he is likely facing jail time in prison as well as disbarment from the practice of law.

There is little doubt that this whole DWI dismissal bribery scandal has shaken the public’s faith in our criminal justice system and APD to its core. The only way that any semblance of faith can be restored and for people to begin trusting APD again is if all the police officers involved in this scandal are held accountable and the lawyers involved are held accountable.  That will only happen when there is aggressive prosecutions and convictions, the police officers are terminated, and they lose their law enforcement certification and disbarment occurs with the attorney.

HISTORIC MILESTONE

The announcement that APD, after almost 10 years,  is now essentially in full compliance with the Court Approved Settlement Agreement (CASA) is a major milestone for the beleaguered department plagued by scandal. The 20^th report from the monitor essentially continues to pave the road for APD to “effectively self-monitor”.   Notwithstanding,  the monitor’s 19^th Federal Monitors report  noted  that APD still needs to improve supervisory oversight of in-field activities, something not fully addressed by the released 20^th report. The monitor also said  the Civilian Police Oversight Agency, which focuses on police accountability, needs to address timeliness and staffing issues.

The resulting settlement agreement with the DOJ led to an overhaul of APD use of force policies, recruitment, training, internal affairs procedures and field supervision of officers.  The implementation of all the reforms took over twice as long as was originally agreed and required the expenditure of millions of dollars and oversight by an outside independent monitor. The Federal Monitor and his team have been paid upwards of $12 Million for their services and reports. The city has also spent over $40 to implement the reforms.

The Court Approved Settlement Agreement requires 95% Operational Compliance by APD. Operational compliance tracks whether officers follow policies and whether they’re corrected when they don’t. According to this latest report  APD is  at 99% Operational Compliance.  Since October 2019, APD has been and has remained at 100% Primary Compliance, meaning all required policies and procedures are in place. APD is also at 100% Secondary Compliance regarding the training of officers.

The achievement of 99% of Operational Compliance  allows  APD to to continue with implementation of the settlement terms directed towards a full  dismissal of the case. If compliance can be sustained at 95% or more in all 3 compliance levels for two years, the case can be dismissed. With the filing of yet another Motion to Self Monitor more provisions of the settlement APD should be able to move toward self-monitoring with all remaining sections that have not already been dismissed by the court.

REFORMS ACHIEVED UNDER THE CASA

On November 16, 2024, it will be  a full 10  years that has expired since the city entered into the CASA with the DOJ. It was originally agreed that implementation of all the settlement terms would be completed within 4 years, but because of previous delay and obstruction tactics  by APD management and the police officers’ union found by the Federal Monitor as well as APD backsliding in implementing the reforms, it has taken another 5 years to get the job done.

After 10 full years, the federal oversight and the CASA have produced results. Reforms achieved under the CASA can be identified and are as follows:

• New “use of force” and “use of deadly force” policies have been written, implemented and all APD sworn have received training on the policies.
• All sworn police officers have received crisis management intervention training.
• APD has created a “Use of Force Review Board” that oversees all internal affairs investigations of use of force and deadly force.
• The Internal Affairs Unit has been divided into two sections, one dealing with general complaints and the other dealing with use of force incidents.
• Sweeping changes ranging from APD’s SWAT team protocols, to banning choke-holds, to auditing the use of every Taser carried by officers and re-writing and implementation of new use of force and deadly force policies have been completed.
• “Constitutional policing” practices and methods, and mandatory crisis intervention techniques an de-escalation tactics with the mentally ill have been implemented at the APD police academy with all sworn police also receiving the training.
• APD has adopted a new system to hold officers and supervisors accountable for all use of force incidents with personnel procedures implemented detailing how use of force cases are investigated.
• APD has revised and updated its policies on the mandatory use of lapel cameras by all sworn police officers.
• The Repeat Offenders Project, known as ROP, has been abolished.
• Civilian Police Oversight Agency has been created, funded, fully staffed and a director was hired.
• The Community Policing Counsels (CPCs) have been created in all area commands.
• The Mental Health Advisory Committee has been implemented.
• The External Force Investigation Team (EFIT) was created and is training the Internal Affairs Force Division on how to investigate use-of-force cases, making sure they meet deadlines and follow procedures.
• Millions have been spent each year on new programs and training of new cadets and police officers on constitutional policing practices.
• APD officers are routinely found using less force than they were before and well documented use of force investigations are now being produced in a timely manner.
• APD has assumed the self-monitoring of at least 25% of the CASA reforms and is likely capable of assuming more.
• The APD Compliance Bureau has been fully operational and staffed with many positions created dealing directly with all the reform efforts and all the duties and responsibilities that come with self-assessment.
• APD has attained a 100% Primary Compliance rate, a 100% Secondary Compliance rate and a 99% Operational Compliance rate.

CITY SHOULD SEEK DISMISSAL OF CASE AND NOT WAITE ANY LONGER

Over the last 10 years, APD has devoted thousands of manhours, and the city has spent millions of dollars on the reform process, creating and staffing entire divisions and roles and rewriting policies and procedures.  APD has implemented oversight outside of the CASA requirements, implementing 6 month reviews of police shootings to identify shortcomings and possible solutions.

Despite the fact that the Court Approved Settlement Agreement mandates 2 years of sustained compliance of all 3 levels, it can be said that the spirit and intent of the CASA have now been fully achieved.  Given the extent of the compliance levels, the work of the Federal Monitor is done. The purpose and intent of the settlement has been achieved.

The city should seek to negotiate a stipulated dismissal of the case with the Department of Justice (DOJ) sooner rather than later.  Should the DOJ refuse, the City Attorney should move to immediately to dismiss the case under the termination and suspension provisions of the CASA by filing a Motion to Dismiss the case and force the issue with an evidentiary hearing and let the assigned federal judge decide the issue of dismissal.

The link to a related blog article is here:

APD Has Achieved Compliance Levels Mandated By Court Approved Settlement Agreement; City Should Seek Immediate Dismissal Of Case And Not Be Required To Waite 2 More Years

 

On October 25, the Albuquerque Journal published the following guest opinion column submitted  by Democrat United States Senator Martin Heinrich:

HEADLINE: “I’m running for a third term to build a stronger future for New Mexico”

When I first ran for public office, my motivation was simple: I wanted to make life better for the people of New Mexico.

Growing up the son of a lineman and factory worker, I learned the value of hard work and the challenges working families face. My parents instilled in me a sense of responsibility to help others, and that’s what I tried to do every day in public office.

Over the years, I’ve been proud to deliver real results for New Mexicans: from expanding access to health care for veterans and lowering the costs of life-saving medications, to protecting our treasured public lands like the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and the Rio Grande del Norte National Monuments, to securing $1.5 billion for military construction at our military bases and doubling the funding and workforce at our national labs, and making record investments in early childhood education.

We’ve made major strides in transforming New Mexico’s economy. Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, and the Infrastructure Law, we’re seeing a manufacturing renaissance in New Mexico.

We’ve brought new industries like wind energy and semiconductor manufacturing to our state, creating thousands of good-paying jobs that are revitalizing our communities.

In the fight against the fentanyl crisis, I helped pass legislation to crack down on the financial networks of traffickers. I’ve also secured over $400 million for fentanyl detection technology at our borders, ensuring our law enforcement agencies have the resources they need to stop this deadly drug before it hits our streets.

I was incredibly proud to have helped pass the first bipartisan gun safety legislation in 30 years. This law included provisions I authored to stop gun trafficking and keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and domestic abusers.

I’ve also secured millions to support our local law enforcement and help them protect our communities.

As an avid sportsman and outdoorsman, protecting our public lands has always been central to my work. I led efforts to pass the Great American Outdoors Act, a landmark piece of legislation that made historic investments in conserving our public lands, improving access for outdoor recreation, and addressing maintenance needs in our national parks and forests.

I’ve also worked to secure clean water resources for our rural communities, ensuring our families, farmers and ranchers have access to this vital resource.

There’s still more work to do. Too many families are still struggling to make ends meet. My focus moving forward is on continuing to build a brighter future for New Mexico.

I’m committed to fighting for economic opportunity for every New Mexican, ensuring everyone who works hard can provide for their families and get ahead.

I will keep defending the rights and freedoms that New Mexicans cherish. We’ve seen unprecedented attacks on reproductive rights, and I’ll continue standing up to protect a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions. That means codifying Roe v. Wade into federal law and ensuring access to abortion, contraception, and IVF for every woman, no matter where she lives.

I’m running for another term in the U.S. Senate because I believe in the strength, resilience and potential of our state. We’ve made real progress, but I know that our best days are still ahead of us.

We need leaders who are committed to fighting for our working families, defending our rights, and protecting our future. That’s why I’m asking for your support in this election.

Together, we can keep building a stronger, more prosperous New Mexico for everyone who calls this great state home.”

Martin Heinrich, of Albuquerque, is the Democratic candidate for U.S. senator from New Mexico. He faces Republican Nella Domenici in the Nov. 5 election to represent the state for a third consecutive six-year term.

https://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/opinion-i-m-running-for-a-third-term-to-build-a-stronger-future-for-new/article_6124a1fa-9188-11ef-89d9-dbcfcbd43940.html

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

The U.S. Senate is currently controlled by Democrats by just 2 votes and has 51 Democrats, including three independents, and 49 Republicans. There are 34 seats up in 2024, including a special election in Nebraska, of which 23 are held by Democrats or Independents. Republicans can retake control of the Senate with a net gain of two seats or by winning the 2024 presidential election along with a net gain of one seat.  In other words, the US Senate race between  Martin Heinrich and his opponent will no doubt play a major roll as to which party will control the United States Senate.

Senator Martin Heinrich by far is more reflective of New Mexico values than his opponent. Over the last 12 years, Heinrich has emerged as the type of United States Senator more interested in getting things done for the state as opposed to giving interviews to the media and building a national reputation to seek higher national office. Heinrich is currently a member of the powerful Senate Appropriations committee. He also serves on the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies, the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development and the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, all assignments that allow the Senator to advocate for New Mexico.  Senator Heinrich has made the case that he should be returned to the United States Senate.

The link to a related blog article is here:

ABQ Journal US Senate Poll: Heinrich 51%, Domenici 40%; Control Of United States Senate On The Line And Could Be Decided By Race

 

Four-star Army General Mark Milley was appointed by then President Donald Trump as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  The general worked alongside the then-president for more than a year. In 2023, Milley retired following more than four decades of military service to the United States.  In his retirement speech, his remarks included language that raised a few eyebrows when he said:

“We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, to a tyrant or dictator — or wannabe dictator.”

General Milley’s remarks were an obvious reference to Donald Trump, but the four-star Army general did not elaborate any further.

General Milley was interviewed by award winning journalist and author Bob Woodward for his new book entitled WAR. In the published book, Milley gives a blunt assessment of former President Donald Trump. In the Woodward book, retired General Milley warns that former president Donald Trump is a “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country” voicing his mounting alarm at the prospect of the Republican nominee’s election to another term. General Milley is quoted as telling Woodward this:

“No one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump. … Now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country.”

The link to the quoted and relied upon news source is here:

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trumps-former-joint-chiefs-chair-trump-fascist-core-rcna175248

TRUMP VERY DEFINITION OF FASCIST AS HE CLAIMS ADOLF HITLER “DID SOME GOOD THINGS”

Donald Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff John Kelly is warning that former President Donald Trump meets the very definition of a fascist and that while in office, Trump suggested that Natzi leader Adolf Hitler “did some good things.” John Kelly is a  retired Marine general who worked for Trump in the White House from 2017 to 2019. Kelly made the remarks in interviews with both The New York Times and The Atlantic.

Kelly said in his interview with The New York  Times that Trump met the very  definition of a fascist. After reading the definition aloud, including that fascism was “a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader,” Kelly concluded Trump “certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

Kelly has long been critical of Trump and previously accused him of calling veterans killed in combat “suckers” and “losers.”  Kelly’s  new warnings came just two weeks before Election Day, as Trump seeks a second term vowing to dramatically expand his use of the military at home and suggesting he would use force to go after Americans he considers “enemies from within.”

“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” Kelly recalled to The Times. Kelly said he would usually quash the conversation by saying “nothing [Hitler] did, you could argue, was good,” but that Trump would occasionally bring up the topic again.

Trump has frequently voiced his disdain for those who serve in the military and for their devotion to duty, honor, and sacrifice. Former generals who have worked for Trump say that the sole military virtue he prizes is obedience. As his presidency drew to a close, and in the years since, Trump has become more and more interested in the advantages of dictatorship, and the absolute control over the military that he believes it would deliver. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him make the remarks.

In his interview with The Atlantic, Kelly recalled that when Trump raised the idea of needing “German generals,” Kelly would ask if he meant “Bismarck’s generals,” referring to Otto von Bismarck, the former chancellor of the German Reich who oversaw the unification of Germany. “Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals,” Kelly recalled asking Trump to which the Trump responded, “Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.”

Kelly told The Times:

“He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government. … I think he’d love to be just like he was in business.  He could tell people to do things and they would do it, and not really bother too much about whether what the legalities were and whatnot.”

Links to quoted or relied upon news sources are here:

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/10/23/trump-wanted-generals-hitlers-and-said-nazi-leader-did-some-good-things-john-kelly-claims.html

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/john-kelly-trump-offered-private-praise-hitlers-generals-rcna176664

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/22/politics/trump-fascist-john-kelly/index.html

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/john-kelly-swinging-trump/story?id=115061457

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-john-kelly-said-about-trumps-praise-of-hitler-and-fascist-tendencies

TRUMP LASHES OUT AT KELLY

No at all surprising, Donald Trump lashed out at his former chief of staff John Kelly after he made damning claims about the Republican presidential candidate’s views of Adolf Hitler. The Trump campaign denied Kelly’s allegations and said the stories were “fabricated”.  Trump then took to Truth Social to trash Kelly’s claims as mere “lies” and brand his former chief of staff “a total degenerate”, “LOWLIFE” – and “JELLO.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-john-kelly-hitler-fascist-lowlife-b2634789.html

TRUMP REFERES TO DEMOCRATS AS “THE ENEMY WITHIN”

On October 13,  Donald Trump during the  Fox network program “Sunday Morning Futures”,  referred  to Democrats as the “enemy from within.” On October 13, Trump told host Maria Bartiromo that California Rep. Adam Schiff and other Democrats were “lunatics” and a bigger threat to the U.S. than foreign adversaries like Russia or China. Trump said this:

“I always say, we have two enemies.  …. We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.”

He also suggested that the military could be called in to handle any unrest on Election Day from “radical left lunatics.”

Trump doubled down on his “enemy within” comments during  a taped town hall of all-women voters in Cumming, Georgia, with Fox News’ Harris Faulkner   calling Democrats “evil” and “dangerous.” Trump said this:

“They’re Marxists and communists and fascists, and they’re sick. … We have China, we have Russia, we have all these countries. If you have a smart president, they can all be handled. The more difficult are, you know, the Pelosis, these people, they’re so sick and they’re so evil.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-democrats-enemies-within-rcna175628

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/story/2024-10-19/enemy-within-trump-is-straight-up-talking-like-a-nazi

Statements attributed to Adolph Hitler are:

• “I will get rid of the ‘communist’ ‘vermin’,”
• “I will take care of the ‘enemy within’,”
• “Jews and migrants are poisoning Aryan blood,” and
• “One people, one realm, one leader.”

Statements attributed to Trump on the campaign trail include:

• “I will get rid of the ‘communist’ ‘vermin’,
• “I will take care of the ‘threat from within’,”
• “Migrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country'”, and
• “One people, one family, one glorious nation.”

https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-donald-trump-adolf-hitler-viral-quote-comparison-accurate-1843501 

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS CONDEMNS TRUMP

On October 23, Vice President Kamala  Harris reacting  to John  Kelly’s interviews with The New York Times and The Atlantic that former President Trump fits the definition of being a “fascist”  argued Trump has become more unstable and wants unchecked power. Harris said this from her residence in Washington. DC:

“It is clear from John Kelly’s words that Donald Trump is someone — who I quote — certainly falls in ‘the general definition of fascist.’ Who has in fact vowed to be a dictator on day one and vowed to use the military as his personal militia to carry out his personal and political vendettas. … Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable and in a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions.  The bottom line is this, we know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be, what do the American people want?”

“This is a window into who Donald Trump really is. From the people who know him best. From the people who work with him side by side in the Oval Office and in the Situation Room. [Trump wants a military] that is loyal to him and not to the Constitution  troops who will obey his orders even when he tells them to break the law or abandon their oath to the Constitution of the United States.”

“It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans. … “In just the past week, Donald Trump has repeatedly called his fellow Americans the enemy from within and even said that he would use the United States military to go after American citizens.”

The vice president also noted that Trump considers those who refuse “to bend a knee or dares to criticism him would qualify” as the enemy from within, warning that he would consider judges, journalists, nonpartisan election officials in that category.

The link to relied upon and quoted news source material is here:

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4949270-kamala-harris-john-kelly-donald-trump-adolf-hitlerfascism/

RECALLING AMERICA’S HITLER BEING ACCUSED OF BEING A FASCIST

In 2016, Donald Trump’s now Vice Presidential pick Ohio Sen. JD Vance was once a fervent critic of the former president. In private messages, he wondered ahead of Trump’s 2016  election whether he was “America’s Hitler” and in 2017 said the then-president was a “moral disaster.” In public, he agreed Trump was a “total fraud” who didn’t care about regular people and called him “reprehensible.”

Vance wrote in a message to a friend in 2016:

“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad, and might even prove useful, or that he’s America’s Hitler. … How’s that for discouraging?”

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/15/politics/kfile-jd-vance-comments-trump/index.html

On Monday, May 20, 2024,  former President Donald Trump  posted a video showing images of a fake newspaper article that references a “unified Reich” if he’s reelected in 2024.  The video details “what happens after Donald Trump wins” with a narrator reading hypothetical headlines such as “Economy Booms!” and “Border is closed,” styled as World War I-era newspaper clippings.

One headline that reads “What’s next for America?” is a reference to the “creation of a unified Reich.”  Another headline in the video states “15 Million Illegal Aliens Deported” next to the start and end days of World War I.

The term “reich” is associated Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, who designated Germany a “Third Reich” from 1933 to 1945.

The video was removed from Trump’s Truth Social account. Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said in a statement that the video was not created by the campaign and was “reposted by a staffer who clearly did not see the word, while the President was in court.”

Democrats swiftly and emphatically condemned Trump over the video, with the White House denouncing what it said was flagrant antisemitism. “This is the same guy that uses Hitler’s language, not America’s. … Trump says if he loses again in November there [will] be a blood bath” Biden told donors in Boston on Tuesday May 21, according to reporters traveling with the president.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/21/politics/trump-unified-reich-video/index.html

On November 12, 2023 in a speech commemorating Veterans Day and on his Truth Social media platform, former President Donald Trump pledged to eliminate political extremist groups that “lie, steal and cheat on elections,” calling them “vermin” echoing a term Nazis often used in antisemitic propaganda to dehumanize Jews, equating them to parasites who spread disease.

On December 16, 2023 at his rally in New Hampshire and  in a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump declared illegal immigration is “poisoning the blood” of the country, defiantly repeating a line widely criticized as echoing Hitler when he first deployed as his rhetoric increasingly draws comparisons to dictators and fascists.  The phrase closely mirrors one used several times in Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” to describe the “influx of foreign blood” as “poison.”

During the New Hampshire rally, Trump also quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin and praised dictators Hungarian President Viktor Orban and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Trump said “even Vladimir Putin says that President Joe Biden has led ‘politically motivated prosecution of his political rival.’ ”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2023/12/17/trump-doubles-down-on-anti-immigrant-blood-slur-despite-widespread-criticism-hes-quoting-hilter/?sh=1283ac7c78b7

Ammar Moussa, then a Biden-Harris 2024 spokesperson, said in response to Trump’s remarks:

“Tonight Donald Trump channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler, praised Kim Jong Un, and quoted Vladimir Putin while running for president on a promise to rule as a dictator and threaten American democracy.”

20 LESSONS LEARNED BY TRUMP FROM HITLER

Trump has reportedly studied Adolph Hitler and expressed admiration toward the Nazi dictator to people close to him. His first wife, Ivana Trump, told her lawyer that Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speeches at his bedside, according to a 1990 Vanity Fair piece published amid their divorce.  According to divorce filings, Trump kept and studied a book translating and annotating Adolf Hitler’s pre-World War II speeches and kept the Hitler writings in a locked bedside cabinet. Trump learned his lessons well studying the rise to power and studying the writings from Adolf Hitler. The ugly truth is he adopted Hitler’s approach to become President and now he is using the same dangerous fascist rhetoric as he runs again.

A remarkable book outlines the stunning similarities between Trump and Hitler. The book powerfully describes how America’s constitutional checks and balances were pushed to the brink by President Donald Trump who consciously followed Adolf Hitler’s extremist propaganda and policy template from the early 1930s when the Nazis took power in Germany.

Burt Neuborne is an author and one of the nation’s foremost civil liberties lawyers. His 55-year career began by challenging the constitutionality of the Vietnam War in the 1960s. He became the ACLU’s national legal director in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. He was founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School in the 1990s. He has been part of more than 200 Supreme Court cases and Holocaust reparation litigation.

In July, 2019, Burt Neuborne’s book entitled “When at Times the Mob Is Swayed: A Citizen’s Guide to Defending Our Republic”  was published. On August 09, 2019 a book review written by Steven Rosenfeld was published by Common Dreams, a U.S. based progressive news website that publishes breaking news stories, editorials and commentary. A link to the complete book review is here:

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/08/09/leading-civil-rights-lawyer-shows-20-ways-trump-copying-hitlers-early-rhetoric-and?fbclid=IwAR1O9kLuT5nOSmmkP1kXeB5816nQagDFs1oNEYXmUaLr0rzqwWJ0wKVK-aQ

Neuborne writes in his book:

“Ugly and appalling as they are, [Hitler’s] speeches are masterpieces of demagogic manipulation. … Give Trump credit. He did his homework well and became the twenty-first-century master of divisive rhetoric. We’re used to thinking of Hitler’s Third Reich as the incomparably evil tyranny that it undoubtedly was. But Hitler didn’t take power by force. He used a set of rhetorical tropes codified in Trump’s bedside reading that persuaded enough Germans to welcome Hitler as a populist leader. … The Nazis did not overthrow the Weimar Republic. It fell into their hands as the fruit of Hitler’s satanic ability to mesmerize enough Germans to trade their birthright for a pottage of scapegoating, short-term economic gain, xenophobia, and racism.”

SHARED VALUES OF TWO DEMAGOGUES

The book lists 20 very alarming points of comparison between Adolph Hitler and Donald Trump:

1. NEITHER WAS ELECTED BY A MAJORITY.

“Trump lost the popular vote by 2.9 million votes, receiving votes by 25.3 percent of all eligible American voters. “That’s just a little less than the percentage of the German electorate that turned to the Nazi Party in 1932–33,” Neuborne writes. “Unlike the low turnouts in the United States, turnout in Weimar Germany averaged just over 80 percent of eligible voters.” He continues, “Once installed as a minority chancellor in January 1933, Hitler set about demonizing his political opponents, and no one—not the vaunted, intellectually brilliant German judiciary; not the respected, well-trained German police; not the revered, aristocratic German military; not the widely admired, efficient German government bureaucracy; not the wealthy, immensely powerful leaders of German industry; and not the powerful center-right political leaders of the Reichstag—mounted a serious effort to stop him.”

2. BOTH FOUND DIRECT COMMUNICATION CHANNELS TO THEIR BASE.

“By 1936’s Olympics, Nazi narratives dominated German cultural and political life. “How on earth did Hitler pull it off? What satanic magic did Trump find in Hitler’s speeches?” Neuborne asks. He addresses Hitler’s extreme rhetoric soon enough, but notes that Hitler found a direct communication pathway—the Nazi Party gave out radios with only one channel, tuned to Hitler’s voice, bypassing Germany’s news media. Trump has an online equivalent.

“Donald Trump’s tweets, often delivered between midnight and dawn, are the twenty-first century’s technological embodiment of Hitler’s free plastic radios,” Neuborne says. “Trump’s Twitter account, like Hitler’s radios, enables a charismatic leader to establish and maintain a personal, unfiltered line of communication with an adoring political base of about 30–40 percent of the population, many (but not all) of whom are only too willing, even anxious, to swallow Trump’s witches’ brew of falsehoods, half-truths, personal invective, threats, xenophobia, national security scares, religious bigotry, white racism, exploitation of economic insecurity, and a never ending-search for scapegoats.”

3. BOTH BLAME OTHERS AND DIVIDE ON RACIAL LINES.

As Neuborne notes, “Hitler used his single-frequency radios to wax hysterical to his adoring base about his pathological racial and religious fantasies glorifying Aryans and demonizing Jews, blaming Jews (among other racial and religious scapegoats) for German society’s ills.” That is comparable to “Trump’s tweets and public statements, whether dealing with black-led demonstrations against police violence, white-led racist mob violence, threats posed by undocumented aliens, immigration policy generally, protests by black and white professional athletes, college admission policies, hate speech, even response to hurricane damage in Puerto Rico,” he says. Again and again, Trump uses “racially tinged messages calculated to divide whites from people of color.”

4. BOTH RELENTLESSLY DEMONIZE OPPONENTS.

“Hitler’s radio harangues demonized his domestic political opponents, calling them parasites, criminals, cockroaches, and various categories of leftist scum,” Neuborne notes. “Trump’s tweets and speeches similarly demonize his political opponents. Trump talks about the country being ‘infested’ with dangerous aliens of color. He fantasizes about jailing Hillary Clinton, calls Mexicans rapists, refers to ‘shithole countries,’ degrades anyone who disagrees with him, and dreams of uprooting thousands of allegedly disloyal bureaucrats in the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI, and the CIA, who he calls ‘the deep state’ and who, he claims, are sabotaging American greatness.”

5. THEY UNCEASINGLY ATTACK OBJECTIVE TRUTH.

“Both Trump and Hitler maintained a relentless assault on the very idea of objective truth,” he continues. “Each began the assault by seeking to delegitimize the mainstream press. Hitler quickly coined the epithet Lügenpresse (literally ‘lying press’) to denigrate the mainstream press. Trump uses a paraphrase of Hitler’s lying press epithet—‘fake news’—cribbed, no doubt, from one of Hitler’s speeches. For Trump, the mainstream press is a ‘lying press’ that publishes ‘fake news.’” Hitler attacked his opponents as spreading false information to undermine his positions, Neuborne says, just as Trump has attacked “elites” for disseminating false news, “especially his possible links to the Kremlin.”

6. THEY RELENTLESSLY ATTACK MAINSTREAM MEDIA.

“Trump’s assaults on the media echo Hitler’s, Neuborne says, noting that he “repeatedly attacks the ‘failing New York Times,’ leads crowds in chanting ‘CNN sucks,’ [and] is personally hostile to most reporters.” He cites the White House’s refusal to fly the flag at half-mast after the murder of five journalists in Annapolis in June 2018, Trump’s efforts to punish CNN by blocking a merger of its corporate parent, and trying to revoke federal Postal Service contracts held by Amazon, which was founded by Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.”

7. THEIR ATTACKS ON TRUTH INCLUDE SCIENCE.

Neuborne writes “Both Trump and Hitler intensified their assault on objective truth by deriding scientific experts, especially academics who question Hitler’s views on race or Trump’s views on climate change, immigration, or economics. For both Trump and Hitler, the goal is (and was) to eviscerate the very idea of objective truth, turning everything into grist for a populist jury subject to manipulation by a master puppeteer. In both Trump’s and Hitler’s worlds, public opinion ultimately defines what is true and what is false.”

8. THEIR LIES BLUR REALITY—AND SUPPORTERS SPREAD THEM.

“Trump’s pathological penchant for repeatedly lying about his behavior can only succeed in a world where his supporters feel free to embrace Trump’s ‘alternative facts’ and treat his hyperbolic exaggerations as the gospel truth,” Neuborne says. “Once Hitler had delegitimized the mainstream media by a series of systematic attacks on its integrity, he constructed a fawning alternative mass media designed to reinforce his direct radio messages and enhance his personal power. Trump is following the same path, simultaneously launching bitter attacks on the mainstream press while embracing the so-called alt-right media, co-opting both Sinclair Broadcasting and the Rupert Murdoch–owned Fox Broadcasting Company as, essentially, a Trump Broadcasting Network.”

9. BOTH ORCHESTRATED MASS RALLIES TO SHOW STATUS.

“Once Hitler had cemented his personal communications link with his base via free radios and a fawning media and had badly eroded the idea of objective truth, he reinforced his emotional bond with his base by holding a series of carefully orchestrated mass meetings dedicated to cementing his status as a charismatic leader, or Führer,” Neuborne writes. “The powerful personal bonds nurtured by Trump’s tweets and Fox’s fawning are also systematically reinforced by periodic, carefully orchestrated mass rallies (even going so far as to co-opt a Boy Scout Jamboree in 2017), reinforcing Trump’s insatiable narcissism and his status as a charismatic leader.”

10. THEY EMBRACE EXTREME NATIONALISM.

“Hitler’s strident appeals to the base invoked an extreme version of German nationalism, extolling a brilliant German past and promising to restore Germany to its rightful place as a preeminent nation,” Neuborne says. “Trump echoes Hitler’s jingoistic appeal to ultranationalist fervor, extolling American exceptionalism right down to the slogan ‘Make America Great Again,’ a paraphrase of Hitler’s promise to restore German greatness.”

11. BOTH MADE CLOSING BORDERS A CENTERPIECE.

“Hitler all but closed Germany’s borders, freezing non-Aryan migration into the country and rendering it impossible for Germans to escape without official permission. Like Hitler, Trump has also made closed borders a centerpiece of his administration,” Neuborne continues. “Hitler barred Jews. Trump bars Muslims and seekers of sanctuary from Central America. When the lower courts blocked Trump’s Muslim travel ban, he unilaterally issued executive orders replacing it with a thinly disguised substitute that ultimately narrowly won Supreme Court approval under a theory of extreme deference to the president.”

12. THEY EMBRACED MASS DETENTION AND DEPORTATIONS.

“Hitler promised to make Germany free from Jews and Slavs. Trump promises to slow, stop, and even reverse the flow of non-white immigrants, substituting Muslims, Africans, Mexicans, and Central Americans of color for Jews and Slavs as scapegoats for the nation’s ills. Trump’s efforts to cast dragnets to arrest undocumented aliens where they work, live, and worship, followed by mass deportation… echo Hitler’s promise to defend Germany’s racial identity,” he writes, also noting that Trump has “stooped to tearing children from their parents [as Nazis in World War II would do] to punish desperate efforts by migrants to find a better life.”

13. BOTH USED BORDERS TO PROTECT SELECTED INDUSTRIES.

“Like Hitler, Trump seeks to use national borders to protect his favored national interests, threatening to ignite protectionist trade wars with Europe, China, and Japan similar to the trade wars that, in earlier incarnations, helped to ignite World War I and World War II,” Neuborne writes. “Like Hitler, Trump aggressively uses our nation’s political and economic power to favor selected American corporate interests at the expense of foreign competitors and the environment, even at the price of international conflict, massive inefficiency, and irreversible pollution [climate change].”

14. THEY CEMENTED THEIR RULE BY ENRICHING ELITES.

“Hitler’s version of fascism shifted immense power—both political and financial—to the leaders of German industry. In fact, Hitler governed Germany largely through corporate executives,” he continues. “Trump has also presided over a massive empowerment—and enrichment—of corporate America. Under Trump, large corporations exercise immense political power while receiving huge economic windfalls and freedom from regulations designed to protect consumers and the labor force.

“Hitler despised the German labor movement, eventually destroying it and imprisoning its leaders. Trump also detests strong unions, seeking to undermine any effort to interfere with the prerogatives of management.”

15. BOTH REJECTED INTERNATIONAL NORMS.

“Hitler’s foreign policy rejected international cooperation in favor of military and economic coercion, culminating in the annexation of the Sudetenland, the phony Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the horrors of global war,” Neuborne notes. “Like Hitler, Trump is deeply hostile to multinational cooperation, withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the nuclear agreement with Iran, threatening to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement, abandoning our Kurdish allies in Syria, and even going so far as to question the value of NATO, our post-World War II military alliance with European democracies against Soviet expansionism.”

16. THEY ATTACK DOMESTIC DEMOCRATIC PROCESSES.

“Hitler attacked the legitimacy of democracy itself, purging the voting rolls, challenging the integrity of the electoral process, and questioning the ability of democratic government to solve Germany’s problems,” Neuborne notes. Trump has also attacked the democratic process, declining to agree to be bound by the outcome of the 2016 elections when he thought he might lose, supporting the massive purge of the voting rolls allegedly designed to avoid (nonexistent) fraud, championing measures that make it harder to vote, tolerating—if not fomenting—massive Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, encouraging mob violence at rallies, darkly hinting at violence if Democrats hold power, and constantly casting doubt on the legitimacy of elections unless he wins.”

17. BOTH ATTACK THE JUDICIARY AND RULE OF LAW.

“Hitler politicized and eventually destroyed the vaunted German justice system. Trump also seeks to turn the American justice system into his personal playground,” Neuborne writes. “Like Hitler, Trump threatens the judicially enforced rule of law, bitterly attacking American judges who rule against him, slyly praising Andrew Jackson for defying the Supreme Court, and abusing the pardon power by pardoning an Arizona sheriff found guilty of criminal contempt of court for disobeying federal court orders to cease violating the Constitution.”

18. BOTH GLORIFY THE MILITARY AND DEMAND LOYALTY OATHS.

“Like Hitler, Trump glorifies the military, staffing his administration with layers of retired generals (who eventually were fired or resigned), relaxing control over the use of lethal force by the military and the police, and demanding a massive increase in military spending,” Neuborne writes. Just as Hitler “imposed an oath of personal loyalty on all German judges” and demanded courts defer to him, “Trump’s already gotten enough deference from five Republican [Supreme Court] justices to uphold a largely Muslim travel ban that is the epitome of racial and religious bigotry.”

Trump has also demanded loyalty oaths. “He fired James Comey, a Republican appointed in 2013 as FBI director by President Obama, for refusing to swear an oath of personal loyalty to the president; excoriated and then sacked Jeff Sessions, his handpicked attorney general, for failing to suppress the criminal investigation into… Trump’s possible collusion with Russia in influencing the 2016 elections; repeatedly threatened to dismiss Robert Mueller, the special counsel carrying out the investigation; and called again and again for the jailing of Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent, leading crowds in chants of ‘lock her up.’” A new chant, “send her back,” has since emerged at Trump rallies directed at non-white Democratic congresswomen.

19. THEY PROCLAIM UNCHECKED POWER.

“Like Hitler, Trump has intensified a disturbing trend that predated his administration of governing unilaterally, largely through executive orders or proclamations,” Neuborne says, citing the Muslim travel ban, trade tariffs, unraveling of health and environmental safety nets, ban on transgender military service, and efforts to end President Obama’s protection for Dreamers. “Like Hitler, Trump claims the power to overrule Congress and govern all by himself. In 1933, Hitler used the pretext of the Reichstag fire to declare a national emergency and seize the power to govern unilaterally. The German judiciary did nothing to stop him. German democracy never recovered.”

“When Congress refused to give Trump funds for his border wall even after he threw a tantrum and shut down the government, Trump, like Hitler, declared a phony national emergency and claimed the power to ignore Congress,” Neuborne continues. “Don’t count on the Supreme Court to stop him. Five justices gave the game away on the President’s unilateral travel ban. They just might do the same thing on the border wall.” It did in late July, ruling that Trump could divert congressionally appropriated funds from the Pentagon budget—undermining constitutional separation of powers.

20. BOTH RELEGATE WOMEN TO SUBORDINATE ROLES.

“Finally,” writes Neuborne, “Hitler propounded a misogynistic, stereotypical view of women, valuing them exclusively as wives and mothers while excluding them from full participation in German political and economic life. Trump may be the most openly misogynist figure ever to hold high public office in the United States, crassly treating women as sexual objects, using nondisclosure agreements and violating campaign finance laws to shield his sexual misbehavior from public knowledge, attacking women who come forward to accuse men of abusive behavior, undermining reproductive freedom, and opposing efforts by women to achieve economic equality.”

WHITHERING CONSTITUTIONAL CHECKS AND BALANCES

Most of Neuborne’s book is not centered on Trump’s fealty to Hitler’s methods and early policies. He notes, as many commentators have, that Trump is following the well-known contours of authoritarian populists and dictators: “there’s always a charismatic leader, a disaffected mass, an adroit use of communications media, economic insecurity, racial or religious fault lines, xenophobia, a turn to violence, and a search for scapegoats.”

The bigger problem, and the subject of most of the book, is that the federal architecture intended to be a check and balance against tyrants, is not poised to act. Congressional representation is fundamentally anti-democratic.

In the Senate, politicians representing 18 percent of the national population—epicenters of Trump’s base—can cast 51 percent of the chamber’s votes. A Republican majority from rural states, representing barely 40 percent of the population, controls the chamber. It repeatedly thwarts legislation reflecting multicultural America’s values—and creates a brick wall for impeachment.

The House of Representatives is not much better. Until 2018, this decade’s GOP-majority House, a product of 2011’s extreme Republican gerrymanders, was also unrepresentative of the nation’s demographics. That bias still exists in the Electoral College, as the size of a state’s congressional delegation equals its allocation of votes. That formula is fair as far as House members go, but allocating votes based on two senators per state hurts urban America. Consider that California’s population is 65 times larger than Wyoming’s.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s majority remains in the hands of justices appointed by Republican presidents—and favors that party’s agenda. Most Americans are unaware that the court’s partisan majority has only changed twice since the Civil War—in 1937, when a Democratic-appointed majority took over, and in 1972, when a Republican-appointed majority took over. Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s blocking of President Obama’s final nominee thwarted a twice-a-century change. Today’s hijacked Supreme Court majority has only just begun deferring to Trump’s agenda, [especially with its ruling giving Trump immunity from prosecution for official acts].

The link to the complete book review is here:

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/08/09/leading-civil-rights-lawyer-shows-20-ways-trump-copying-hitlers-early-rhetoric-and?fbclid=IwAR1O9kLuT5nOSmmkP1kXeB5816nQagDFs1oNEYXmUaLr0rzqwWJ0wKVK-aQ

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

Der Führer Trump’s supporters and the Republican Party have stuck with him after he was impeached twice, incited a mob to storm the Capitol on January 6 with his inflammatory rhetoric, was found liable for sexual assault in a civil court and was indicted four times in a single calendar year.

With the landmark presidential immunity decision by the United States Supreme Court, the Trump 6 Supreme Court disciples of John G. Roberts, Jr., Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito, Jr. Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett the United State Supreme Court have done whatever they could do to undermine our federal criminal justice system and attempt to ensure that former President Trump returns to power. The 6 do so at the expense of our democracy.

There is little doubt that if Der Führer Donald Trump is in fact elected President of the United States defeating Vice President Kamala Harris that the American people will have elected its first fascist and now convicted felon as President of the United States. His first order of business will be to prosecute all who have opposed him and gotten in his way, including politcal opponents and the courts.

The link to a related blog article is here:

Der Führer Trump’s Radical Second-Term Agenda: An Imperial Presidency Wielding  Executive Power In Unprecedented Ways Reflecting American Fascism; Election News Updates

 

 

 

On October 23, the Albuquerque Journal published its polls in the 1^st Congressional District race between incumbent Democrat Melanie Stansbury and Republican Steve Jones and in the 3^rd Congressional District between incumbent Democrat  Teresa Leger Fernández and Republican Sharon Clahchischilliage. In both congressional district races the incumbent Democrats are leading by comfortable double margins to get elected and both Stansbury and Leger Fernández are likely to win reelection. In both races, 11% of voters were undecided.

POLL RESULTS

In the 1st Congressional District, 53% of likely registered voters surveyed said they plan to vote or had already voted for Democratic incumbent Melanie Stansbury. 36% of voters surveyed said they  intend to or had already cast a ballot for Republican challenger Steve Jones.

The 3rd Congressional District had an almost identical breakdown, with Democratic incumbent Teresa Leger Fernández securing  52% support from likely registered voters surveyed and Republican challenger Sharon Clahchischilliage securing 35% support.

Brian Sanderoff, president of Research & Polling Inc., the company that conducted the polls, had this to say:

“We have two incumbent U.S. congresswomen vying against two less well-known Republicans in blue-leaning congressional districts, so it’s definitely an uphill battle for the Republicans Steve Jones and Sharon Clahchischilliage.”

VOTERS STICK WITH OWN PARTY CANDIDATES

The overwhelming majority of registered voters in both congressional districts said they are sticking with their party’s candidate.

In the 1^st Congressional District, Democrat Stansbury had 85% support among Democrats while Republican Jones had 77% support among of Republicans.

In the 3^rd Congressional District Democrat Leger Fernández had 84% support among Democrats, while Republican Clahchischilliage had 79% support among Republicans.

Both the Incumbent Democrats also secured more support from independent or decline-to-state voters in their district.

In District 1, Incumbent Democrat Stansbury secured the support from 53% of Independent voters while Republican Jones had 28% support among Independents.  19% of independents said they were undecided in the District 1 race.

In District 3, Democrat Leger Fernández had support from 55% of Independent voters while Republican Clahchischilliage had 20% support of Independents.  21% of Independent voters said  they were undecided in the District 3 race.

RESDISTRICTING KEPT BOTH DISTRICT BLUE

The 1st Congressional District includes much of Albuquerque, Placitas and Rio Rancho, all of Torrance, Guadalupe, De Baca and Lincoln counties and a portion of Roswell. While the district is more conservative than it was before redistricting, it  did not significantly dilute its Democrat lean primarily because of Albuquerque. The 1st Congressional District picked it up the city of Rio Rancho in redistricting

During redistricting in 2021, the northern 3rd Congressional District picked up conservative areas in eastern New Mexico including portions of Hobbs. However, it lost Rio Rancho, which tends to lean Republican right which  means the 3^rd congressional district lost a red-leaning community and picked up some strong red-leaning counties, so the overall blue lean of the district did not change significantly.

CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 1 POLL

Congressional District 1 incumbent Democrat Stansbury, 45,  is a former state legislator from Albuquerque. She is seeking her second full term in the 1st Congressional District. She first won in a special election to fill Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland’s seat after she was appointed  Secretary by President Joe Biden. Republican challenger Steve Jones, 78,  is a former energy executive from Ruidoso.

While incumbent Democrate Stansbury had more support than her opponent from women and men in District 1, there was a gender gap in support for the two candidates. Stansbury had 56% of support among women voters compared to 31% support for Jones. Of the men surveyed, 49% supported Democrat Stansbury, while 40% supported Republican Jones.

The 1^st Congressional race is an example of a trend apparent in other state and national elections. Specifically, there is  more support for Democratic candidates among voters with more educational attainment and more support for Republican candidates among voters with less educational attainment.

Among voters with no four-year college degree, Republican Jones had 44% support compared to 43% support for Democrat  Stansbury. Stansbury had 63% support among voters with a four-year college or graduate degree, while Jones had 27% support.

Journal pollster Sanderoff said this about the race between the two:

“[Jones will] get the bulk of the Republican vote. … But can he pick up crossover Democrats? Can he pick up a lot of independents? Has Melanie Stansbury been doing a good job at getting better known in Rio Rancho?”

3RD CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT POLL

The 3rd Congressional District is very large and geographically diverse. It reaches  across northern New Mexico and down into the eastern part of the state. It has a high concentration of Native American voters and includes the bulk of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, and many of the pueblos.

The 3^rd Congressional District is still considered by many and the Northern District and after the 2021 redistricting it  includes Farmington, Aztec and Bloomfield which are conservative Republican leaning areas  in the Four Corners area. Conservative communities in eastern New Mexico, including part of Hobbs and the bulk of Roswell, are also part of the district, but are likely not enough to offset higher-population liberal areas like Taos and Santa Fe.

In the 3^rd Congressional District race, incumbent Democrat  Teresa Leger Fernández, 65, is a former Santa Fe lawyer running for her third term in office. Republican challenger Sharon Clahchischilliage is a former state legislator from Shiprock.  Republican Clahchischilliage, declines to  give her age , will likely do better in northwestern New Mexico than Leger Fernández’s previous opponent, Alexis Martinez Johnson, because she has name recognition in the area and is Native American.

There has only been one Republican who has ever won the 3rd Congressional District since its creation after the 1980 census. Former US Representative Bill Redmond was elected to finish Bill Richardson’s term after Richardson became the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1997. Richardson was the first person elected to the seat.

Native American and Hispanic voters in north-central New Mexico tend to be very  loyal to the Democratic Party. Journal Politcal pollster Sanderoff said this:

“Generally speaking, Native Americans are very concerned about federal issues as well as state because a lot of the trust lands and a lot of their interactions are with federal government agencies. … “So they pay very close attention to what goes on with the president and in the federal bureaucracy.”

Women voters seem more enthusiastic than male voters about Democrate Leger Fernández.  Republican Clahchischilliage had a similar level of support between both men and women.

Incumbent Democrat Leger Fernández had 48% support among men and 57% support among women.  Republican Clahchischilliage had 35% support among men and 34% support among women. More men, 14%, were undecided while 9% of women were undecided.

2^nd CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT POLL RESULTS RECALLED

In 2021, Congressional District 2 was redrawn. Redistricting broke up the conservative stronghold of Eddy, Lea and Chaves counties. The new boundary lines withstood a GOP court challenge.  The congressional district is now more geographically diverse. It encompasses most of southern New Mexico, including parts of the oil patch in Lea and Eddy counties and all of Las Cruces, then reaching north all the way into Albuquerque’s South Valley and West Side.

According to the Journal Poll, Democratic incumbent Gabe Vasquez  leads by 4% points with support from 49% of likely voters surveyed while Republican challenger Yvette Herrell is close behind with 45% of voter support. The lead is within the margin of error of plus or minus 4.8% points. The poll found 5% of voters surveyed were undecided.

The Journal poll found that Vasquez had a 14-point lead among women voters, with 53% of support among women compared to 39% support for Herrell. Meanwhile, Herrell had a slight edge with male voters, with 50% support among that group compared to 46% support among men for Vasquez.

A former Las Cruces city councilor, Democrat Gabe Vasquez won his seat in Congress by approximately 1,300 votes in 2022, unseating Yvette Herrell, a former state legislator from Alamogordo. Two years later, Herrell is trying to reclaim it.

Abortion has been the most common theme in campaign ads.  Vasquez has repeatedly hammered Herrell over her record on abortion in campaign ads and at rallies. In response, Herrell released a television ad to clarify her stance on abortion.

The Vasquez-Harrell race is the most expensive of the three U.S. House races in New Mexico. Herrell has raised $3.7 million and has $1.1 million cash on hand, while Vasquez has raised $6.1 million and has $1.8 million cash on hand, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Both campaigns have attracted major support of congressional leaders. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy helped Herrell launch her campaign last year. Speaker Mike Johnson went to Las Cruces for Herrell in August and is scheduled to visit Carlsbad for a Herrell campaign event on October 23.  House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries came to Albuquerque in early October at Vasquez’s invitation, where he attended events to promote all three Democratic congressional representatives in their reelection campaigns.

It is being reported that former President Donald Trump may visit New Mexico the last week of the campaign in support of Yvette Herrell.

In the final Journal poll, party affiliation was the biggest predictor of candidate preference. While Vasquez had strong support among Democratic voters, with 84% support among that group, Herrell had support among nearly all Republican voters surveyed, with 91% support.

However, more independent or decline to state voters supported Vasquez as well. He had 51% of support among those voters, while Herrell had 32%.

Unlike the Republican and Democratic voters surveyed, the independent voters had more people still on the fence, with 15% of independent voters undecided.

In a pattern similar to that found in other New Mexico and national races, the Democrat Gabe Vasquez had more support among voters with higher educational.

Among voters with some college or with a high school diploma or less education, the race is nearly deadlocked. But Vasquez has a clear lead among voters with a four-year college degree or graduate degree. Herrell has a 3-point lead among voters with a high school diploma or less education, with 50% of support among this group. Vasquez has a 29-point lead among voters with a graduate degree with 64% support.

In the 2022 Journal polling during the pair’s first matchup, Vasquez had a large lead among Hispanic voters in the district, with support of 61% of voters in that demographic. Support among that demographic group is not as strong for Vasquez this election cycle, according to the new poll. Vasquez support dropped to  51% of Hispanic voters surveyed, while Herrell had 40% support among that group.

The link to the quoted and relied upon October 20 Albuquerque Journal article with photos, graphs and charts is here:

https://www.abqjournal.com/news/journal-poll-vasquez-has-slim-lead-over-herrell-in-congressional-race/article_9625d99c-8dd1-11ef-b780-5b30483deec9.html#tncms-source=home-featured-7-block

UNITED STATES SENATE POLL RESULTS RECALLED

On October 22, the Albuquerque Journal published its poll in the United States Senate race between incumbent Democrat Martin Heinrich and his Republican challenger Nella Domenici.

According to the poll, Heinrich received the backing of 51% of voters surveyed while 40% said they would vote for Republican Domenici, 7% were undecided and 1% said they would not vote for either of the two. The 11-point lead in the poll for Heinrich is slightly smaller than the poll conducted last month which showed him up 50% to 38% over Domenici.’

The link to the Albuquerque Journal poll with candidate photos and graphs is here:

https://www.abqjournal.com/election/journal-poll-martin-heinrich-keeps-double-digit-lead-over-nella-domenici-in-u-s-senate/article_79d5e26a-8fd3-11ef-8146-975ee8138994.html

PRESIDENTIAL POLL RESULTS RECALLED

Vice President Kamala Harris has maintained her advantage over Donald Trump in this year’s presidential race in New Mexico securing 50% of  registered, likely voters surveyed in the poll while 41% said they were voting for Trump.  The  previous Journal poll conducted last month found Harris with a lead over Trump by 10%. The previous poll featured 7% of voters who said they had not yet decided who they would vote for in the November 5 general election.

The number of undecided voters dropped to 4% in the new poll. An additional 3% of voters surveyed said they would still vote for independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who dropped out of the race in August and endorsed Trump but is still on New Mexico’s ballot.

Four years ago, President Joe Biden defeated then-incumbent Trump in New Mexico by 11% points or roughly 100,000 votes.  Neither Trump nor Harris has held a campaign stop in the state in the run-up to Election Day.

In the new Journal poll, Harris’ advantage over Trump in New Mexico was largely driven by strong support among female voters and those with a college or graduate degree.  While male voters were largely split between the two leading presidential candidates, women voters surveyed were far more likely to support Vice President Kamala Harris than former President Donald Trump.

Harris has made reproductive rights a key issue in her campaign following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Trump for his part has criticized Biden and Harris  for their  handling of the U.S. economy and border security and Trump has seen an increase in popularity among Hispanic voters. The new Journal poll found 41% of Hispanic voters surveyed expressed support for Trump.

That support level among Hispanic voters was higher than it was in the previous poll, and above what most Republican candidates have received in recent New Mexico statewide elections.

The link to the quoted and relied upon October 20 Albuquerque Journal article with photos, graphs and charts is here:

https://www.abqjournal.com/election/journal-poll-kamala-harris-maintains-advantage-over-donald-trump-in-new-mexico/article_b8ca94e0-8da6-11ef-8a26-67722784e9ab.html

POLL METHODOLOGY

“The Journal poll is based on a random sample of 360 voters in the 1st Congressional District and a random sample of 344 voters in the 3rd Congressional District who cast ballots in the 2020 and/or 2022 general election, and a sample of adults who registered to vote since December 2022 who said they are likely to vote in the upcoming election.

The sample was stratified by race and county and weighted by gender, education level, and party affiliation based on traditional voting patterns in New Mexico general elections, to ensure a more representative sample.

The poll was conducted from Oct. 10 through Oct. 18, excluding the late afternoon of Oct. 14 (due to the U.S. Senate debate). The voter sample in the 1st Congressional District poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.2 percentage points. The voter sample in the 3rd Congressional District has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points. The margin of error grows for subsamples.

All interviews were conducted by live, professional interviewers, based in Albuquerque, with multiple callbacks to households that did not initially answer the phone. Both cellphone numbers (90%) and landlines (10%) of likely general election voters were used in the 1st Congressional District. Both cellphone numbers (89%) and landlines (11%) of likely general election voters were also used in the 3rd Congressional District.”

The link to the Albuquerque Journal poll report with graphs and photographs is here:

https://www.abqjournal.com/election/journal-poll-democratic-incumbents-have-strong-leads-in-1st-and-3rd-congressional-districts/article_811d7fd2-90b0-11ef-af38-8719afe00fe2.html#tncms-source=home-featured-7-block

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

New Mexico has long lost its status as a swing state in Presidential elections. Gone are the days for Presidential candidates to visit the state to secure its 5 electoral college votes. On a national level, national polls indicate that it is a dead heat between Vice President Kamala Harris and Former President Donald Trump.

Both the United States Senate and the House of Representative have the slimmest majorities for control, with the House controlled by the Republicans and the Senate controlled by the Democrats.

The United States House total membership 435 Representatives with 220 Republicans, 212 Democrats, 0 Independents and 3 Vacancies. All 435 house seats are up for re-election and given the closeness of the Presidential race, its uncertain who will control the United States House of Representatives.

The U.S. Senate is currently controlled by Democrats by just 2 votes and has 51 Democrats, including three independents, and 49 Republicans. There are 34 seats up in 2024, including a special election in Nebraska, of which 23 are held by Democrats or Independents. Republicans can retake control of the Senate with a net gain of two seats or by winning the 2024 presidential election along with a net gain of one seat.  In other words, the US Senate race between Martin Heinrich and Nella Domenici will no doubt play a major roll as to which party will control the United States Senate.

National politcal observers are predicting that the United States House of Representatives will “flip” giving control of the House to the Democrats and the the United States Senate will “flip” giving control to the Republicans. If both congressional chambers do in fact “flip” this will mean that whoever is elected President will be dealing with a divided congress and we will have at least another two years of acrimony and a do nothing congress.

Links to related blog articles are here:

ABQ Journal Presidential And Second Congressional District Polls: Harris 50%, Trump 41%, Others 5%, Undecided 4%; Second Congressional Race: Vasquez 49%, Herrell 45%, Undecided 5%; Who Will Control Senate And House?

 

ABQ Journal US Senate Poll: Heinrich 51%, Domenici 40%; Control Of United States Senate On The Line And Could Be Decided By Race

On October 22, the Albuquerque Journal published its poll in the United States Senate race between incumbent Democrat Martin Heinrich and his Republican challenger Nella Domenici.

According to the poll, Heinrich received the backing of 51% of voters surveyed while 40% said they would vote for Republican Domenici, 7% were undecided and 1% said they would not vote for either of the two. The 11-point lead in the poll for Heinrich is slightly smaller than the poll conducted last month which showed him up 50% to  38% over Domenici.

ABORTION DOMINATE ISSUE

Abortion has become the most dominant issue in the race.  Republican challenger Domenici has withered under blistering attacks about her stance on abortion.  Heinrich has hammered away that Domenici was recruited to run for the Senate by Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch Mc Connell so that Republicans can pass a nationwide abortion ban.

Heinrich went so far during a televised debate between the two  to accuse Domenici that if she were elected she would vote in the U.S. Senate for a nationwide abortion ban. That prompted a sharp retort from Domenici, who described the remark as “the most sexist comment you could ever hear from a United States senator.”

Domenici for her part has said that New Mexico has settled the issue making abortions legal and she would not support a federal abortion ban, saying she believes abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.”

CRIME AND THE ECONOMY

Domenici  for her part has been very aggressive challenging Heinrich over border security, New Mexico’s high crime rates and inflation. In her TV commercials she has said Heinrich has done nothing since being elected to curb New Mexico’s high crime rates and that he is out of touch with the financial struggles of average New Mexicans.  Domenici has claimed that Heinrich has insulated himself from the business community as he refuses to meet with business executives.

Domenici has sought to portray Heinrich as a “radical” Democrat who is out of touch with most state residents’ day-to-day struggles. During her debate with Heinrich, Domenici evoked the legacy of her father the late Pete Domenici who served 36 years in the United States Senate and she said this:

“My name still carries a huge amount of bipartisan respect.”

Heinrich in response said he meets frequently with all types of New Mexicans, rebuffing criticism from Domenici. Heinrich also says his family is fully invested in Albuquerque, as he and his wife no longer own a home in Maryland they bought in 2013. Heinrich said during the recent debate between the two:

“I come home almost every weekend, because this is the place that makes me happy.”

Heinrich has attacked Domenici for not living in New Mexico for the last 50 years and only returning to run for the Senate. Domenici  defended her New Mexico roots despite living on the East Coast for years, saying she and her husband have owned a home in Santa Fe for 20 years and helped launch a state charter school program. State voting records show Domenici first voted in New Mexico elections in June 2020.

ANALYSIS OF THE POLL

Brian Sanderoff, the president Research & Polling Inc., which conducted the poll, said Heinrich is facing a tougher reelection campaign than he did in 2018, when he easily defeated two general election opponents. Sanderoff said this:

“Nella Domenici is running a formidable race, but there still is a wide gap between the two candidates. … It’s hard to unseat a two-term Democrat U.S. senator in a blue-leaning state.”

The new Journal  poll found female voters are significantly more likely than male voters to support the Democratic candidate in the U.S. Senate contest. A total of 54% of women voters surveyed said they planned to vote for Heinrich, or already had voted for him, while 37% said they planned to vote for Domenici.

Heinrich also led his opponent among male voters, though the split was much narrower.  Sanderoff said this:

“We definitely have a gender gap, but Heinrich is ahead among both male and female voters.”

The new Journal poll found there  was a sizable difference in voters’ views on the two candidates by education level, with voters who have a college or graduate degree backing Heinrich by a large margin.

Domenici had relatively strong support for a GOP candidate among New Mexico Hispanic voters, a group she has targeted in this year’s campaign.  She also had strong leads over Heinrich in eastern New Mexico and in the state’s northwest corner.

Heinrich held a commanding advantage in the Albuquerque Metro area and in traditionally Democratic north central New Mexico, leading Domenici by wide margins in those regions.

While the new poll found Domenici getting slightly more support from Democratic voters than Heinrich is receiving from GOP voters, the difference was not enough to offset that there are more registered Democrats than Republicans in New Mexico.

Sanderoff pointed out that  his poll revealed that there appears to be low levels of ticket-splitting, meaning most voters plan to cast their votes for candidates of the same party in the presidential and U.S. Senate races.

POLL METHODOLOGY

The Journal poll is based on a statewide random sample of 1,024 voters who cast ballots in the 2020 and/or 2022 general election, and a sample of adults who registered to vote since December 2022 and who said they are likely to vote in the upcoming election.

The sample was stratified by race and county and weighted by age, gender, education level, and party affiliation based on traditional voting patterns in New Mexico general elections, to ensure a more representative sample.

The poll was conducted Oct. 10-18 excluding the late afternoon of Oct. 14 (due to the U.S. Senate debate). The voter sample has a margin of error of plus- or minus-3.1 percentage points. The margin of error grows for subsamples.

All interviews were conducted by live, professional interviewers, based in Albuquerque, with multiple callbacks to households that did not initially answer the phone.

Both cellphone numbers (89%) and landlines (11%) of likely general election voters were used.

The link to the Albquerque Journal poll with photos and graphs is here:

https://www.abqjournal.com/election/journal-poll-martin-heinrich-keeps-double-digit-lead-over-nella-domenici-in-u-s-senate/article_79d5e26a-8fd3-11ef-8146-975ee8138994.html

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

New Mexico has long lost its status as a swing state in Presidential elections. Gone are the days for Presidential candidates to visit the state to secure its 5 electoral college votes. However, both the United States Senate and the House of Representative have the slimmest majorities for control.

The U.S. Senate is currently controlled by Democrats by just 2 votes and has 51 Democrats, including three independents, and 49 Republicans. There are 34 seats up in 2024, including a special election in Nebraska, of which 23 are held by Democrats or Independents. Republicans can retake control of the Senate with a net gain of two seats or by winning the 2024 presidential election along with a net gain of one seat.  In other words, the US Senate race between  Martin Heinrich and Nella Domenici will no doubt play a major roll as to which party will control the United States Senate.

On October 20 and 21, the Albuquerque Journal began publishing its final polls taken before the November 5 election. Following are the results of the Presidential and the Second Congressional District race polls:

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION POLL

Vice President Kamala Harris has maintained her advantage over Donald Trump in this year’s presidential race in New Mexico securing 50% of  registered, likely voters surveyed in the poll while 41% said they were voting for Trump.  The  previous Journal poll conducted last month found Harris with a lead over Trump by 10%. The previous poll featured 7% of voters who said they had not yet decided who they would vote for in the November 5 general election.

The number of undecided voters dropped to 4% in the new poll. An additional 3% of voters surveyed said they would still vote for independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who dropped out of the race in August and endorsed Trump but is still on New Mexico’s ballot.

Four years ago, President Joe Biden defeated then-incumbent Trump in New Mexico by 11% points or roughly 100,000 votes.  Neither Trump nor Harris has held a campaign stop in the state in the run-up to Election Day.

In the new Journal poll, Harris’ advantage over Trump in New Mexico was largely driven by strong support among female voters and those with a college or graduate degree.  While male voters were largely split between the two leading presidential candidates, women voters surveyed were far more likely to support Vice President Kamala Harris than former President Donald Trump.

Harris has made reproductive rights a key issue in her campaign following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Trump for his part has criticized Biden and Harris  for their  handling of the U.S. economy and border security and Trump has seen an increase in popularity among Hispanic voters. The new Journal poll found 41% of Hispanic voters surveyed expressed support for Trump.

That support level among Hispanic voters was higher than it was in the previous poll, and above what most Republican candidates have received in recent New Mexico statewide elections.

REGIONAL VIEWS 

In the new poll, Vice President Harris held a significant edge over Trump in the Albuquerque metro area and in north central New Mexico, with voters in the two regions preferring her over Trump by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.

Not surprisingly, Trump had a big advantage in the traditionally conservative eastern part of New Mexico and in the northwest corner of the state, with voters more evenly split in the southern part of the state that includes Las Cruces.

PARTY AFFILIATIONS

The poll found  there were about 10% of Democrats surveyed who expressed support for Trump than Republicans who said they would vote for Harris.  The difference was not enough to offset the fact there are more registered Democrats than Republicans in New Mexico.

Among independent voters, or those who declined to state a party affiliation, Harris held a 19-point advantage. And self-described moderate voters from all political affiliations were far more likely to back Harris than Trump, with 60% of moderates saying they would vote for Harris and 28% saying they planned to back Trump.

The link to the quoted and relied upon October 20 Albuquerque Journal article with photos, graphs and charts is here:

https://www.abqjournal.com/election/journal-poll-kamala-harris-maintains-advantage-over-donald-trump-in-new-mexico/article_b8ca94e0-8da6-11ef-8a26-67722784e9ab.html

SECOND CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT POLL

In 2021, Congressional District 2 was redrawn. Redistricting broke up the conservative stronghold of Eddy, Lea and Chaves counties. The new boundary lines withstood a GOP court challenge.  The congressional district is now more geographically diverse. It encompasses most of southern New Mexico, including parts of the oil patch in Lea and Eddy counties and all of Las Cruces, then reaching north all the way into Albuquerque’s South Valley and West Side.

According to a new Journal Poll, Democratic incumbent Gabe Vasquez  leads by 4% points with support from 49% of likely voters surveyed while Republican challenger Yvette Herrell is close behind with 45% of voter support. The lead is within the margin of error of plus or minus 4.8% points. The poll found 5% of voters surveyed were undecided.

The Journal poll found that Vasquez had a 14-point lead among women voters, with 53% of support among women compared to 39% support for Herrell. Meanwhile, Herrell had a slight edge with male voters, with 50% support among that group compared to 46% support among men for Vasquez.

A former Las Cruces city councilor, Democrat Gabe Vasquez won his seat in Congress by approximately 1,300 votes in 2022, unseating Yvette Herrell, a former state legislator from Alamogordo. Two years later, Herrell is trying to reclaim it.

Abortion has been the most common theme in campaign ads.  Vasquez has repeatedly hammered Herrell over her record on abortion in campaign ads and at rallies. In response, Herrell released a television ad to clarify her stance on abortion.

The Vasquez-Harrell race is the most expensive of the three U.S. House races in New Mexico. Herrell has raised $3.7 million and has $1.1 million cash on hand, while Vasquez has raised $6.1 million and has $1.8 million cash on hand, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Both campaigns have attracted major  support of congressional leaders. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy helped Herrell launch her campaign last year. Speaker Mike Johnson went to Las Cruces for Herrell in August and is scheduled to visit Carlsbad for a Herrell campaign event on October 23.  House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries came to Albuquerque in early October at Vasquez’s invitation, where he attended events to promote all three Democratic congressional representatives in their reelection campaigns.

UNDECIDED INDEPENDENTS INCREASES

In the final  Journal poll, party affiliation was the biggest predictor of candidate preference. While Vasquez had strong support among Democratic voters, with 84% support among that group, Herrell had support among nearly all Republican voters surveyed, with 91% support.

However, more independent or decline to state voters supported Vasquez as well. He had 51% of support among those voters, while Herrell had 32%.

Unlike the Republican and Democratic voters surveyed, the independent voters had more people still on the fence, with 15% of independent voters undecided.

EDUCATION AND ETHNICITY BREAKDOWN

In a pattern similar to that found in other New Mexico and national races, the Democrat Gabe Vasquez had more support among voters with higher educational.

Among voters with some college or with a high school diploma or less education, the race is nearly deadlocked. But Vasquez has a clear lead among voters with a four-year college degree or graduate degree. Herrell has a 3-point lead among voters with a high school diploma or less education, with 50% of support among this group. Vasquez has a 29-point lead among voters with a graduate degree with 64% support.

In the 2022 Journal polling during the pair’s first matchup, Vasquez had a large lead among Hispanic voters in the district, with support of 61% of voters in that demographic. Support among that demographic group is not as strong for Vasquez this election cycle, according to the new poll. Vasquez  support dropped to  51% of Hispanic voters surveyed, while Herrell had 40% support among that group.

The link to the quoted and relied upon October 20 Albuquerque Journal article with photos, graphs and charts is here:

https://www.abqjournal.com/news/journal-poll-vasquez-has-slim-lead-over-herrell-in-congressional-race/article_9625d99c-8dd1-11ef-b780-5b30483deec9.html#tncms-source=home-featured-7-block

POLL METHODOLOGY

“The Journal poll is based on a statewide random sample of 1,024 voters who cast ballots in the 2020 and/or 2022 general election, and a sample of adults who registered to vote since December 2022 and who said they are likely to vote in the upcoming election.

The sample was stratified by race and county and weighted by age, gender, education level, and party affiliation based on traditional voting patterns in New Mexico general elections, to ensure a more representative sample.

The poll was conducted Oct. 10-18. The voter sample has a margin of error of plus- or minus-3.1 percentage points. The margin of error grows for subsamples.

All interviews were conducted by live, professional interviewers, based in Albuquerque, with multiple callbacks to households that did not initially answer the phone.

Both cellphone numbers (89%) and landlines (11%) of likely general election voters were used.”

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

New Mexico has long lost its status as a swing state in Presidential elections. Gone are the days for Presidential candidates to visit the state to secure its 5 electoral college votes. However, both the United States Senate and the House of Representative have the slimmest majorities for control.

The U.S. Senate is currently controlled by Democrats by just 2 votes and has 51 Democrats, including three independents, and 49 Republicans. There are 34 seats up in 2024,  including a special election in Nebraska, of which 23 are held by Democrats or Independents. Republicans can retake control of the Senate with a net gain of two seats or by winning the 2024 presidential election along with a net gain of one seat.

The United States House total membership 435 Representatives with 220 Republicans,  212 Democrats, 0 Independents and 3 Vacancies . All 435 house seats are up for re-election and given the closeness of the Presidential race, its uncertain who will control the United States House  of Representatives.