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Real Conversations for Real New Mexicans.
The Chile Wire with A. Baldonado.
Gregg Hull:Hey, y'all. Welcome back to The Chile Wire. We are coming up on November 3, election day. Early voting is happening right now. If you haven't got out to vote, please do.
Gregg Hull:Polls closed on Saturday. As you all can see, we put out calls to both gubernatorial candidates. Mayor Hull answered the call, and he's here to talk to you in New Mexico, share his vision, and encourage you to get out and vote. It's a big election. And mayor, thank you again for stopping by the Chile Wire.
Gregg Hull:We know you're extremely busy. We were chatting right before this. 90,000 miles you put on your vehicle.
Abe Baldonado:80,000 miles. Up on 98. Rolling up on Yeah. I got 80.
Gregg Hull:Tuesday, it might be a hundred hundred thousand miles.
Abe Baldonado:It might be. New transmission already. And like I said, I've... Now I'm looking at a new windshield and, you know, numerous oil changes and it's... But I'm gonna need a new set of tires too.
Gregg Hull:Absolutely. Well, you know, I I joked with mayor Hull. I said after November 3, he may not be driving for four more years and
Abe Baldonado:It's true.
Gregg Hull:May may have an escort service there, and so that'll save some miles and some tread on those tires.
Abe Baldonado:Yes. Absolutely. And I just wanna tell everybody, please get out and vote. It is that this is a a very important election when you think about it. The the future of the state of New Mexico is really in the balance as to which direction we're gonna go, or are we gonna stay on the same path, or are we gonna take a new direction?
Abe Baldonado:And I believe that based on what I've shown people that I'm capable of doing, that I can take the state in a new direction when it comes to public safety, health care, education, all the things that we're really doing here. Infrastructure. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it's all the things that we've been talking about now for months on end, and we've all identified as issues that are really plaguing New Mexico.
Abe Baldonado:When you think about CYFD and some of the other just major issues that need a very concerted focus to make sure that we're bringing forward solutions that actually solve these problems. And Abe, I've always said this in Rio Rancho. We were in a city that was immune from problems when I first took office. We had a lot of problems. But instead of getting involved in a lot of the partisan political rhetoric, I just focused on the issues and said, this is what we need to get done.
Abe Baldonado:How do we get it done? Let's pull together the people that can identify this is the problem. This is this is what's catalyzing the problem, and this is how we stop the problem and and fix it going forward. And that's what we need right now. We've got to step back from a lot of the political, you know, back and forth and say, you know what?
Abe Baldonado:We have a real problem in health care. Let's pull all the professionals together, set our party divisions aside, and actually just focus on what it's going to take to make sure that New Mexicans can get quality health care. Absolutely. And same thing with public safety. I've pointed out that really my approach to public safety is going to be working with our communities.
Abe Baldonado:Because where's the crime happening? In the communities, right? So need to... The state needs to be a better partner with the communities to develop strategic plans around public safety within the community. And I use the term public safety because it's a broader scope than just saying crime, out of That's control kind of a trigger word, if you will.
Abe Baldonado:I like to point out that it's public safety. That means whether it's police, fire, nine eleven services, behavioral health services, rehabilitation services, recovery services, you name it. All of that comes into play when you're talking about public safety. It's not just a single point on a map that says, if we conquer this point, it'll all end. There's there's really layers and layers and layers of problems when it comes to public safety, and that's...
Abe Baldonado:Then you've got to address it from every level. You've got to approach it from a
Gregg Hull:360 degree approach. Absolutely. And Meyer, with that, so one thing that you've talked about is solutions. You've come out with a really good solution right now. When I started thinking about solutions, I started thinking about the conversation we're having.
Gregg Hull:You came out with an extraordinary plan and there's some people that don't like it, but I I think it's think it's amazing and many New Mexicans should because we keep hearing affordability is a big issue. Right. I'm sure you've heard it over the last two years that you've been on the campaign trail. Costs are going up, you know, things are getting a little bit more expensive every now and then. You know, maybe wages aren't catching up.
Gregg Hull:But there's a there's a silver lining there with an opportunity that New Mexicans need
Abe Baldonado:to understand. And you rolled out your four point plan to remove New Mexico's personal income. Absolutely. And and affordability goes from two different directions. And you'll hear a lot of politicians talk about, well, we're...
Abe Baldonado:I'm gonna bring down the price of this, and I'm gonna bring down the price of that. And Which
Gregg Hull:is easier said than done.
Abe Baldonado:It it is. Well, it's almost impossible because, really, if you're a governor or a legislator or a mayor, you don't have control over national and global pricing influencers. Right? There's so many different things that when you're dealing with what the cost of stuff... For example, I love to bring this up when it comes to we need to we need to make housing more affordable.
Abe Baldonado:Okay? Well, the government can do certain things like maybe help with the interest rates or do buy down programs or do certain little things to help maybe make the home borrower
Gregg Hull:Down payment assistance. Down payment assistance.
Abe Baldonado:But the reality is is that when it costs 100,000 to build a house, it costs $100,000 to build a house. Mhmm. The lumber, the labor, the concrete, electrical, the HVAC. I mean, we know it's more than that. Buying the land, creating all the infrastructure to get to the house, whether that's drilling your own well or bringing in public services, dropping a septic tank or bringing in a sewer line, putting in the infrastructure to bring the water and to take the sewer, all of that stuff has very specific costs.
Abe Baldonado:So how do you help people at that point in time? Well, you give them more money or you make sure that they have more money because there's two ways to look at affordability. Affordability, yeah, hopefully we can bring costs down. But at the same point in time, by people having more money is a a definite way of making things more affordable. If something costs $10 and I only have one, it's not affordable.
Gregg Hull:Right.
Abe Baldonado:But if something costs $10 and I have 20, it's affordable. Yeah. And I have spare change. Right. See, so...
Abe Baldonado:And and I don't know why we have gotten into the mindset in this state that the government has to have all this money so that they can tell you how you're going to spend it. Whether it's in health care, whether it's in education, whether it's in where you buy your food, SNAP benefits, and where get your childcare from. Is that you don't know how to take care of yourself, so we're going to take care of you for you. And all those programs are great for individuals that are low income, middle class, people trying to get an education, managing two or three jobs. These are great services to assist people with, but they shouldn't be services that people become dependent on.
Gregg Hull:Right. Well, and I also... I've always learned that no one knows how to spend their money better than yourself. Correct. And so when you empower people, you put money back into individuals.
Gregg Hull:They decide where that money goes and what's best for their needs, their family. Right? Do I need new tires on my vehicle? Do I need an oil change? Do I need to buy items for...
Gregg Hull:If if I'm a newly expecting parent? Right. Do I need to buy things for my newborn? And so those peep... And again, history has shown us when you put money back in the pockets of Americans, it goes back into the system.
Gregg Hull:It does. They start buying. They they have more purchasing power.
Abe Baldonado:Right. And a, my plan doesn't even account for the the stimulus on the economy. Mhmm. It is because I didn't wanna put hypotheticals in there. And people are...
Abe Baldonado:The the favorite question people ask me is, well, how's the state gonna pay for that? Yeah. Okay. And so let me give my my favorite sound bite. It doesn't cost the state anything to not take your money.
Abe Baldonado:Yep. No. It doesn't cost. Is is there a reduction in revenue? Yes.
Abe Baldonado:So what do we do? We grow our revenues organically. We grow them somewhere else. And I don't mean by doing additional tax increases. I'm very specific on that.
Gregg Hull:You bring business in.
Abe Baldonado:Right?
Gregg Hull:They they they bring money into the GRT.
Abe Baldonado:Well, let let me just give you some simple math. The the state's take on on GRT, just on GRT, if you put $2,000,000,000 back into the economy and people spent that on discretionary items that generated GRT, That alone is about $600,000,000 back for the state, a little bit more than that. I don't have a calculator with you, but it's a lot of money that right off the bat, you're going to be making money back through just the economic stimulus from that. And then that money goes to make payroll for and especially in small businesses and stuff like that. That money goes to make payroll.
Abe Baldonado:You're adding additional employees. You're creating more economic benefit. People spending more money. The local restaurant is making money. The local grocery store is making money.
Abe Baldonado:All of these various different places. The local tire store is making more money because you can afford to put the new set of tires on. The local car dealership's making more money because somebody can afford a car payment now. All of these things are really... It's a direct result of having that type of stimulus in the economy, $2,000,000,000.
Abe Baldonado:And I do want to make sure that I always point out my math here is that if you go look at the current reoccurring budget for the state of New Mexico, recurring expenses, it's a little over $12,000,000,000.
Gregg Hull:12,000,000,000. Yeah. That that is one thing. I'm glad you brought it up, Mayor, because what I've been frustrated with is hearing folks say, this is gonna make us a poor state. We can't lose out on $2,000,000,000.
Gregg Hull:What they're not telling you is New Mexico last year brought in a little over $12,000,000,000. And this year, they're forecasted to bring in almost $15,000,000,000.
Abe Baldonado:Correct. Well, our current reoccurring revenues are a little over 14,000,000,000 already. We're gonna have an extra billion on top of that.
Gregg Hull:And that actually... So you're not essentially losing money by repealing the income tax because you're making that money. And I thought it was fascinating. I'm not sure if you've seen this. Steve McKee recently spoke at economic forum.
Abe Baldonado:I I missed that. I'm hoping... I don't know if they recorded that or not, but I... Steve's a good friend of mine.
Gregg Hull:Yeah. And likewise. And, you know, it was amazing to hear him speak just about the amount of wealth we're sitting on with our sovereign wealth funds.
Abe Baldonado:Right.
Gregg Hull:And just the interest alone that is made yearly off of that fund Right. Alone is more than the loss that we would see from personal linkages.
Abe Baldonado:You know, and and once again, when you look at all the various different programs that the state offers, my plan keeps those things in place at a little over $12,000,000,000 Phase one, as you do a four step phase out of the tax, Phase one, it's going to reduce revenues by $81,000,000 to $100,000,000 against a $2,000,000,000 surplus. Right. So you're still 1.9 in the plus. So we've got room to give relief to the lowest income individuals in our state.
Gregg Hull:Yeah. Okay? And the mom
Abe Baldonado:and And they're trying to call this a tax break for the rich. I'm not starting at the top echelon. I'm starting at the bottom. And, you know, and quite frankly, my whole life, I've lived... I will tell you, I have lived within the first two steps of this plan most of my life.
Abe Baldonado:Because the first step is single filer's 25,000 exempt income, joint filer's 50,000 exempt joint income or or total income or or... Yeah. Exempt income. And then phase two is 5,100. And I can tell you as a joint filer, we've lived within those first two steps most of my life.
Gregg Hull:Right. LFC just put out a fascinating report. I'm not sure if you saw it. But for folks to understand what we're talking about here, when you say this isn't a tax break for the rich. No.
Gregg Hull:It's a tax break for middle lower class.
Abe Baldonado:Yes.
Gregg Hull:Because right now, middle lower class is footing the tax bill for New Mexico and personal income taxes. And so I I thought it was interesting. They showed a graph where early on, early in your career, New Mexico's tax code is actually a progressive tax
Abe Baldonado:Yes.
Gregg Hull:Up to a certain income. And then once you get to a certain income, you know, and you're higher income, it's then regressive. And so what you see, there's a middle point of who is actually burdened by the highest taxes. Right. It's actually middle lower class It is.
Gregg Hull:In New
Abe Baldonado:And and when you look at that, you you say eliminating personal income tax in the state of New Mexico, yes, if you did it all in one fell swoop, Okay, it would be approximately $2,100,000,000 in revenues, in reduced revenues for the state. Now, which right now is our current surplus. But you can't spend your surplus because we have a state policy that says we have to hold 25% reserves, Okay? And what 25 reserves are, generally 25% of whatever your reoccurring expenditures are. So you've got to hold that reserve.
Abe Baldonado:And so you can't completely dig into that or go below that. So what we'd be looking to do is take the first step, grow out of it. Take the second step, grow out of it. Would I like to see it done in four years? Yeah, I'd love to see it done in four years.
Abe Baldonado:If we can't, that's okay. We take a pause if we're not seeing the economic growth. But I believe that we're going to see economic growth from this, and it's going to put money back in the pockets of people who spend money. Because honestly, when you look at your lower income to middle income families, they're spending every dollar that they get on one thing or another. They have a very difficult time putting money in savings.
Abe Baldonado:I know. It's very hard to put money in savings when you have increasing costs and you have expenses that come out of the blue and you find yourself not being able to buy homeowners insurance or car insurance, all of these things that people struggle with on a day to day basis. So I don't know many people that are in the low income to middle class that actually have the ability to do much savings. But if you're a single filer making $40,000 a year, this would save you $1,400 a year. You'd be able to put that into savings.
Gregg Hull:Yeah. Or use it at your discretion, whether it's a down payment for a vehicle or new tires or Yeah. To fix your vehicle if something comes up. I mean, it's just a nice little rainy day set aside It is. Monies to say, hey, I'm okay.
Gregg Hull:I have some money there just in case I run into a problem.
Abe Baldonado:And I just want to point this out. My opponent is putting out there that we want to increase the child tax credit. Okay. Why would you need a child tax credit if you're not paying any Income tax. Tax.
Abe Baldonado:Right? Why would you need that? So this is a broader payback or leave the money where it is. And then there are those that are on the low income tax credit that actually don't pay anything in, but they get some money back, right? That's fine.
Abe Baldonado:We've put that in the plan. In order to satisfy that need, would take about $350 to $400,000,000 with the whole plan phased out, because there's just a very small number of people that are actually getting that benefit. So it's not from the bottom, from zero all the way up to the top filer. It's just... It's that lower echelon that they're under the certain income level where they're not paying any income tax, so they get a low income tax credit.
Abe Baldonado:And that currently costs the state $3.50 to $400,000,000 a year right now. So we've done the research on this, and for anybody to say that this is going to bankrupt the state... No. What's going to bankrupt the state is if we kill the oil and gas industry in the state, because that's a $6,000,000,000 loss, and you're not going to make up those revenues through wind and solar. And that doesn't mean that I'm against wind and solar.
Abe Baldonado:That doesn't mean that. But the fact of the matter is, we've been told year over year over year that if we get off of oil and gas and we move to wind and solar, it's more affordable. But for the last ten years, I've never seen my utility bill go down once. Right. But I have seen my usage go down because I'm constantly looking for ways to keep the lights turned off and keep the heat set at a low number or the AC set at a high number in order to keep my energy bills down.
Abe Baldonado:I subscribed to the program on PNM where at Energy certain saver? Yeah. Where at certain times of the day, they shut my air conditioning systems down. And I'd forgot they had done that one year, so I called a service tech out to say, hey, my air conditioner's not working. They're like, sir, forgot you enrolled in this.
Abe Baldonado:Yeah. You see this little box here? It's got you shut off. I forgot about that. But I didn't work from home until the pandemic, so that's when that kind of triggered.
Abe Baldonado:But it's a common scare tactic that if the government's not taking your money, somehow everything's going to fall apart. Right. And we can provide the services that we need to provide right now. We've got the revenues. And giving some people some tax relief because we have been promised for years, years and years and years, if we will take these oil and gas revenues and put them into these sovereign funds that Steve McKee talked about, is that we'll put those into the sovereign funds.
Abe Baldonado:We will save for the future, and somewhere in the future, this will pay us back. This is the time that it can pay us back. We've been patient with this. We have sat and wait. Now we're sitting on 75,000,000,000 in managed sovereign funds.
Abe Baldonado:And yes, there are beneficiaries that are specific to some of these funds. But we need to start looking at how, instead of assigning new beneficiaries and creating new programs, that we can start to actually give the taxpayers relief for the royalties that we've been drawing property off that belongs to the citizens Right? Of the state of New our oil and gas revenues. That's our severance taxes that come from minerals and rights that we have as New Mexicans in the state of New Mexico. Right?
Abe Baldonado:So taking those severance taxes, putting in them in a permanent fund, now those permanent funds need to be built up in a way where they actually start paying general fund obligations as opposed to developing out new programs.
Gregg Hull:Absolutely. And mayor, I love that you brought up, you know, the the rhetoric from your opponent about, you know, killing the oil and gas industry, moving to this net zero carbon by 2050. It's just not feasible. It's not realistic. Right.
Gregg Hull:And quite frankly, the the misinformation there is that it doesn't bring down affordability. Utility rates will skyrocket because the reality is is that clean energy like, you know, wind and solar cannot meet the demands of an entire state. No. And where I see your thought process on this as refreshing and a great plan is that we should be a hub for all energy sources. Correct.
Gregg Hull:Like, if we want to create true competition and opportunities for New Mexicans to decide, hey, I want solar or I want wind or I want natural gas.
Abe Baldonado:Right.
Gregg Hull:I have those options available to me and what fits best for me and my paycheck and what I can afford. But the moment you strip out oil and gas Yeah. You're gonna... I mean, look at look at Texas right now with their grid. Year after year, they are afraid because they know that their grid right now, and this is considering that they have natural gas, their grid can't even sustain the demand that is necessary.
Gregg Hull:And that's what I really want folks to understand is that, look, you strip away oil and gas, wait till you see your utility rates skyrocket.
Abe Baldonado:You really will. And look, that's the other thing. You will see everything else skyrocket in expense because if you don't have that industry generating revenues for the state of New Mexico, that's where you will have to raise taxes to make up $6,000,000,000 in revenues that just comes from that industry. But you'll also have to raise taxes another, give or take, 2,000,000,000 from the loss of revenues from the money that's generated by what we call the economic ripple effect, is that people get paychecks, they go out and spend money, they buy cars, they buy houses, they go to the grocery store, they go to restaurants. Top golf.
Abe Baldonado:Top golf, Yeah. You They do recreation. They go to movie theaters. Right. And they go to the coffee shop.
Abe Baldonado:They go to the ice cream shop, whatever. All of that stuff comes from the paychecks that are coming out of that industry as well. And so there's a ripple effect to that. So not only do you cut off the mainstream of funding, you cut off the mainstream that creates the ripple effects. And those feed off into local economy.
Abe Baldonado:When the big chunk of money is coming into the state, it's that other dollars that's really fueling local communities. And that... You can't underestimate the impact that that's going to have.
Gregg Hull:Right. And, you know, to even go a little bit further, just thinking about Steve McKee's presentation, I may have the graphic so I could show it to you. New Mexico's stagnant, if not declining population, there's a piece of this graph that shows New Mexico's tread line for population growth, economic growth, and the line for the sovereign wealth fund growth. And it is astonishing that, you know, New Mexico's line for population shifts has been pretty stagnant, if not there's some dips there. And you see the sovereign wealth fund and how much it's grown is just wow.
Gregg Hull:One other thing that as I think about that graphic that we oftentimes don't think about, You're losing a tax base if you end the oil and gas industry because now you're talking about hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect jobs. These people are gonna flee New Mexico. They're gonna go to West Texas. They're gonna move somewhere else
Abe Baldonado:Right.
Gregg Hull:To harness their skills. And I think the nativity that I hear from your opponent is, well, they'll just go work for clean energy jobs. That's not a guarantee. No. That's not a guarantee.
Gregg Hull:No. And and I don't even know if clean energy jobs have enough vacancies to hire every single one of those direct and indirect employees of the oil and gas industry.
Abe Baldonado:They do not.
Gregg Hull:And they're gonna flee the state. So now you lose population, not only your schools suffer because now they're losing students Right. And families, but we're losing families to another state that are gonna hit say, hey, you know what? Texas doesn't tax my income. You know, Florida doesn't tax my income.
Gregg Hull:Right. You know, many other states don't. I'm gonna go there. They're not gonna tax my income and I get to keep the job that I enjoy doing for the oil and gas industry.
Abe Baldonado:That I put my whole life into.
Gregg Hull:Yeah. So now, you're losing those folks putting money into your economies. Carlsbad potentially becomes a ghost town. Hobbs Yep. You know, these folks flee and those economies suffer.
Gregg Hull:I mean, I grew up in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and I'm I'm saddened every time I go back to visit my parents because I see another door shut. I see something boarded up that it's not thriving like it's like it I used
Abe Baldonado:went through Grant's the other day, and it was just one boarded up building after another. It was it was sad to see because, you know, you've you've really shut down the whole extractables industry over there with the with the uranium mines and some of the other stuff. And then you have also the the prisons and all that other thing... All the other things that were driving some of that economy
Gregg Hull:over And an irresponsible government took those opportunities away and didn't bring in new opportunities either to at least offset some of that.
Abe Baldonado:So the idea is kill it and they will come. I'm sorry.
Gregg Hull:Did I
Abe Baldonado:say that backwards? Yeah. Yeah. San Juan.
Gregg Hull:San Juan generating station. Right? Right. Many of those folks were put out of business and those... That economy has suffered.
Gregg Hull:And I... I've actually talked to some school board members from up in the 4 Corners area years ago when I was doing our education report for Think New Mexico. And hearing from some of the board members say, we're losing students because their parents lost their job. Yep. And now they're having to go out into the workforce and they're picking working at a local restaurant instead of being in school to help their family provide.
Gregg Hull:And that's what happens when you have an irresponsible government that just rips it out and doesn't plan for the future.
Abe Baldonado:Well, that's the thing, is if you if you ever rip out the oil and gas industry in in New Mexico, you kill the schools instantly. Yep. That's another effect.
Gregg Hull:Yeah. Yeah.
Abe Baldonado:You kill the schools instantly.
Gregg Hull:On average, $2,000,000,000 towards public education in New Mexico, gone. Yeah.
Abe Baldonado:Right. There's so many consequences to this. I do wanna touch on one thing. Yeah. Do.
Abe Baldonado:Wanna make sure we touch on one other thing. And I appreciate you pointing out the fact that I enjoy showing up. I enjoy talking about these things because if we don't talk about them, Abe, we're not going to be able to fix them. Right. We'll just...
Abe Baldonado:You know, and I to talk about the issues. I want to talk about how we get stuff done. And right now, the hot topic is data centers. That's the hot topic. And I have said that I don't support, and I want to be very clear of this for everybody that's listening, I don't support a moratorium on any industry.
Abe Baldonado:Because if you do it to one industry, you'll do it to another, right? Absolutely. So what happens if we say, I declare a moratorium on data centers coming into the state of New Mexico, and then we say, well, that worked out well, so why don't I put a moratorium on any new extractive services and kill the oil and gas industry? So you have to be careful. And my position on this is this.
Abe Baldonado:Let the counties and the cities make the decision that this is a good fit for them.
Gregg Hull:Communities know what's best for them and what their needs are.
Abe Baldonado:And I pointed out the other day that when there was this big protest against AI centers and my opponent came out and said, oh, I'm going put a moratorium on AI data centers the first day that I'm in office, that sounds wonderful and great, and it's a good sound bite. But the fact of the matter is, you know, she said that a couple of days before the No Kings rally. So I I just... You know, you you go, okay. Does that look kind of kingly to say I'm gonna just Yeah.
Abe Baldonado:Put a moratorium. An edict on this? Look, here's where we're at. Every industry needs to be regulated to make sure that it is good for our environment, and it is respectful of our resources. But we don't want to send the message that we are closed for business, because you just talked about a declining population.
Abe Baldonado:And Steve McKee's report shows that as well. And that is a major problem. And I've been asked, what do you think the greatest issue facing the state of New Mexico is? And I've said, it's our declining population.
Gregg Hull:We're the greatest exporter of our people.
Abe Baldonado:Correct. But think about this. Cost of services, as we've already discussed, don't typically come down. Right. Okay?
Abe Baldonado:And if government is providing all those services and it's taking that money from the people through taxation to pay for those services, the fewer people that you have in the state to contribute to that taxation, the more expensive it becomes on the people that are remaining. This is a problem from a 200 economic standpoint that reduced the pool of money by the people who are paying in. This is what we proved in Rio Rancho works. Okay? We grew the population in Rio Rancho about 20% during my administration.
Abe Baldonado:And the median household income in Rio Rancho went from 53,000 when I first took office to a little over 87,000 by the time I left office. And our focus was economic growth. And by the way, the sales tax rate is the same today as when I took office in 2014. There's not a lot of cities that can say that. You can grow wealth.
Abe Baldonado:You can grow economies without taxing people into oblivion. And so so what I'm saying is is let's turn the thought process around and and let's have government actually work for the people, not, you know, be the be the the supporter of of all people, you know, or where where everybody's dependent on the government, you know. Yeah. The government should be dependent on the people, not the other way around.
Gregg Hull:Absolutely. And mayor, to your point about the data centers, I'm gonna do a hot take here just to talk to our audience that I'm infuriated and so should you because Deb Holland said she wants to put a moratorium on data centers yet has received thousands of dollars from data center operators and and job creators. And again, that to me is a hypocrisy is... And to say, well, if they ask for the money, I'll give it back. On principle, and I want you Mexicans to think about this, on principle, if you're opposed to something like myself Right.
Gregg Hull:I doubt that we would take money Right. From it. Right. If you're that just dead set, like, I don't believe in this, I don't believe in this industry, why would I take their money? Correct.
Gregg Hull:To go out and say, well, elections are expensive. Well, that's a... That's not a real good answer.
Abe Baldonado:No. It's not. And let me point this out too. The PAC called Affordable New Mexico that's saying that these data centers are going to drive up all these expenses, and they're going to drive up your utility bills, and so on and so forth, They actually ran a commercial saying that I wanted to proliferate data centers throughout the state of New Mexico. They made it very cartoonish, and there were data centers all over the map.
Abe Baldonado:This is a pack that is directly supporting Deb Haaland's campaign, And they took a $250,000 Wow. From from Energy Transfer LP, which is the gas company that's building the Chile line from El Paso to Project Jupiter. So they took a $250,000 to tell everybody that I like data centers, and they're running the commercials off data center money when I haven't taken a penny from data centers. Yeah. You know?
Abe Baldonado:A little bit... You know, it's called read the room. Mhmm. It's called read the Read
Gregg Hull:the room.
Abe Baldonado:You know, whether whether I agree with data centers or not, I kinda recognize this wouldn't be a good time to take a check.
Gregg Hull:Yeah. Right. Right. Well, and the whole data center topic is so complex, and I think there's a lot of misinformation out there, especially on Project Jupiter. I mean, I know one side tries to say, like, this was just rammed down, you know, the community's throats and, like, no discuss...
Gregg Hull:No. They went through an... A formal administrative process. It did. The New Mexico environment department has been heavily involved.
Gregg Hull:They've asked questions on air permitting and and data from the operators to to provide. They've made adjustments. They're bringing in their own microgrid, the fresh water that they are gonna use for the one time I
Abe Baldonado:wanna point out the microgrid. Mhmm. That's another hypocrisy. K? It took legislation to allow for that microgrid to happen because you're gonna be running two cycle natural gas in generators on this facility.
Abe Baldonado:And those are in direct conflict with the Energy Transition Act that looks to get us to by zero two thousand and fifty. So this administration sidestepped their own policy to get this deal in, and then somehow it all became my fault. Yeah. Right? And I'm in nowhere in control.
Abe Baldonado:I'm not in any of the facilities or any of the forms of government that work to get this done. Right. But this microgrid allows for this energy. Now, had I decided to structure this deal, I would have had Project Jupiter overbuild the energy source so that they could, through a power purchase agreement, back feed the energy into the El Paso electric grid so that we could actually buy down people's utility bills through an economic development deal and actually bring costs down by inviting industry in the state. But reality is, is you know why they can't put the excess energy onto the El Paso grid?
Abe Baldonado:Because it's in violation of the So they had to have a microgrid law that sidestepped the ETA because under the ETA, you're not allowed to, on normal grids, have more than a certain amount of carbon energy on those grids.
Gregg Hull:I hadn't heard that part, but it all makes sense now. It does? It all makes sense All I'm saying
Abe Baldonado:is I I I follow the I follow the I follow the real money.
Gregg Hull:No. Absolutely.
Abe Baldonado:Because I've been in government for twelve years, and I fought this corruption from the ground up. Right.
Gregg Hull:And I want you Mexicans, go look for the facts. Don't believe misinformation. Don't believe, you know, even hear from me. Don't believe my Right. My say or or the mayors.
Gregg Hull:Go out. Do the research. There's an administrative record. If you wanna know everything about Project Jupiter and all the approvals from our government, they're there in the administrative record. And first and foremost, if you wanna know about the fresh water, go look up where they're gonna get their fresh water resources.
Abe Baldonado:Right.
Gregg Hull:News flash, it's actually a private landowner that decided to sell or lease
Abe Baldonado:Right.
Gregg Hull:Their private water rights. You have no say in that. Right. As a private property owner, could do whatever you'd like for
Abe Baldonado:your Well, that's the other thing a moratorium would do. You have to lay... You have to look at the total overall when you say, I'm gonna declare a moratorium. Okay. Let's say that you were that private property owner and you had struck up a deal to sell your land to anybody.
Abe Baldonado:Doesn't And you sold the water rights with the land. So you own the water rights, you own the land, and you've got this deal struck, and all of a sudden the government said, I'm putting a moratorium on whatever deal it is that you've got working. Is that a violation of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution when it comes to government taking personal property? Absolutely. I mean, so sounds
Gregg Hull:like Unless they unless they call... Unless they strike eminent domain. Well, would... Even if
Abe Baldonado:that is eminent domain, but they would have to come in. And and at that point, because they put a moratorium, they would say, well, we're not taking your property, but you are. Okay?
Gregg Hull:So you You're taking away my ability to utilize my private property in a way that Correct. I believe is fit for my family and myself.
Abe Baldonado:Correct. So do we really want the government going down this path? Mhmm. So you would have a cause of action to sue New Mexico saying, hey, look, I had a 50... I had a $60,000,000 deal on this land, and your little moratorium killed that deal.
Abe Baldonado:So I'm gonna sue you for the 60,000,000 because that was a $60,000,000 taking of my value because I can't sell this land for that purpose anymore. So you're gonna give me the compensation for that that I would have gotten through a private land transaction. So you need to slow down and not do sound bites, but actually walk through these things in a way that it actually benefits the public, but it also make sure that it protects the public from lawsuits that can come from these political actions.
Gregg Hull:Absolutely. And understanding that your public officials, oftentimes, if they're allowing this, they clearly don't care about you to say, hey, you know what? It's not my money. It's their money. So the state and we'll pay it.
Gregg Hull:It's not our money. Right? And that's that's the unfortunate reality. See too many lawsuits against the state of New York.
Abe Baldonado:We really do.
Gregg Hull:We really do. Where, you know, again, it's it's just bad governance where it's like, sue the state. Like, we're fine with it. We'll pay it. Well, yeah, you're paying it with someone else's money.
Gregg Hull:Right. That... That's unfair to New Mexicans.
Abe Baldonado:And that's irresponsible and it's bad stewardship.
Gregg Hull:Absolutely. Well, mister mayor, we know that you're pressed for time. You're getting back on the road. Last few days Yep. Would just love to give you an opportunity to make your final pitch to New Mexico.
Abe Baldonado:Please go vote. Please go vote. Please go vote. And we'd love to invite you if you're gonna air this before Monday. We've got a get out the vote rally at the rail yards in Albuquerque, 05:30.
Abe Baldonado:We'd love to have you come and join us. And then, of course, we'd love to have you join us for our election night watch party, 06:30 at Hotel Albuquerque. If there's anything else you'd like to know about myself and our campaign, please go to gregghull.com. That's gregghull.com, and you can see a lot of our policies. And you can read my 60 page boring document on four steps to zero, which is eliminating personal income tax in the state of New Mexico.
Gregg Hull:Mister mayor, thank you so much. And with that, y'all, next Tuesday night, unfiltered with Elias and The Chile Wire will be live on KDAZ, ninety six point nine seven hundred FM. Please listen, and hopefully, we'll be able to get mayor Hull on election night to chat with us. And who knows? We may be calling you governor Hull, and The Chile Wire will be looking forward to that conversation next.
Abe Baldonado:Absolutely. A lot of work to do, but I'm looking forward to it.
Gregg Hull:Absolutely. And mister mayor, just before we wrap here, I just wanna say, God bless you. God bless your family.
Abe Baldonado:Thank you.
Gregg Hull:Thank you for stepping out and putting it all on the line to run for New Mexico is not an easy thing to do. Putting your family on the road and running for office and the thousands of people you've met throughout New Mexico, just thank you for taking that effort.
Abe Baldonado:That is true public service. That. I is... It has been it has been a test on our on our family and our resources, but we've been blessed the whole way.
Gregg Hull:Absolutely. Well, and as we joked around before the podcast started, God will provide. Absolutely. Mister mayor, with that, thank you very much for stopping by the Chile Wire. We...
Gregg Hull:God bless you. God bless your family, and be safe over the next few days as
Abe Baldonado:you You got it.
Gregg Hull:Make the final stops.
Abe Baldonado:You got it.
Gregg Hull:Well, y'all, that's for it this week's Chile Wire. We'll see you next time. And as mayor Hull said, get out and vote.