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Real News For Real New Mexicans.
The Chile Wire with A. Baldonado.
Abe Baldonado:Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Chile Wire. Things are a little bit different around here. Our good friend, Noah Vargas, who you all might have seen in a previous Chile Wire podcast, was actually on the show. And come to find out, Noah got an exclusive not only with Deb Haaland, but also Greg Hall.
Abe Baldonado:As of late, we've heard that we're probably not gonna see a debate between Greg Hall and Deb Haaland before voting starts, and that's unfortunate. But I believe Noah gave us the closest glimpse that we'll see the differences between both of the candidates and their vision for New Mexico. And shout out to Noah for being able to do this because we know it's not easy. We know schedules are always conflicting. And so shout out to Noah for being able to get two gubernatorial candidates to sit down and have a conversation with them.
Abe Baldonado:It's not your typical debate. The questions are a little bit different. There are some that Noah asked the same. However, we reviewed the videos of both candidates here at The Chile Wire, and we just want to share some information with you that we found. Going through each one, what our takeaways are.
Abe Baldonado:One of the big things that I will say is please go watch the improvised intelligence pod with Noah Vargas when you get a chance. Be sure to go watch these videos yourself. These takeaways are my personal opinions from what I've taken away, from what I understand, what I know. However, you need to make decisions for yourself, I highly encourage you. Please do your own research.
Abe Baldonado:We just want to give you an opportunity here, our takeaways first, but really encourage you, go listen in to each one of these and find out who do I really believe is going to lead New Mexico better for me in the long run, and who is the better candidate. And so with that, let's get started. I wanna talk about Greg Hole. Noah did a good job. He he he came out and asked Greg about probably some very controversial, decisions that were made during his time as mayor in Rio Rancho.
Abe Baldonado:And one was around Rio Rancho didn't opt into the election and consolidation. And what that was is once upon a time, there was a bill that would allow and which still allows municipalities to opt into having their elections during big elections. So your gubernatorial or presidential elections. So they moved it over to November if a municipality chose to be part of that election cycle. Rio Rancho did not.
Abe Baldonado:And Noah asked Greg Hole, why didn't you? And Greg Hole, to his credit, gave a very, very good answer. He talked about ballot fatigue. He he noticed, hey, people aren't gonna have all the time in the world to fill out a super long ballot. When you start putting every candidate, every school board member, every city councilor, every bond question, every judicial retention question, it adds up and it creates a very long ballot, which many people could potentially skip voting on a lot of number of issues and a lot of decisions that need to be made, which then we don't really get good voices in our election process.
Abe Baldonado:And Greg Holt, to his credit, did a really good job to explain, hey, I understand that, you know, in Rio Rancho, one of the biggest cities in New Mexico, we didn't opt into this. But there are reasons because I truly believe that it would have done a disservice to voters at the ballot box. Box. And that that was a great answer to that. I wanna move on and y'all, I wanna keep this as straightforward as possible, just key takeaways because we're gonna put some video clips in here from the podcast with Noah for each of the candidates so you can see yourself.
Abe Baldonado:But also, just want you to go and watch both of these videos. They're they're both long. They're a little over an hour each of them, so there's a lot of information, a lot of questions. But just wanna kinda give you some highlights of what we took away. For the Deb Haaland interview, I thought it was interesting.
Abe Baldonado:One thing you'll notice, there's a lot of emotion. There's not a whole lot of conversation around solutions and actual firm public policy solutions of what policy could look like, potential bills. And that was one key takeaway I noticed right away. And I noticed there was a phrase throughout that Deb Haaland said.
Speaker 3:When you meet voters where they are, meet voters where they are. Travel to meet voters where they are.
Abe Baldonado:Meet voters where they are. And she continuously says that throughout the the interview with Noah. And it is a phrase to make people feel good. And it does. Right?
Abe Baldonado:You're like, oh, they're meeting me where I'm at. They're coming to my community. Well, I got to tell you that is the job of a candidate. They should go to you. It's not anything different.
Abe Baldonado:It's not the, hey, oh, this candidate's doing this one, this one isn't. If one of those candidates isn't doing that, then yeah, they don't deserve your vote. But every candidate, especially a gubernatorial candidate, should be going to your communities, should be having conversations with you. But when I hear someone say continuously say on different questions and different responses, meet voters where they are, to me it's just a disguise that detaches a voter from noticing minimal context to the questions answered. Meaning there's there's no context to Deb Haaland's answers in a lot of these questions.
Abe Baldonado:What she's doing is she's creating an illusion of we're meeting people where they are, and that sounds good, but that's not a solution. When we talk about affordability, we talk about health care, we talk about education. Meeting people where they are isn't a solution. And yes, you should be having conversations with folks. There should be roundtables.
Abe Baldonado:There should be discussions about issues, but also solutions. But when you continue to say meet voters where they are, there's really no context here. You'll notice when that statement is made, there's not a good answer given to a potential solution to data centers, to energy, and it really just kinda gives a half answer or makes the interviewer feel good, and then they move on. I want to ping pong back to Greg Hole. He was asked about some challenging situations and, you know, questioning of his leadership that have been critiqued during his time as Rio Rancho.
Abe Baldonado:And this goes back to a situation where a child lost their life. Many of you may have heard this news story. Unfortunately, it was the sibling that got hold of a weapon that accidentally discharged and killed their sibling. There was a lot of questions being asked about why full details weren't shared and why video wasn't shared with the public. And, I gotta say, Greg Hole, this was a really challenging question.
Abe Baldonado:When you challenge a candidate and questioning their leadership decisions, this is where we find out where if these candidates are put in a tough position, they can answer the tough questions. And I thought this was a really good response by by mayor Hall at that time was that we had a family who just encountered something very unfortunate and that no family should have to go through. And he admitted that he took a lot of heat because the city of Rio Rancho did not put out the video of this child who had been injured and unfortunately passed away. And Greg states that he had to do his due diligence to not only protect the community, but also protect the family that was going through this very, very, very unfortunate situation. And he talked about a world that we live in in social media.
Abe Baldonado:We're becoming desensitized to things that we normally shouldn't see or want to see.
Abe Baldonado:Let me just ask you this. Would you wanna see a video on the Internet of your three year old child bleeding out? Yeah. Of course not. Okay.
Abe Baldonado:There are people that wanna see that, Noah, and and that's devastating to the families. Right. And up until a certain point, those images were not protected. And so so I think that there's a reason why Child Code protects certain individuals. And what people didn't know at this particular time when this lawsuit was brought is that there was another child involved.
Abe Baldonado:And he goes into full detail on this in this interview, and I I agree with with with mayor Hall on this because we should not ask to see a video of a child who's been hurt. It's not for our eyes. It's not for... That family, I'm sure, does not want you to see the horrors that they experienced. And although it doesn't feel like transparency, it is.
Abe Baldonado:It's it's being transparent that an investigation is taking place to what occurred, but also protecting the family and loved ones from very disturbing videos being shared online. You know? And as Americans, as New Mexicans, we shouldn't want to see these type of videos. We should not want to see horrific acts. And as a millennial, I'll tell you myself, we saw nine eleven.
Abe Baldonado:We saw how horrific that is. But it's not normal. It's not normal for us to crave to want to see it or know every single detail in an investigation. We have to let authorities do their job. We need leaders to do their job, and it is their job to protect us from things that we shouldn't want to see.
Abe Baldonado:Yes, we we need transparency on what occurred and that will come out during an investigation. But those personal videos don't belong to myself, they don't belong to you, they don't belong to anybody, and they shouldn't be shared online. And so that was a very interesting question that Noah brought up, and I think it really showed Greg Hole's resolve in tough situations, and that's what leadership is. You're gonna make tough decisions that sometimes aren't popular, or people are gonna find like, well, what are you hiding by not sharing this video with us? Well, we're not hiding anything.
Abe Baldonado:We're protecting the family who just experienced something very tragic. And I I really thought that was a well thought out answer by Greg Hole, and you can tell that it was authentic. You know, he he'd had no idea that this question was coming, but it shows to his leadership that how he handled that situation and how he still stands by it today on what they did and taking accountability. Like, yeah, we did do that. Back over to Deb Holland, you know, starts off her conversation about her experience.
Abe Baldonado:We've heard over the last year or so that she was a salsa business owner. There's no records of her ever owning a business whatsoever. There's nothing at the secretary of state's office with a registered LLC business entity. And when she begins her introduction with Noah, she never talks about being a business owner. She talks about only being an inside political positions.
Abe Baldonado:And with that, not many of them are even public. We know that she served as state party chair, then later on congresswoman for two years, and then four years as department of interior secretary. But she makes notable comments as she's been a political organizer. However, there's not many records out there that show what type of organization work she did or what political work she did. But she raves that she has the experience to run as governor and to lead as governor, and I do have some serious concerns because there's not a whole lot of clarity here about what she has done and what experience she has, you know.
Abe Baldonado:And I've heard people say, well, she's a lawyer. She's not a lawyer. She went to law school, she graduated, but she fell the bar three times and never passed the bar. She's not a lawyer. She served in Congress for two years only.
Abe Baldonado:And as Department of Secretary, she served that for four years. So we're talking about six years of proven work experience that we can look at, six years of federal work experience, and then the rest was, inside political positions, which we know nothing about. We can't say that it does or does not make her a qualified candidate for the office of governor. And on that note, I'm I'm deeply concerned because during her time as Congress, and she says this in the podcast with Noah, she says that I have solely passed five bills during my years as Congresswoman, all five bills which were then signed by president Donald Trump.
Speaker 3:But being the the congresswoman for District 1 where I got five bills passed and signed into law by president Trump because they were bipartisan bills and...
Abe Baldonado:This appears to be false and here is why. We fact checked. It is misleading. We went to Deb Holland's page on congress.gov and I encourage every single one of you to go do the same because we're not making this up. We did our fact checking.
Abe Baldonado:We went to congress.gov to look at her record and the legislation that she introduced during the one hundred and sixteenth and one hundred and seventeenth Congress, and that was during her term as a congresswoman. And none of her bills went further than being introduced in the Senate. She... There was a couple that were passed in the house, made it over to the Senate, but were never passed by the Senate. And the five bills that she claimed to have went to Donald Trump for signature, there are none of those to be found.
Abe Baldonado:And so the question is, is she taking credit for someone else's work or is she just flat out lying? And that's the difference, you know. And in her conversation, I encourage you to go listen to the Noah podcast, but then also go to congress.gov and look up her legislative record because she states in that podcast, I passed five bills that I introduced, and they were all signed by president Donald Trump. That is not true. There's not five bills to prove on her legislative record.
Abe Baldonado:If there were, they would be on there, and we would tell you, yes, this is true. This is in fact true. She did pass these bills. Now, did she sign on to someone else's bill? Potentially, but that's not her bill, and that's not what she said.
Abe Baldonado:So it is very misleading, and it's very concerning because if this is someone who is going to be governor, well, I don't think we want the person running the 4th Floor of the roundhouse as the person who takes credit for someone else's work. We need someone who leads, who's gonna lead the effort, and who's gonna do right by New Mexico and also be held accountable and hold himself to a high standard to not mislead New Mexicans. And so that was one big takeaway that we had. Greg Hole, Noah asked a lot of tough questions on Greg Hole. A lot of questions that I know resonate with New Mexicans, and one was about ICE.
Abe Baldonado:And Greg Hole had a really good answer and very eloquent said he's all about protecting human rights, and he wants to do the right thing as governor. He wants to collaborate with the attorney general and the Department of Justice in New Mexico to ensure that all agencies are involved in the enforcement process and making sure that individuals are being treated fairly and within the scope of the law. And that is the appropriate leadership that we need. That's just that is the appropriate answer that it's not just, hey, I'm governor, I get to do what I want. No.
Abe Baldonado:There are multiple facets that go into the immigration and customs decisions. There's the courts, there's the attorneys, the the state, the federal government, and he talks about working collaboratively with all of them, not being hostile towards them, but saying, hey, we're gonna work together. I'm also gonna protect New Mexicans. I'm gonna make sure that individuals rights aren't being infringed upon. And that is the right way.
Abe Baldonado:That is due process. That's how it should work. And I I really enjoyed that it wasn't an emotional answer. And Deb was asked about ICE as well. And it comes from a place of emotion.
Abe Baldonado:And and folks, my my viewers, the folks listening in, if you're not subscribers yet to The Chile Wire and you're listening in, all I wanna say is do not vote with emotion because emotion is what has gotten us here. This is why we're so divided because we make every decision on emotion rather than through logic, pragmatism. We need to bring that back. We need common sense. We need to have an actual conversation about the decisions that are being made and not using emotion to drive those.
Abe Baldonado:No one makes good decisions while emotional. That's why they always tell you, hey, cool off, think about it, sleep on it. Right? We all do that as humans because sometimes we could be irrational. If we let emotion drive us, we can make an irrational decision.
Abe Baldonado:And same goes for voting. We shouldn't be voting for people that make us, you know, feel really good or, you know, make us feel very angry and, you know, start driving this divisiveness between us. We need to vote for folks that say, hey, I have the experience, I have solutions, and for the issues that I don't have solutions yet for, I'm willing to have a conversation. I want to sit down with experts. I want to have a conversation with folks.
Abe Baldonado:That's how we should be expecting our leaders to lead and and even our our legislators. We should want all of these individuals to focus on common sense. What is keeping all of us up at night? What is hurting us? Is it crime?
Abe Baldonado:Is it education? Is it health care? Okay. How do we address those issues? Not getting folks angry because they can't get a doctor.
Abe Baldonado:Not getting folks angry because their child's not reading at grade level. No. That emotion doesn't work. And so one thing that I took away is in Deb Holland's appeal, and this probably goes to her Emerge New Mexico training, is that they want to sell you emotion. And I think we agree on a lot of this.
Abe Baldonado:We agree that affordability is a big issue. We need to address cost of living. We need to make life more affordable for New Mexicans and for Americans. A lot of that starts here at home. You know, as I mentioned in previous podcasts, there are legislators right now trying to impose and bring back gas tax increases.
Abe Baldonado:That's not good for you. That's not good for you that the individual that goes to the pump that's already paying a high dollar amount. In New Mexico, I know right now it seems easy to blame Washington and the president for high gas prices. And a lot of what is happening, in The Middle East is contributing to high gas. No doubt about it.
Abe Baldonado:I'm not gonna lie to you there. But I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you that you're also paying more on gas because of a bill that passed a couple of years ago in the Clean Transportation Fuel Act, which now increased gas prices for you at the pump. And that was the decision that was made here in New Mexico. And so again, it's easy to blame Washington. It's easy to blame a person.
Abe Baldonado:But we really have to look at what's happening here in our own backyard. And you know, secretary Holland talked about affordability, she talked about education and Noah asked her, you know, hey, how do we address affordability? And she said, however we can lower prices for people and have more money in their pockets, whether through the working families tax credit and the child tax credit or lowering utility costs. I can agree with lowering utility costs. Yes.
Abe Baldonado:However, the follow-up to her answer on that is a little bit more cloudy. And working families tax credit and child tax credit, they're already there. So I don't know what she means that that's gonna make things more affordable for folks. Folks already have access to those tax credits. So you're...
Abe Baldonado:You can already claim them. So that's nothing new. And she went on to the utility costs and initially I was like, okay, there's a potential solution. How do we lower utility costs? Well, her answer was, well, we need more clean energy.
Abe Baldonado:We need to go net carbon zero. We need to go net zero on carbon emissions, which means no oil and gas and more emphasis on wind and solar energy, and she talked about how New Mexico had plentiful of sun, which we do. The unfortunate reality is is what she's not telling you is that if we solely move to solar or wind energy, it is not enough to meet the demands of New Mexicans across the entire state. Industry professionals will tell you without natural gas and without our natural resources in the oil and gas production, we can't feasibly make energy needs met for Americans. We just can't.
Abe Baldonado:And especially by 2030 or 2050, it's just not feasible. And industry folks will tell you the same thing. So it sounds great, right? Having more wind and solar, yes, but it's not enough to meet the demands. And when it's not enough to meet the demands, that means that you have demand very high and supply very low.
Abe Baldonado:What does that mean y'all? It means higher costs. Supply and demand. So you're not going to lower utility rates by moving straight to clean energy. And in fact, one of the cleanest forms of energy is nuclear, and most folks are opposed to nuclear energy.
Abe Baldonado:We don't... Most people in America would say, no, I don't want a nuclear power plant. But if we're talking about clean energy, nuclear energy is in fact the cleanest form of energy. And so I I thought that part really stuck out, you know. It it was, okay, utility costs.
Abe Baldonado:That's a potential solution. How do we do that? Unfortunately, her solution doesn't work for New Mexicans. It just doesn't. And if she's governor, I'm terrified that if she pushes this hard enough and really pushes out our oil and gas industry and makes it very hard for them to do business, our state will be hurting financially, and we will see rising utility costs.
Abe Baldonado:So it'll actually contradict her statements of lowering utility costs for individuals. It'll actually exacerbate energy poverty. And we need to be very careful that because energy poverty does exist. Luckily in The United States, it's not as prevalent because we are energy independent, and we also use our natural and gas resources in a way that prevents skyrocketing costs. But if you look at Europe and you look at what's happened over there, very tough.
Abe Baldonado:You're you're not going to get your instant, you know, cold air, you know, your central air. You're not going to get your heater kicking on. And those costs rise even more when there's a limited supply of oil and gas. And Europe has felt victim to that because they rely on outside sources for their energy development. Luckily, in America, we don't.
Abe Baldonado:We have a good balance, but we have a very strong Permian Basin. We have a Delaware Basin. We have our San Juan Basin as well. And those are all right here in New Mexico, which is great. So New Mexico is leading on the energy front.
Abe Baldonado:However, there are some deep concerns that with the push of clean energy by the Holland administration, we will make things less affordable for New Mexicans and we have to take that into consideration. Moving back to Greg Hole, talking about energy. Greg Hole provided a lot of solutions and you know data centers were a topic between the two. Deb Holland is not a fan of data centers. She believes in a moratorium versus Greg Hole who said, no, we should have a conversation about where we're planning to install these data centers.
Abe Baldonado:So first off, let me just put this out there. I'm neither pro or against data centers. I'm not endorsing them, I'm not saying we need to proliferate them all across the state of New Mexico. Just my knowledge of Raton, that doesn't seem like a good fit right there, just in that particular area. There was one that was proposed in Socorro.
Abe Baldonado:I don't think that that one was a good fit, you know, just based on just the general area. Yeah. So what do we do to look at areas in the state of New Mexico where these might work, right? And so first off, where would be a good siting location? So I think that that needs to be careful carefully looked at so that when we put regulations in place, go, okay, certain areas we can allow for these to happen and in certain areas we don't.
Abe Baldonado:To his credit, Greg did a good job of highlighting that there are certain regions that don't make sense for having data centers built, like in Raton. He said, that to me doesn't sound like the best fit. And so, Greg Hole is actually looking at things holistically. It's saying, hey, I want to bring businesses to New Mexicans. I...
Abe Baldonado:Data centers play a vital role in our modern way of life. Me talking to you here on this podcast today wouldn't happen without a data center. We wouldn't be able to share this with you all on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X. I mean, all those platforms are emails, are all housed in data centers throughout the country. And Greg talked about the responsible development of data centers, asking important questions, ensuring that we are protecting our environment, that we're protecting our communities, ensuring that we're not tapping into our fresh water resources, and notably, taking advantage of some opportunities that exist.
Abe Baldonado:And having previously worked for the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, I really enjoyed Greg's point that he brought up about produced water and desalination in New Mexico, where we could lead this initiative. It is hitting a bunch of roadblocks, but in a state like ours that lacks a lot of fresh water or oftentimes in serious drought, produced water and the desalination process can play a vital role in meeting our water needs, whether it's for agriculture, consumption, or even opening up data centers or businesses that require water to to function without tapping into our freshwater resources. And there was a company that was built in Orla, Texas, TPL, Texas Pacific Land Cooperation, and they do desalination. And we have to ask, why did they not build in New Mexico? Because New Mexico is not friendly to this business.
Abe Baldonado:And that's unfortunate because they're leading the way in the desalination of water, and they're trying to address New Mexico's needs. Unfortunately, now that it's in Texas, we might have to pay a fee on sending our water over there to be recycled and run through its process to be returned to us, we're probably going to have to buy it back at a premium because it's in another state. And that's unfortunate, but Greg Hole talked about these as solutions that, you know, as we talk about data centers and economic development, you know, we have opportunities here and New Mexico sits on a big piece of brackish water, which I believe, our friend representative Rebecca Dow mentioned that amount of brackish water underneath would fill about 10 elephant buttes. That is a lot of water. And we can use that water.
Abe Baldonado:We can just put it in desalination. We can use it for other purposes. So New Mexico has an opportunity to lead in this. Unfortunately, we're not doing that now. And we're not looking at the development of data centers holistically.
Abe Baldonado:We're not asking the questions. We're not looking at the paperwork of how these businesses are going to operate. We also had micro grid legislation that a lot of the big conversation around data centers, and Deb Holland alluded to this, are increased utility cost. But no one talks about the micro grid legislation that was passed that allows data centers to build their own microgrids, whether it's from solar or natural gas or, wind powered energy. They can provide their own energy resources to power their data center, which means they're not tapping into normal New Mexicans utility costs like you and I, whether through PNM or another regional cooperative, electric cooperative, their...
Abe Baldonado:The utility rates won't go up because they're using so much power. They've actually been given the opportunity to bring their own energy sources to power up their facilities. And that is a discussion that is missing from a lot of the data center talk. And I highly encourage every single one of you to look into it. Look into closed loop systems, you know, learn about how the water is gonna be used.
Abe Baldonado:You know, their desalination efforts can be used to take that water and sell it to data centers. It's a one time fill, they fill it up and they don't have to fill it up again for a number of years. But that protects them from having to ask for fresh water or utilize our fresh water resources. And so I thought that was a very, very... And if you all watch, please do.
Abe Baldonado:But you'll see that mayor Hole geeks out on this. I actually enjoy it. If you're a policy wonk like me, he gets into the weeds on a lot of this stuff. And and that's a good thing. That's something that we should look for.
Abe Baldonado:And someone that's running for office, it's is well versed in these conversations, in these very complex conversations of policy and economic development. He he has the experience. During his time as mayor, he led a lot of recycled water initiatives in Rio Rancho, and he's taken the time to learn more about produced water throughout our state and the opportunities that it can provide us. Another striking comment from Deb Holland's interview with Noah that stuck out to us was her claim that it takes a lot of money to run for office, and this was an answer that she gave in response to Noah's question about the criticisms around a lot of outside money coming to her campaign, not being New Mexicans that are giving to her campaign. And her response was, it takes a lot of money to run for office, and she makes the the claim that New Mexico is the fifth largest state.
Abe Baldonado:It is in land mass, but population is only 2,000,000 in New Mexico. And so I thought that was striking and we did our research because she says that she is proud to say that her campaign is solely grassroots contributions from New Mexicans.
Speaker 3:Second, I I know that, yes, we have been criticized for raising money from out of town, but my average donation is around $25. We're a very grassroots campaign. So that means lots and lots of donors have given... Give 5 and $10 at a time.
Abe Baldonado:That is not true. And we're gonna provide this for you to see just these recent campaign contributions that came in in her first general report. And I encourage you to go back to her previous reports because it doesn't change. These are not New Mexican contributions that are coming in like she claims. And I'm gonna read a couple here for you all.
Abe Baldonado:This was as of September 14. This was the report submitted. And these are the states that are putting money into her campaign. California, Illinois, Las Vegas, Nevada, Phoenix, Arizona, Wayland, Massachusetts, Fountain Hills, Arizona, California again, New York, Henderson, Nevada, Providence, Rhode Island, pretty far from New Mexico, New Hampshire, New York, Delaware, Oregon, Maryland, Virginia. Wow.
Abe Baldonado:Y'all, Colorado Springs. Minnesota. Yeah. Seattle, Washington. I can't make this up y'all.
Abe Baldonado:And you're you're gonna see it. Those of you listening, you may not see it, but if you really want to see this, please go on to YouTube because we will put as we scroll through her campaign finance report, we will show you that these contributions are not small grassroots contributions from New Mexicans. They're out of state interests. Individuals who'd have no stake in the game here, they're not New Mexicans. That should concern every single one of us.
Abe Baldonado:And notably, the big contributions, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Akeem Jeffries, all maxed out. Y'all, that that is not a small grassroots effort by New Mexicans. I I encourage you. I I implore you. We got to bring accountability.
Abe Baldonado:Like, it is unfair for a candidate to make these claims when that is not the truth. I will tell you there are some sprinkled New Mexican contributions here. There are. But they're not primarily New Mexican contributions. They're out of state.
Abe Baldonado:So her claim that they are a grassroots effort by New Mexicans is completely inaccurate. And to say we're taking in money because elections are expensive, well, we also need individuals who have principles. We recently heard her say that she took money from data centers because elections are expensive, but she opposes data centers. That's not principle. You don't take money from something that you disagree with.
Abe Baldonado:And if you do, well then I struggle to believe that you're actually opposed to that organization, that cause, that issue. I, you know, so I I really have to challenge your moral compass if you can take something from someone or something that you do not agree with. That should strike every one of us to say, and again, y'all, I'm not trying to create this bias. This is just straightforward facts that I'm looking at on the claims that Deb Haaland made. And I encourage you to do the same.
Abe Baldonado:If you don't believe that after you look at it and you don't... You still don't believe that, then I respect that. But I encourage you to go look at this. And I think if you did, you you would agree that we should ask a lot more questions here. I wanna go into a little bit.
Abe Baldonado:Noah asked a very good question to Deb Haaland about Jeffrey Epstein. And if you all aren't familiar with this, Deb Haaland was in the flight manifest that took a flight on a plane owned by Jeffrey Epstein and was chartered by Jeffrey Epstein on behalf of Gary King and Deb Haaland who were both running for governor and lieutenant governor. Initially, Deb Holland, and we've put out the video on the Chile Wire, I'm sure we can do it again. Deb Holland initially said, I did not fly on that plane. I'd never flew on that plane.
Abe Baldonado:And then later she says, well, I did fly on the plane. I just didn't know it belonged to Jeffrey Epstein. And that's concerning because you outright said that you did not ever fly on that plane to then switching your stance on, well I did, but I didn't know it was Jeffrey Epstein's plane. And Noah asked the tough question about whether or not she knew that it was being chartered by Epstein, and Noah was on the radio, he'll tell you this. He he looked back at it.
Abe Baldonado:We watched it. Deb Holland becomes very uncomfortable during this conversation. And her eyes began to move rapidly, and she begins to look away constantly as she's trying to frame a response that you can tell she's trying to be very cautious with what she says rather than just speaking the truth. If you just flew on the plane and you didn't know, it should be easy as that. I flew on the plane, Gary King and I were running for governor and lieutenant governor, and we had a flight chartered.
Abe Baldonado:I took the plane. I did not know it was Jeffrey Epstein, period. You should be able to say that and not get uncomfortable because if that is true, then okay, you did nothing wrong. No one is saying that you did anything wrong. There's probably many of people that came across Jeffrey Epstein.
Abe Baldonado:I'm not gonna say that they're a pedophile. We should hold those that are pedophiles accountable. And those who knew about what Jeffrey Epstein was doing, who knew about his behavior should all be held accountable. There is no doubt about that. And miss Holland, if her truth is that she flew on that plane and did not know, that's all you have to say.
Abe Baldonado:Just be truthful. Did you know that it was through his LLC? Did you know that it was his plane? Did you know anything about Epstein at the time? Because most didn't.
Speaker 3:No. Nobody was talking about Epstein back then. But And I was the measly lieutenant governor candidate. The governor candidate was my running mate, Gary King. And he is the one that that arranged for the flight.
Speaker 3:Right. So I went because he asked me to go. And so I did. And so no, I didn't know anything about anything. I went because I was part of the team.
Speaker 3:Right. Right? And so, I mean, my name was on a flight manifest, and it wasn't Jeffrey Epstein's plane. It wasn't... He wasn't on the plane.
Speaker 3:I never
Abe Baldonado:threw his
Speaker 3:flight there. Met him. I've never emailed or texted or seen him in person. I've never spoken to him on the... It's...
Speaker 3:I just don't know. I've never even knew him or knew of him, quite frankly, because people weren't necessarily talking about him back then. When
Abe Baldonado:you become very uncomfortable and when your track record shows you going back and forth on this issue, it raises a lot of lot of eyebrows. And it raises my eyebrows because I do not like liars. And that was one thing Noah and I talked about is when we look at candidates, we don't like people who lie. Just don't lie. We're not gonna hold it against you that you got on a flight that you had no idea how it was chartered, but you hopped on the plane because you're running for governor and you got on it.
Abe Baldonado:But when you say I never flew on that plane to then walking it back and saying, well, I did fly on it. I just didn't know. It seems like you're trying to cover something up and you realize that you're not gonna be able to cover it up. So you try to backtrack and you say, well, did, but I didn't know. I have to believe you may have known.
Abe Baldonado:And I encourage every single one of you to look at that question. It's towards the end of Noah's podcast with Deb Holland. She gets very, very uncomfortable. And when... Obviously, you know, most of the time we can tell when people are not being very sincere with us.
Abe Baldonado:You all know it. You all know when you're having conversations with folks, you know that they're not giving it to you straight. It feels like one of those moments where she is very worried about the question and really overthinking what she has said before, which is concerning. Why are you overthinking something that you've already said your piece on? And so definitely got to ask some questions, but we also have to realize Deb Haaland was state party chair for the Democratic Party of New Mexico, an organization that is well known to have ties to donations from Epstein in New Mexico.
Abe Baldonado:That is well known. Jeffrey Epstein gave financial contributions in the state of New Mexico to Democrats. And so as state party chair, I'd find it very hard to believe that you just unknowingly did not know anything whatsoever. And you may not have known about what he was doing in his private life. You at least knew who he was, and you knew he was contributing money to candidates and issues here in New Mexico.
Abe Baldonado:So to say you didn't even know the name, I find it very hard to believe that you didn't know the name with large contributions and money that was flowing in from Epstein into New Mexico. And so, y'all, we we just have to... We really have to seek integrity from our candidates. We need integrity from from our candidates, and we need to ensure that they're they're being upfront with us. Because if they're not upfront with us now, they're not gonna be upfront with us when they're governor.
Abe Baldonado:And that goes for both sides. So we really have to ask the tough questions. We have to look at it, and we have to see, does this pass the smell test? And I'll tell you, that question by Noah, I don't think it passed his smell test. It didn't pass mine certainly.
Abe Baldonado:And looking back at it now, you you just see that conversation changed. And and luckily for Noah, he got to the end of that podcast with that question. So New Mexico, you have a choice to make. You have a choice to make. We're probably not gonna see these individuals debate as you all head to the polls, whether through early voting or on election day.
Abe Baldonado:I encourage you to look at every resource out there, whether it's Noah's podcast to learn more about each of the candidates, see how they answer tough questions, even questions on some of their track record that has either been favorable or unfavorable. I I would encourage you to find other clips, resources, that show who these candidates really are and look up their records and do your research. You know, today's podcast was just to give you some insights from takeaways that we saw here in our observation of Noah's podcast with both candidates, and we wanted to share them with you because some of the things really stood out. But what stands out to you? Because that's what really matters.
Abe Baldonado:We're not gonna tell you how to vote here. I'm not gonna tell you how to vote. I want you to make your own well informed decision, but that is the most important thing. I want you to make a well informed decision, and that's why I wanted to share some thoughts with you today on The Chile Wire about what I observed on both of these candidates and things that really stuck out to me, qualities that we should be looking for in our next governor, opportunities to lead. And I believe between Noah's work with both of these candidates and his podcast and some of the other resources are...
Abe Baldonado:That are out there, I believe you can come to your conclusion on where you think New Mexico is best fit to to move in a new direction and what direction that will be. And it's up to you, the voter. It's up to me as a voter. And it is our responsibility to find out every detail about each of these candidates before we make the decision. As I said earlier, don't make this decision on emotion.
Abe Baldonado:Don't make it because you like one person or you dislike one person because that's not a reason to vote for someone who could potentially hurt New Mexico or set New Mexico back. And so you really have to look at these track records. You really have to ask tough questions, and you really have to do some soul searching on who you believe can really lead New Mexico and our future, and where this state goes. We we have an opportunity here to to do that. We have an opportunity for change.
Abe Baldonado:We have an opportunity for accountability. It's up to us to make that happen. And so please, if it's anything that I ask of you all, just do the research, do your due diligence, ask questions, reach out to us. If you need to be pointed in a direction that you're trying to find information, we're happy to share share it with you if we know where it's at as well. If there's something that we can point you to to to take a look at so you can make a well informed decision, we're happy to do that as well.
Abe Baldonado:You can DM us on our social pages. We will get back to you. We'll share as much information as we can, and that's what we're doing today. We're sharing Noah's podcast. We're sharing information with you from hearing from the candidates themselves.
Abe Baldonado:Words straight out of their mouth and what they said and just the the contrast of each of those candidates and their vision for New Mexico. And so with that, y'all, I appreciate you all tuning in to The Chile Wire. If you're not subscribed, please subscribe. Follow... Hit that follow button.
Abe Baldonado:Follow us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Facebook. We're happy to keep you all informed. We're happy to answer any questions. And again, we just want New Mexico to be the state that we know it can be, and that is a wonderful state. And we have a wonderful culture, we have a wonderful history, and no doubt that it can get better.
Abe Baldonado:But it starts with each one of us using our civic duty, our privilege to go out and vote on November 3. So if you plan to vote, please do so. Do it early, do it on election day, but just get out there, find a time to vote. There are opportunities for you to vote early. If you can't get off election day and make it to the poll, you can go anytime here pretty soon.
Abe Baldonado:Believe at the end of this week, early voting opens up. So there are opportunities for you to find a day to find your local polling center and go by and and cast your ballot for New Mexico's future. And so with that y'all, we're gonna get back to our normal routine. We just thought we'd do something a little different this week to break down some new information that we saw as we get closer to election day. And so just remember, your vote matters.
Abe Baldonado:Get out and vote and do your due diligence and tune in to The Chile Wire. We'll see you next time.