The Chile Wire with Abe Baldonado. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Chile Wire. We are live in Santa Fe today with my good friend, senator Crystal Brantley. Senator, thank you for joining us on The Chile Wire today.

You, Abe.

Likewise. Well, senator, on The Chile Wire, we always have to ask our guests, red or green? And I have a hunch I'm already gonna know what you're gonna say based on your district.

Yeah. I'm a red. I'm a red. Interesting.

I thought you were gonna be

I have some really funny during, campaign season, it says eat green, vote red. But the truth is I am a red chili fan.

Alright. Good to know. I thought she was gonna side with green chili, so I really did. Senator, thank you for your time. I know today is a busy day.

Clear Horizons, I wanna start off there. That is being heard today in your chamber. Can you give us a rundown on that bill? And it seems like it's gonna have severe consequences if this thing gets to the governor's desk.

It is. Our caucus and the senate Republicans have identified that as the most threatening bill of the session. And so it is the overreach and the restrictions far exceeds just oil and gas. I think some people are thinking that's the only industry that it would regulate. It's going to go into everything from agriculture, which you know is important to my district.

And it goes on and on, and I think there's just such a disconnect of the intent of what they're trying to do, and what will really happen. And it's gonna move business out of New Mexico, and not just small business. Big business will move out of New Mexico. And so that really is the bill that our senate Republicans have died, you know, decided that we're gonna fall on the sword over. There is a call of the senate that is currently on right now, and what that does is it prevents business from happening until all senators return to the chamber.

That's still in effect. We'll see how today plays out, but the next item on the agenda is Clear Horizons. So gonna be headed into the roundhouse today and certainly up against some sort of of pretty big fight today.

Absolutely. And we'll be tuning into that today as well. And senator, it seems like, you know, I I listened into the senate tax and business committee over the weekend, and I saw a few notable democrats, senator Leo Jaramillo. He voted for the bill, and ultimately, he said the stationary language that was added into the clear horizons wouldn't affect electric co ops, specifically rural electric co ops, which mainly are in his district in Ria Riba County. You have the Jemez Mountain, rural electric co op.

You know, I think it's it was wrong because the the sponsor of the bill, senator Mimi Stewart, said it wouldn't affect those folks. And it will because I think the honest conversation that wasn't had was where do our electric co ops derive their energy from? It's not solar or wind, it's oil and gas. So if you take out oil and gas from the state of New Mexico, costs are gonna rise for the rural electric co ops to generate electricity from other states. And now, like you said, you're moving business to other states.

It's it's absolutely, miss a lot of mistruths about what this bill will actually do, and it's unfortunate that sponsors and even some senators can just throw out, you know, some of these claims that is just not correct. I'll tell you, equally disturbing, you mentioned clear horizons and how someone can try to justify a yes vote. We also just got through sending the worst gun bill through the New Mexico senate. Right? SB 17, clearly a violation of the second amendment.

Right? And in fact, so many democrats know it, they actually referenced that. Actually said, I think this has some constitutionality issues. I think this will be overturned in court. And then took a yes vote.

Yes vote. Yeah.

Can you how do you reconcile that? When we are we take an oath, we are sworn to protect the constitution to acknowledge that we recognize that this is in direct violation of it, and then take a yes vote. I just I can't wrap my head around it.

Well, and for me, it it really undermines the duty as a public servant to your constituents. Like, you literally undermine your constituents by saying, hey. You know what? I'm gonna vote to break the law here. I'm gonna vote to go against the constitution.

Even though I agree it's unconstitutional and senator Joe Cervantes was one of those votes, in his judiciary committee admittingly saying, yeah, I do think it's unconstitutional, but, yes, I vote for it to pass on. And I gotta believe that has to be the hypocrisy that frustrates New Mexicans about politics in our state. The corruption and just the flat out gaslighting and lies in front of our face, and and hopefully, New Mexicans can see that. And that's why here at the Chili Wire, we have these conversations because I think a lot of people are just assuming that their legislator is doing the best they can here in Santa Fe and not really paying attention to the things that they're saying and the things that they're doing and the bills that they're sponsoring.

Absolutely. And the political canes happen. We're talking specifically about the gun bill and senate judiciary and the chairman who, one, has a lot of power because chairmans can determine the agenda set in that committee. Quite frankly, they can decide that a bill is so egregious that they're not even gonna hear it in their committee. So not only was the bill put on the agenda, but for him to take a yes vote was so disappointed because the very next day on the floor

He votes no.

He votes no, so he can go back to his constituents and say, no, I I went up there and fought for your second amendment. The reason it got out of his committee is with his support.

Yeah.

And so these are the political games, and I think it's why people are so turned off on politics these And

and for me, it's just thinking this bill could have been long gone. It could have been killed in senate judiciary. Mhmm. And you wouldn't be having to debate it on the senate floor and it moving over to the house and potentially to the governor's desk. And quite frankly, a waste of taxpayer dollars is what I think a lot of people don't understand is that it's you New Mexico, it's you New Mexicans they're gonna pay for this lawsuit.

They're gonna pay for it. And you know what? These radical Democrats have a history of passing unconstitutional bills and they're getting turned over in court. We just saw this with the seven day wait. There is no doubt in my mind the same thing's gonna happen with this gun bill.

And you're right, it comes to it at a cost to New Mexico taxpayers who are gonna pay for that court battle, and in the meantime they operate in this state of limbo, where the courts are saying that's unjust and unconstitutional, but your elected lawmakers are passing these unconstitutional bills and no one really knows what laws. Who does it impact? It impacts those who want to be law abiding citizens. Which brings me to crime. Yeah.

Because as you know, we're in a budget session, but the governor has the authority to make calls, and she identified public safety as being a concern. We came up here, she's teamed up with a number of Republicans to pass some real meaningful public safety bills and they're not really going anywhere. And so instead we have something like this gun bill, which isn't gonna do a darn thing to push back on public safety.

Your colleague, Senator Jim Townsend brought that up. He asked the, experts behind the bill. What does this gonna do? Does this stop crime? Does this stop, criminals from doing what they're gonna do?

No. It hurts the the folks who are law abiding, trying to

protect the law.

And and also the local mom and pop stores that, you know, are the local gun dealers in town. And let's be honest, like show us the proof that criminals are getting their guns from law abiding gun dealers.

It's not happening.

Not a splash market.

What it is, is lawmakers are taking the easy route this session and it is a lot easier to target law abiding citizens than it is to hold the unlawful accountable. And they're not willing to come up here and put in the hard work, so they're going to target the easiest way out to say that we did something And really what we're looking at is just political theater.

Yeah. Well, and it seems like it seems like trial lawyers have a big influence on not only crime, but medical malpractice and a lot of the issues in both chambers. Seems like trial attorneys are behind a lot of these facets of legislation because, looking at some of the details that I pulled, the committee, of individual responsibility, trial attorney backed PAC seems to be supporting a lot of these legislators who are voting, with criminals and not victims and supporting trial attorneys over doctors and, you know, we're losing doctors and not to transition too fast, but medical malpractice was a big issue coming here. Yes, we had the medical compacts go through. That's one component, but it doesn't fix everything.

It's a band aid because the reality is even if you open up the compacts and what that does is it allows out of state doctors to practice in New Mexico, With our medical malpractice environment, they're not going to want to. They'll get their pantsuit off of them in this environment. And you're right, so the trial attorneys have a chokehold on New Mexico lawmakers up here. There's a lot of them that are trial attorneys themselves. I would argue that their vote, that their positions and even carrying some of this legislation, not just voting on it, actually carrying some of this legislation is clearly a violation of their ethical duties.

I mean, feel like they should have to recuse themselves on this vote. Making millions and millions of doctors. Some of the lawmakers here are practicing trial attorneys that sue doctors. That's what they do. They sue doctors and they sue hospitals.

Do you think they're going to vote on legislation that's going to impact their pocketbook? Heck no.

Absolutely not. I mean, it's a way for them to make a lot of money.

A lot of

money. Bankrupt hospitals, bankrupt doctors, go after

And that's what's happening.

Their personal assets. And it is happening. And Sender, you're from rural New Mexico and I'd just love for you to give us a glimpse of what it's like in rural New Mexico for access to health care because I think a lot of people assume, hey, you're in Albuquerque. Yeah. You have access to multiple hospitals, but rural New Mexico really seems to feel the impacts of this type of bad policy.

Even more, I mean, you have to recognize that in Albuquerque, if it's hard enough for you to get a doctor and it's taking months to get in to see some sort of specialist, In rural New Mexico, we're traveling four hours to get to Albuquerque, right? Have the furthest Southwest seven corners of the Southwest Corner. They're already traveling four or five hours to get in. It's because there are no specialists and no doctors out there in rural New Mexico. The reality is, just like most New Mexicans, they're having to travel to Texas or Arizona to go across state lines to try to find doctors, and that's unfortunate.

Especially because there are meaningful policies we can pass today that would start fixing

Yeah.

And the number one thing is to reform medical malpractice. It doesn't look like democrat lawmakers are going to let that happen this session.

Yeah. It looks like the house rolled over house bill 99 again last night.

It's not going to get done. We're running out of time. It's not going to get Now the governor has indicated she has an appetite to call a special session for that. As a Republican, I will tell you we stand ready to join her up here if she wants to call a special session to get it done, but I'm not optimistic that the Democrats will do it. She called a special session last year for public safety, and Democrat lawmakers refused to to engage and to take part of that.

I expect that they may have the same sort of response to medical malpractice.

Yeah. It it it's very unfortunate. And Senator to shift gears, you've been a longtime advocate for children. You've been the voice in the roundhouse. We see what's happening to children across our state.

You've introduced some accountability bills on CYFD. I know they haven't gotten messages because it is a budget session, but how important is it for not only your colleagues in the roundhouse to look at this, but also for New Mexicans to ensure that our children are protected and they're safe? Unfortunately, New Mexico has been ranked dead last in child well-being and a place to raise a family, and it seems like your legislation and your advocacy for children, a lot of these policies that you've been for would actually help families and actually help protect children.

You know, in recent years, we've had some wins, but they're not enough. They're minor wins. I think that history will show in hindsight when we look over this governor's administration that her greatest failure was what's happened with NCYFD. There's been a revolving doors of cabinet secretaries. I think we're on our sixth right now.

None of them are qualified to be in that position. The reality is we are the worst in the nation in child well-being and repeat maltreatment that's happening, and a lot of that is because of the broken policies within a broken agency itself. And some of the stories coming out of there are just disgusting. The state, CYFD, is the problem in a lot of these cases. So you have New Mexico's most vulnerable population is not just being, you know, abused by their perpetrator and their abuser, but it's frankly abused what the state's doing by not coming in when frankly we can pass laws that would have meaningful differences.

We've made some good measures. Look, last year we created the Office of the Child Advocate. It's a bill that I'd carried for four or five years, and it's not my brainchild. This advocated by representative Rebecca Dow, representative Kelly Fajardo, who's no longer legislator, a long line of lawmakers who've been fighting for that. This is what it comes down to.

Until that agency recognizes that the best interest of the child has to govern their mission, and I have a bill that does that, Until they recognize that, nothing will change. Because right now CYFD's mission is focused on reunification with biological parents at all costs. We know, and you can read headlines, that often it is those biological parents that are creating the harm and doing the harm, And if their mission is to immediately try to reconnect them with those biological parents at all costs, instead of considering, this is easy, this is the easy stuff, what's in the best interest of the child? And just those short words, they will not adopt as a mission statement to make sure that they're considering that. And until we put kids first, they're gonna be, kids are gonna continue to be last.

Absolutely, it's so unfortunate given the issues in our state with our education rankings and just, you know, it seems like children often tend to lose in our state and

They tend to lose. I'll tell you one big win. What we have right now is last year I passed Senate Bill 11 and what that did, it was a message to our school districts that we recognize the dangers of cell phone use among teenagers. So at that point, it was a strong recommendation that we advised districts to adopt policy. They had to have some sort of policy, although we didn't tell them exactly what it needed to look like.

A number of school districts have adopted phone free classrooms, and we have seen nationwide what that means. It's improved outcomes, not just in academics, but in social interactions face to face, especially when it comes to mental health of teenage girls and teenage boys, the reality is it's not the phone itself, but it's these social media apps that they continue

to spend.

Absolutely. The average teenager spending six hours a day on the phone. Wow. So if we could get them to disconnect during the classroom hours, that was the intent. Well, still have a lot of districts that decided not to do anything and adopt any sort of policy, so I have teamed up with the governor this time, we're coming back.

It is a mandate that they have to adopt a phone free school, because what we've seen is, and I hate mandates, right? I hate telling local but our districts who are refusing to adopt best practices are the ones who aren't seeing advancements. And so we're coming in and we are saying, look, this is a proven best practice. We've seen it in a lot of red states. Sarah Huckabee Sanders down in Arkansas led this.

Texas just adopted this policy. But going to phone free zones in our schools is exactly where we need to be. So I'm happy and think we're gonna get that done this session. So a little bit of good news. I do have a couple bills that will help our law enforcement coming through with mainly training procedures.

Think that we'll have some success there. But you know, Gabe, on the big picture, we're not doing enough. We are failing New Mexicans because we can come up here and actually come in here and do the people's work and get some good stuff, and what we see is a lot of stall tactics. They're not addressing the big headline stuff that will have real impacts for all New Mexicans, and so overall, I would give this legislative session about a d minus. Yeah.

Right? We're gonna get a couple things through, but surely not anything that's gonna have meaningful impact. After

last night, I would even go on another level and say, it might be an f when I saw some Democrats vote against aggravated battery on a police officer.

No.

Yeah. 11 Democrats voted against legislation that protects officers from aggravated battery.

That has

to be a house bill.

That is a common sense bill. So I I hope that it can I hope it can survive some of those democrat attacks and get over to the senate?

Yeah. It's coming over to you all. It did pass.

Thankfully.

But I was shocked to see 11 democrats vote against a bill that just protects off common sense protects officers. How

terrible. You know, this is my sixth legislative session. At the end of my very first legislative session, I got a phone call notifying me about the murder of, state police officer Darian Jarrett, had just been murdered in the line duty. I received another call years later about Las Cruces police officer Jonah Hernandez who had been murdered in the line of duty. And on the final night of last year's session, I received a terrifying call, a courtesy call that there was a mass shooting that was taking place at Young Park where we had youth offenders killing youth victims.

And and then to hear this, right? Our law enforcement are the guardians and it's all we have left in a state of chaos. Yeah. We are in a criminal chaos state right now because we refuse to hold these children and repeat offenders accountable. In all of those cases, each one of those perpetrators had a long list of violent violent crimes that they were never held accountable for until it escalates to first degree murder.

Right? Or the murder of of a number of young teenagers in a park. Why are we not willing to come in and step in to assist our law enforcement officers? They are bringing us policy before us saying this is what will have impacts on crime. This is how we will make our streets safer.

And we thumb our nose and we do something that we're not even gonna acknowledge that when they get battered on the street that we care and we're gonna increase penalties. I just don't it's so disheartening for our law enforcement that not only are we gonna see this max exodus of doctors, but who wants to be a law enforcement agency, or agent in New Mexico when we refuse to do anything to target criminals and we're not protecting the law enforcement officers?

Well, and going back a few years ago to the Civil Rights Act, right, that targeted police officers, stripping away qualified immunity and just there's no incentive for I mean, the world that we live in now, we villainized peace officers and it's so unfortunate that we've villainized them because they're the first ones that we call when we need protection and we need safety or we have an issue going on. They're the first line of defense that people tend to call to and we've now had groups of individuals trying to tell you that they're the bad guys.

That they're the bad guys. Not only are we are you pushing off law enforcement, but at the same time, we're over here disarming our citizens and telling them they can't have certain certain sorts of weapons or or firearms. I mean, I think people need to wake up. I think they need to rise up, and they need to engage in the legislative process. I think they need to take very close attention to these votes that are happening both in committee and on floor votes.

And I hope that the votes that are taken here in Santa Fe are reflected by the people when they go to vote in November because it's the only way things are gonna change.

Absolutely. And senator, to wrap up, I I know you have another bill targeting waste, fraud, and abuse. I think a lot of people in New Mexico say that doesn't happen here, but we've seen some of the highest error rates in snap funding and snap payments. And you've introduced a bill. I know it hasn't gotten a message, but how important is it for us to address that?

I I was shocked at the LFC report. It was released quietly and now I know why because over the last decade, we've seen it skyrocket to how much money has been

Everybody is apparently on Snap. We know that fraud is the largest in the nation. It's estimated at 15% right now with fraud, waste, and abuse on the error rate for Snap. I think we can agree on this. No hungry New Mexican needs to go unfed.

Right. And we are committed to making sure that our children, and our elderly, and our hardworking are getting fed and receiving the meals that they need. What we don't like is to find out that someone who does not qualify by any means is receiving these SNAP benefits at the cost of other taxpayers who are working hard for that. To see such a pushback to just wanna make sure that we clean up those records and make sure that those who deserve it most are the ones getting it, I don't understand either, because what's happening is those who need it most are not getting it because there's such a large level of those who are abusing this system. It's very easy to wanna come in and just wanna clean that up, and to make sure that those who deserve it are the ones who are benefiting from the

Absolutely. Like anything else, we should have guardrails to protect the most vulnerable, the people who need it. And, senator, just wanna thank you for that. And we know you gotta go because you have some bills, on deck this morning, but we wanna thank you at the Chile Wire for being an advocate, for being a voice here in Santa Fe, and speaking out for rural New Mexico, and we wanna thank you for coming on the Chile Wire.

I'm happy to carry the fight. Thanks for your help and getting the messages out.

Thank you, senator, and may God bless, and may God bless you for the next two weeks because I'm sure it's gonna get pretty fast moving.

It is. It is. And God bless New Mexico. Here to make sure that this state is all that it can be.

Absolutely. Well, y'all, that's it for the Chile Wire this week. We'll see you next time.