ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: SENATE? HOUSE?

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Oct. 21, 2004

State Sen. Joe Carraro, R-Albuquerque, thought he had a safe glide to election day with no opponent in his re-election bid for his Senate District 23 seat.

Or so he thought.

This week Carraro found a political postcard in his mailbox that gave him a start.

It was from New Mexico Progressive Action, a liberal PAC, seeking votes for Democrat Janice Kando for Senate District 23.

“All these people kept calling me up saying, ‘Joe, you need any help in the campaign,’ “ Carraro said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “I kept telling them I was unopposed, but they said they thought I had an opponent.”

Carraro said after he got the postcard he called the state Bureau of Elections just to make sure.

In reality, Kando, a family physician with a Corrales address, is running for the seat in House District 23, against Republican incumbent Rep. Eric Youngberg.

Carraro said he’s not sure whether Kando or her supporters actually thought she was running against him.

Apparently that’s not the case. Though Kando couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday, her website makes it clear she’s running for the House. “NM House District 23” is even part of her campaign logo.

David Duhigg, treasurer of New Mexico Progressive Action, whose name appeared on the cards, couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.

Easy races

Carraro said that while it’s good not to have to worry about campaigning he almost wishes he did have an opponent. “I’m going to win, but I’m not going to beat my record,” Carraro said. That record was in 2000 when Carraro won 83 percent of the vote against a Libertarian opponent in the general election.

Actually the state legislative races could use a lot more competition. This year 25 of the 42 Senate seats have only one candidate running. There are 13 unopposed Republican senators and 12 unopposed Democrats. And despite rumors to the contrary, not all of those are running for Senate president pro tem.

This is up from 19 races with only one name on the ballot in 2000.

It’s a similar picture on the House side where 43 of the 70 seats are uncontested this year. Twenty five of those are Democrats while 18 are Republicans.

Poll dancing

Because of an agreement with Mason-Dixon Polling and Research, MSNBC and Knight-Ridder newspapers, we can’t tell you the result of the latest New Mexican/KOB-TV poll on the presidential race until Friday’s paper.

But in the meantime, for the benefit of all you poll junkies out there, another statewide poll of New Mexico voters was released Wednesday.

American Research, Inc., an independent firm based in New Hampshire, shows Sen. John Kerry at 48 percent to President Bush’s 46 percent. Ralph Nader has one percent in this poll, while five percent are undecided.

Although Kerry has a slight edge, it is well within the 4 percent margin of error.

The bad news for Kerry is that he was up by five percent in the AMG New Mexico poll a month ago and ahead by seven points two months ago.

AMG polled 600 likely voters in the state. Interviews were conducted Saturday through Monday.

LIBERALS WALK AMONG US

A version of this story was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Oct. 20, 2004

When the Kerry campaign announced this week that their candidate would be appearing in Las Cruces, the state Bush campaign responded with an e-mail statement from spokesman Danny Diaz that began, "John Kerry's attempt to run from his liberal record is taking him to Las Cruces this weekend."

The prominent use of the word "liberal" is consistent with a tried-and-true Republican strategy. In the final debate between President Bush and Kerry last week, Bush repeatedly used the "L-word" to hammer Kerry.

And of course the word "liberal" is used quite liberally in Republican political commercials, which have been bombarding New Mexico and other swing states this year. (The recently released report of the Nielsen Monitor-Plus and The University of Wisconsin Advertising Project shows Albuquerque to be the number two market in the United States for campaign ads, second only to Miami, Fla. during the period of September 24 - October 7.)

References such as "John Kerry and the liberals in Congress" are aired constantly here in an attempt to persuade voters to reject Kerry.

Syndicated columnist Robert Sheer recently wrote a piece that said, "I like liberals. They gave us the five-day workweek; ended child labor; invented unemployment insurance, Social Security and Medicare; and led us, despite fierce opposition from 'America First' pseudo-patriots on the political right, to victory over fascism in World War II. Liberals also ended racial segregation and gave women the vote."

However, a new poll for The New Mexican and KOB-TV illustrate why Kerry and other Democrats don't try to reclaim the word liberal as something positive. The poll shows that the "liberal" label hurts far more than it helps.

Mason-Dixon Polling and Research of Washington, D.C. asked 625 likely voters statewide last week, "If a candidate describes themselves as "liberal", does that make you more likely to vote for them, less likely to vote for them, or do such labels have no real effect on your vote?"

Twenty eight percent said they would be less likely to vote for a self-described liberal. Only seven percent said they would be more likely to vote for an admitted liberal. Of the remaining voters, 62 percent said there would be no effect, while 3 percent said they were unsure.

The results were predictable among supporters of Bush and Kerry. Of the Bush supporters, 53 percent said the liberal label would make them less likely to vote for a candidate while none said it would make them more likely. Of the Kerry supporters, 17 percent said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate calling himself "liberal," while only one percent said less likely."

Undecided voters - who are the target audience for all the campaign ads - tend not to like the description of liberal. None said they'd be more likely to vote for a self-described liberal, while 22 percent said it would make them less likely to vote for such a candidate.

Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that "liberal" in the past 35 years or so, has become a "radioactive" word.

"I believe it's a reaction to the excesses of the '60s," Sabato said. "It was the era of riots, assassinations, Vietnam, overspending. It's a reaction against the attitude that if we throw enough money at a problem we'll solve it."

Sabato said the word has been poison since about 1968.

New Mexico pollster Brian Sanderoff, in an interview Tuesday, said that 1968 might be the last time any presidential used the word in a positive way.

Sanderoff, who operates Research and Polling Inc. of Albuquerque, said that Hubert Humphrey, running for president that year against Richard Nixon, had a commercial that had a man-in-the-street saying Humphrey was "a good liberal man."

Sanderoff said when Republicans repeatedly use the word "liberal" to tarnish an opponent, they are playing directly to conservative-to-moderate Democrats and independents.

"New Mexico has 32 percent Republicans and 51 percent Democrats," he said. To win, Republican candidates must appeal to "Anglo moderate to conservative Democrats. That's who really decides elections in this state."

Albuquerque consultant Doug Turner - who has worked for several Republican campaigns including that of former Gov. Gary Johnson - said Tuesday that Republican candidates label their opponents as "liberals" to appeal to a more conservative base.

"Republicans have spent a lot of energy drawing negative associations to that word," Turner said. "People have to put their views and perspectives into 30-second spots and drive it over again and again and again."

Turner is not currently working for any campaigns. His business now concentrates on corporate public relations.

Turner, Sanderoff and Sabato agreed that Democrats haven't been successful at making "conservative" a charged word.

"Many Hispanics, who always vote Democrat describe themselves as 'conservative,' Sanderoff said. "And they are on many social issues."

However some Democrat ads use the description "right-wing" to describe their conservative opponents. " 'Right-wing' means 'extreme,' out of the mainstream," Sabato said.

"Democrats will point out that their Republican opponents 'always vote with the Republican leadership,' "

Sanderoff said. "That's an appeal to those conservative-to-moderate Democrats. It's telling them, 'You don't want someone who votes with the Republican leadership all the time.' "

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAY LIST

Sunday, Oct. 17, 2004
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Now Webcasting
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays MDT
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
I'm in Love Again by Fats Domino
Get Ready For Love by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Starry Eyes by Roky Erikson with Luanne Barton
More of You by The Fleshtones
Where Were You by The Mekons
Puddin' Truck by NRBQ
You're My Girl by Neil Young
Mr. Soul by Buffalo Springfield

My Name is Mud by Primus
One Reporter's Opinion by The Minutemen
That Gum You Like Is Back in Style by Camper Van Beethoven
A Love Supreme by The Twilight Singers
Drugs (Electricity) by The Talking Heads
Sentimental Marching Song by Sally Timms
All in a Day by Joe Strummer
Hornet's Heart by Thinking Fellers Union Local 282

Waitin' For Waits by Richie Cole
Don't Go Into That Barn by Tom Waits
Murder in the Red Barn by John Hammond
Heart Attack and Vine by Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Way Down in the Hole by The Blind Boys of Alabama
Dead and Lovely by Tom Waits

Patriot's Heart by American Music Club
Demons and Fiends by Robyn Hitchcock
Step Into the Light by Mavis Staples
Not Alone Anymore by The Traveling Wilburys
Wind Chimes by Brian Wilson
Carrickfergus by Van Morrison & The Chieftains
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAY LIST

The Santa Fe Opry
Friday, October 15, 2004
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Now Webcasting:
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays MDT
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Lower 48 by The Gourds
Cussin' in Tongues by The Legendary Shack Shakers
Why You Always Cheatin' On Me? by Nancy Apple

Nancy Apple Live Set

Bears in the Woods
My Boyfriend
Table For Two, Dinner For One
Angel Cried
Pride
You're the Reason
Shoulda Lied About That
Fruit of the Vine
Truck Driver's Woman

Midnight Rodeo by Cordell Jackson
Honey Do by John Fogerty
Honey Don't by The Beatles
Home to Houston by Steve Earle
Tuskegee Pride by Jason Ringenberg
Let's Live Together by Robbie Fulks
I Don't Care If The Sun Don't Shine by Elvis Presley
Next Stop Santa Fe by Sid Hausman & Washtub Jerry
Wrong by Splitlip Rayfield

Town by The Dashboard Saviors
Music Man by Hank & Nancy Webster
Two Seconds by Laura Cantrell
Somewhere in My Heart by The Volebeats
I'm Falling in Love Again by Willie Nelson
Sold American by Kinky Friedman
Jacob's Ladder by Greg Brown
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

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TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: WORTH THE WAITS

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
October 15, 2004


Real Gone is Tom Waits’ roughest, most grating and most out-there albums since -- well, maybe this one is his roughest, most grating and most out-there album ever.

Starting out with a crazed, five-minute human beat-box, clunky, funky out-Becking Beck nonsense workout called “Top of the Hill”, which hands off the baton to a gritty Latin-flavored tune called “Hoist That Rag,” which sounds like he’s fronting Giant Sand trying to be Santana, Waits lets us listeners know that we’re in for a crazy ride.

The very title recalls Elvis’ challenge to his band after the false start of “Mystery Train”: “Hold it fellas, that don’t move. Let’s get real, real gone for a change.”

So Waits gets more gone than Elvis ever imagined.

But even though Real Gone may be something of an acquired taste for a casual Waits fan, and even takes a little time to warm up to for Waits zealots like myself, this album is definitely worth the time and effort. While its charms aren’t as obvious as those of Mule Variations or Frank’s Wild Years, Real Gone is an amazing piece of work.

Some of Waits’ best musical collaborators play here. Guitarist Marc Ribot, who helped Waits redefine his sound in the mid ‘80s, returns here. Les Claypool of Primus plays bass on a few cuts, though most of those duties are covered by Larry “The Mole” Taylor (a founding member of Canned Heat). Waits’ wife Kathleen Brennan co-wrote the songs (I still say she’s the anti-Yoko, because Waits’ work improved after she started collaborating with him) and their son Casey plays turntables and drums.

As for Waits, he sings (as well as, grumbling, mumbling, scatting and sometimes screaming,) he plays guitar, he creates percussion tracks with vocal loops, and on a spoken-word recitation called “Circus” he plays the chamberlain.

But he doesn’t play piano. In fact this is the first album he’s ever made where he doesn’t touch the piano. Back in the ‘70s he told us “The Piano Has Been Drinking." Maybe now the piano’s in rehab. At any rate, it’s a radical departure for a musician who first became famous playing piano with a beatniked-up cocktail jazz sound.

Real Gone, for the most part has two basic styles. There are noise songs like “Top of the Hill,” “Metropolitan Glide” and the 46-second post-modern chain chant “Clang Boom Steam”

And there’s songs that might be described as blues noir/grainy art-house torch tunes. These are my favorites.

They include the 10-minute “Sins of My Father.” Some complain it‘s too long, but the length just becomes part of its captivating hypnotic power.

There’s “Dead and Lovely,” a classic Waits cautionary tale of a good girl who falls in with a bad, bad dude. The title tells you it ends tragically.

“Make It Rain” starts out with a blues cliché, but Waits is well aware that this road has been traveled. “She took all my money and my best friend/You know the story/Here it comes again.”

One of the scariest tunes Waits has ever done is “Don’t Go Into That Barn.” Could this be a continuation of the story he first told more than a decade ago in “Murder in the Red Barn”?

In a chilling call and response between evil-doers, (with Waits calling as well as responding), the signer growls “Did you bury your fire? /Yes, sir!/ Did you cover your tracks?/ Yes, sir!/ Did you clean your knife?/ Yes, sir!/ Did they see your face?/ No sir!/ Did the moon see you?/ No sir!

Some tunes are an unholy cross between noise tracks and raunchy blues. Such is “Shake It,” in which both Ribot and Taylor play guitar while Claypool’s bass rumbles and Waits wails "like a preacher waving a gun around.”

Most of the album has an otherworldly feel about it. Te sound quality is almost tinny, as if it was the unearthed soundtrack from some long forgotten surrealist film.

But at the end of the album Waits brings us abruptly into the present with what turns out to be one of the strongest anti-war songs of the Operation Iraqi Freedom era.

The narrator of “The Day After Tomorrow” is a lonely soldier. With Waits’ raspy voice, you know it’s got to be a real dogface right out of a Bill Mauldin cartoon.

With Waits writing one of his saddest melodies in recent memory, this song is the “grand weeper” among all the “grim reapers.”

The singer, writing a letter to loved ones back home, is cold and “tired of taking orders.” He shudders at the bloodshed he’s seen, but doesn’t dwell on it. “I still don’t know how I’m supposed to feel at all the blood that has been spilled.” And he wonders about the enemy praying to God. “How does God chose? Whose prayers does he refuse?”

But mostly he’s having bittersweet nostalgia about home. “What I miss you won’t believe/ Shoveling snow and raking leaves.”

He’s coming home, he says, the day after tomorrow. But the listener can’t help but wonder. Is death waiting around the corner? Is this show going to drop? A lesser writer would have had the song end in a terrible tragedy. Waits, in his wisdom lets you wonder. Waits lets you hope.

Real Gone can be considered Waits’ first new album of the millennium. True, he released two albums, Blood Money and Alice in 2002. However both of those were from theater works and were composed years before. Real Gone is a sometimes difficult album for difficult times.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: SEXING UP THE ELECTION

As published in the Santa Fe New Mexican
Oct. 14, 2004

According to New Mexico election lore, miniature bottles of whiskey was always the traditional method to entice otherwise reluctant voters to the polls. But a Web site erected by a group of Harvard and Columbia University alums is trying something different to penetrate the low-turnout problem.

Votergasm.org, according to its mission statement, is "a non-partisan nonprofit campaign formed to simultaneously reverse two disturbing trends in American society: low voting rates among young people, and unacceptably low rates of youth sexual activity."

Don't panic. They're only talking about youth who are old enough to vote.

Participants are asked to sign a pledge. There are three levels.

* To be a "Citizen," one must pledge to withhold sex from non-voters for the week following the election.

* To be a "Patriot," one must pledge to have sex with a voter on election night and to withhold sex from non-voters for the next week.

* To be known as an "American Hero" one must pledge to have sex with a voter on election night and withhold sex from non-voters for the next four years.

The Web site has a section to help organize election night parties. "Make your party sexy without being sleazy," Votergasm advises.

Such parties are listed by the state. So far the response from New Mexico has been rather limp. Only one is listed in New Mexico.

Most of you probably think it's in Albuquerque, the home of all those free-love college students at the University of New Mexico who read about Votergasm last month in the Daily Lobo. Or perhaps in liberal Santa Fe.

However, the sole Votergasm election night party listed is in that Sin City on the San Juan -- Farmington.

But alas, the guy who posted on the site said he just did out of curiosity.

In an e-mail Wednesday the 19-year-old man who asked to be identified only by his first name, Cody wrote "I actually heard about it on Rush Limbaugh."

Limbaugh, who has talked about Votergasm at least three times on his national radio show and Votergasm, which has links to Limbaugh's transcripts, have each had some fun at each others' expense.

Cody, who indicated he's supporting said he posted "just to see what kind of turn out it would get and see how far people would go just for a presidential election."

He's received only one response so far -- in addition to the query from this columnist. Cody said he's not really going to have an election night party.

Rapidly responding

Most polls give John Kerry a slight edge over President Bush in last Friday's debate, while many pundits declared that debate a tie.

But there's one aspect of the debate that Bush won hands down: The rapid response battle.
While the general public is busy watching the debate, each political camp has a team of laptop warriors scurrying to find contradictions or arguments to oppose what the opponent just said.

I assume both sides have a similar operation to the Democratic "war room" I visited during the Republican Convention in New York - rows of tables where the rapid-response teams Google and Lexus/Nexus away to create instant press releases to make the other guy look bad.

Judging from my e-mail inbox, the Bush camp was twice as aggressive as Kerry's on Friday.

Counting e-mails from the time the debate started until shortly before midnight (which actually is an artificial cut-off time as the partisan debate analysis resumed early Saturday), the Republicans sent 26 e-mails compared to 12 from the Democrats.

These includes electronic correspondence from the national as well as state campaigns.

Bush's numbers might be slightly padded. For instance I got two e-mails with Bernalillo County Republican Chairman Darren White's analysis of the debate. (Surprise, surprise. Bush won according to White.)

The Kerry squad wins for the funniest heading though. While most of Bush's Most of their e-mails during the debate had the subject heading of "Breaking Debate Fact" (they were numbered, going up to 12), Kerry's e-mails were called "Bush vs. Reality."

After the debate both sides sent out favorable quotes from various commentators.

I'm writing this an hour and a half before Wednesday's third and final presidential debate. I have no doubt that my inbox will be full again tonight. Already I've received an e-mail from the Kerry folks with the subject heading "Prebuttal - What This Election is Really About."