A COUPLE OF POLITICAL STORIES

Here's two political stories I wrote for today's paper that didn't make it to The New Mexican's Web site:

A version of these were published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
July 2, 2005

With a new Supreme Court vacancy two ideological sides are preparing in New Mexico for a possible political battle — and the focus is on one man who could make a difference — U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman.

The U.S. Senate must confirm whoever President Bush nominates. Bingaman, a Democrat has been known to vote against some Supreme Court nominees of Republican presidents.

One of the likely areas of contention is the issue of abortion.

NARAL Pro-Choice New Mexico, an abortion rights group, is organizing a rally in Albuquerque Tuesday to gather petition signatures, which they plan to deliver to Bingaman’s office. The rally is scheduled for noon Tuesday at Fourth and Central.

NARAL will be on the Plaza Monday during the annual pancake breakfast to distribute petitions urging Bingaman “to protect the balance of the United States Supreme Court,” NARAL director Giovanna Rossi said Friday.

Rossi said most people assume that the state’s other senator, Pete Domenici, a Republican, will support whoever Bush nominates. “Bingaman is a swing vote,” she said. “He’s a national target.”

Meanwhile, a newly-formed Republican consultant business called Gordian Strategies is representing a national organization called Progress for America, which has vowed to spend $18 million nationwide to promote whoever Bush nominates to the Supreme Court.

Robin Dozier Otten, a former cabinet secretary in the administration of Gov. Gary Johnson, talked to reporters in the state reporters about the campaign earlier this week — several before Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement.

“My job is not to convince Jeff to vote for the president's nominee,” Otten said Friday. “It is to convince Jeff's constituency to convince him to vote for the nominee.”

Bingaman’s spokeswoman Jude McCartin said Friday said the senator hopes Bush will nominate a qualified candidate acceptable to both sides. “We’re hoping this will be done as it should be,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be a divisive time.

She said that Bingaman recently signed a letter from Senate Democrats urging Bush to consult with senators from both parties before making a nomination. The Democrats haven’t heard back from the President McCartin said.

Bingaman released a statement Friday saying, “ “It is my hope that the White House works with the Senate to find a nominee of the same caliber as Sandra Day O’Connor.”

Both Rossi and a Republican law professor at the University of New Mexico said Friday they hope a nomination fight can be avoided.

”We really want to stress that we hope there’s a consensus,” Rossi said. “He could do this by putting names out who have mainstream records. If he does chose the course of an extreme nominee, we’re ready to put up a battle. But we would rather have consensus.”

Lisa Torraco, a former Santa Fe prosecutor who teaches law at UNM. “What should happen is that (senators) defer to the system and recognize that the president was elected by a majority and he has the right to make a nomination. The Senate should have an up-or-down vote. Don’t reduce the judiciary to a political smear campaign. Protect the integrity of the jurists and the integrity of the Supreme Court.”

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(Here's the other story ...)

City Council David Pfeffer, a Democrat-turned-Republican who is considering running for U.S. Senate, said Friday he’s still in the “exploratory” mode of his possible candidacy,” meaning, among other things, he’s looking at fundraising possibilities.

But — as is the case for virtually anyone who challenges a incumbent member of Congress — he’s got a lot of exploring to do before he catches up with the man he hopes to run against.

More than a year before the general election, Sen. Jeff Bingaman in his latest campaign finance reports shows he has more than $1 million cash on hand. Democrat Bingaman, who first was elected in 1982, announced earlier this year he will run for re-election in 2006.

“There is no way we’ll beat Bingaman on the dollar,” Pfeffer said Friday. But he said he thinks he can beat Bingaman with “a smart campaign.”

“It’ll be a strong grassroots campaign,” he said. “I’ll make it obvious for everyone to see the differences between Sen. Bingaman and me on what is role of America in the world, what are the dangers confronting America, our views on protecting the border, Supreme nominations, Social Security, and what the character of America is and what it ought to be.”

A spokeswoman for Bingaman said Friday, “Sen. Bingaman works hard for New Mexicans and hopes they will continue to support him next year.”

While Pfeffer hasn’t officially announced his political intentions, he talks increasingly like someone running for Senate. Asked if he’d ruled out running for re-election on the council, he said, “My focus now is on the Senate.”

Many local political observers say Pfeffer would have hard time winning re-election for council in a city where Democrats enjoy a 3-to-1 registration edge over the GOP.

Pfeffer would be the second Republican who once was a Democrat to announce for next year’s Senate race. Former state Sen. Tom Benavides of Albuquerque threw his hat in the ring earlier this year. Benavides is something of a perennial candidate, running unsuccessfully last year for his old Senate seat and for state auditor in 2002. In 1990 he was the Democratic candidate who ran against Republican U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici.

Pfeffer, an architect and Vietnam veteran, was elected to his north-side District 1 council seat in 2002, defeating incumbent Jimmie Martinez. Pfeffer was known mainly as an advocate for recreation facilities before he got elected.

Once elected he frequently found himself in clashes with other councilors when the governing body discussed resolutions about national issues such as The U.S. Patriot Act and the Iraq War.

About a year ago he announced he was supporting President Bush for re-election against Democrat John Kerry. Early this year he announced his party switch.

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, July 1, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Now Webcasting
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Red Necks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer by Johnny Russell
Fourth of July by Dave Alvin
Song of the Patriot by Johnny Cash
American Trash by Betty Dylan
Indoor Fireworks by Elvis Costello
One Time, One Night by Los Lobos
Only in America by Bobby Purify

Endless War by Son Volt
Waist Deep in The Big Muddy by Pete Seeger
That's the News by Merle Haggard
Chosen One by The Waco Brothers
Give a Little Whistle by Michelle Shocked
The Obscenity Parayer (Give It To Me) by Rodney Crowell
Dying Breed by Lonesome Bob with Allison Moorer
Bargain Store by Dolly Parton
The Story of Susie by Billy Ray

Theme from A Fistful of Dollars by Hugo Montenegro
High Noon by Tex Ritter
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance by Gene Pitney
The Ballad of the Alamo by Marty Robbins
The Ballad of Davy Crockett by Doug Sahm
Rawhide by Frankie Laine
The Ballad of Cat Ballou by Nat King Cole & Stubby Kaye
Paladin by Johnny Western
Legend of Wyatt Earp by Hugh O'Brian
Wanderin' Star by Shane MacGowan with Charlie MacClennan

God's Country by Loudon Wainwright III
Here We Are by George Jones with Emmylou Harris
I Heard The Bluebirds Sing by Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge
Who Made You King by Grey DeLisle
Independence Day by Say ZuZu
The Wayward Wind by Jackie "Teak" Lazar
I'll See You In My Dreams by Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: TO LOVE THE LIPS

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
July 1, 2005



When I moved from Oklahoma City to Santa Fe 37 years ago, it didn’t take me long to see the huge psychological difference between the two cities. While both places can be considered laid-back compared to big cities, people in Santa Fe seemed far more free to express themselves, far less pressured to conform, much less inhibited about being weird.

Oklahoma, according to filmmaker Bradley Beesley, is known for “oil derricks, college football, and country music — hardly a mecca of freaky art rock.”

But in many ways — especially for freaky Okies and freaky Okie exiles — that’s a big part of the charm of the Flaming Lips, the freakiest, artsiest Okie rock band ever.

Beesley, a longtime Lips crony, chronicles the Lips — their history, their families, their music — in his documentary The Fearless Freaks, showing for two weeks at CCA Cinematheque, 1050 Old Pecos Trail, starting tonight, July 1 (tickets are $8).

The Flaming Lips rose from the working-class Classen-Ten-Penn neighborhood of Oklahoma City, starting out in the early ’80s as, in the words of Lips leader Wayne Coyne, “a no-talent, derivative, hillbillies-gone-punk version of the Who.” Beesley remembers seeing them in Norman, Okla., around 1986, though all he remembers about their music from that show is that “it was insanely loud.”

The Fearless Freaks — the title comes from the name of a backyard football league organized by Coyne and his four brothers — is bound together by psychedelic montages of Lips performances from home movies of their loud-young-punk phase, their MTV videos, and recent big-time extravaganzas with dancers in bunny suits, puppets, strippers, bubbles, balloons, and a goateed, graying Coyne acting as a smiling emcee in a white suit.

The band’s journey from Okie punksters to serious, Grammy-winning musicians, whose latest albums sound like otherworldly soundtracks, is pretty fascinating in itself. But the strongest parts of the film are when Beesley introduces us to the families of Coyne and drummer/multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd.

The love Coyne and Drozd have for their respective families is obvious. No sad tales of rage or abuse — unless you count those Fearless Freaks football games, which Coyne describes as “more of a violent cult” than a football team.

And Coyne at least seems like a happy fellow. He still lives in Classen-Ten-Penn, where he enjoys scaring the local kids on Halloween, walking around the neighborhood, and yakking with folks on the street. He even talks fondly of his days of working as a fry cook at a Long John Silver’s.

But it’s not all bunny suits and Martian Santa Clauses in the Lips Universe. There are dark shadows that Beesley reveals in his film.

Coyne’s oldest brother Tommy, who has gone from a “tortured artist” to “just plain tortured,” according to Wayne, has been a druggo for years and has had scrapes with the law. You’re not sure whether Wayne is joking when he asks Tommy whether he’s actually a fugitive at the moment.

“Wayne went to Hollywood to do concerts, I went to jail,” Tommy Coyne says.

Houston native Drozd also has a jailbird brother. James Drozd served an 11-year sentence for grand theft auto, beginning about the time Steven joined the Lips. But harsher still is that the Drozd brothers’ mother and two of their siblings committed suicide. The Drozds seem like the embodiment of the Allison Moorer song “Dying Breed” (“I take after my family/My fate’s the blood in me/No one grows old in this household/We are a dying breed”).

Those family demons catch up with Steven Drozd by the mid-’90s; his heroin addiction is a big reason why guitarist Ronald Jones quit the band. There’s a disturbing interview scene with Steven, shot in noirish black and white, when he was in the depths of his addiction.

But the horror of that scene is offset by one of the most touching moments in the film, when Steven and fresh-from-the-joint James play a song (written by James) with their father, Vernon Drozd, a saxophone-playing veteran of Texas polka bands.

What makes this band so special is the ability of its members to embrace their pasts and recognize the darkness (without wallowing in it) while creating strange, beautiful, and transcendental art packed with whimsy and raw, real emotion. The Fearless Freaks captures the earthiness that grounds these freaky art-rock musicians.

Steve Terrell’s Lips list

*Favorite Flaming Lips song: “Bad Days” from Clouds Taste Metallic (1995) — my second favorite Lips album. In a masterful example of sequencing, this song comes right after “Evil Will Prevail,” a mournful tune reportedly inspired by Tim McVeigh’s act of terrorism in Oklahoma City. It’s a declaration of goofy optimism — “all your bad days will end” — with just a suggestion of carnival music. And the first verse is one of the best rewrites of Jimmy Reed’s “Big Boss Man” in recent years. “You hate your boss at your job/But in your dreams you can blow his head off/In your dreams, show no mercy.”

*Favorite Flaming Lips album: The Soft Bulletin (1999). Listening to this album prompted me to go back and listen to material from the Beach Boys’ Smile. With its elfin choruses, harps, synths, musical saws, UFO noise, and medical and scientific imagery, this is one for the ages.

*Favorite Flaming Lips song title: “Talkin’ Bout the Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues” (from Hit to Death in the Future Head; 1992).

*Favorite Flaming Lips cover song : “After the Gold Rush” (from The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young, 1989).

*Favorite Moment in The Fearless Freaks: Wayne Coyne’s reenactment of a robbery at Long John Silver’s.

*Biggest Flaming Lips regret: I was in Austin in 1996 when Coyne performed his “parking garage symphony” — and I missed it.

*Most Flaming Lips ever played on local radio in New Mexico at one time: This Sunday night, July 3, starting at 11 p.m. on Terrell’s Sound World, free-form weirdo radio, KSFR-FM 90.7.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: POLLS & SPORTSBOOKS

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 30, 2005

George W. Bush might have won New Mexico’s five electoral votes last year — the Republican incumbent beat Democrat John Kerry here by less than one percentage point — but according to a statewide poll taken by a national research company earlier this month — Bush is losing the job-approval race.

And according to the same polling company, Gov. Bill Richardson’s numbers, while still favorable by a healthy margin, have slipped from last year’s poll figures.

According to the poll, released this week by the New Jersey-based Survey U.S.A., 50 percent of New Mexicans surveyed said they disapproved of the way Bush is doing his job, while 45 percent said they approved of Bush’s job.

Albuquerque pollster Brian Sanderoff of Research & Polling Inc., said Wednesday these numbers are believable. “New Mexico usually is pretty close to the national numbers,” he said, pointing to the Real Clear Politics Web site (www.realclearpolitics.com/polls.html), which shows the average of the three recent national polls to have 50 percent disapproving of Bush’s performance and 47 percent approving.

Survey U.S.A.’s poll was conducted June 10 to 12. Six hundred New Mexico residents were randomly called to participate in an automated phone poll. The margin of error is 4.1 percent. Similar polls were conducted in all 50 states.

Rating the governors: Early last month, Survey U.S.A. did polling in all 50 states on how residents rated their governors.

According to that project, our Gov. Bill Richardson is the 20th most popular governor in the union.

Asked “Do you approve or disapprove of the job Bill Richardson is doing as governor?” 54 percent said they approved while 39 percent said they disapproved.

While these are good numbers for the gov, if this poll is accurate, it shows a slide from the numbers Sanderoff got last in a poll he did in late August and early September for The Albuquerque Journal. That poll showed 63 percent giving Richardson a favorable rating while 25 percent said their opinion was unfavorable.

“I don’t know if there’s been a change in attitude or a methodological difference,” Sanderoff said.

Sanderoff said he is wary of polling outfits that use automated systems to gather opinions instead of live callers. He also noted that his company calls likely voters who have voted in recent elections, while Survey U.S.A. calls random numbers.

Another possible factor in the big shift in Richardson numbers, Sanderoff said, is the fact that Survey U.S.A. asked whether participants “approved” or “disapproved” of Richardson’s performance, while Sanderoff’s company asked if participants had “favorable” or “unfavorable” opinions of the governor.

“The favorability polls tend to be higher than approval polls,” Sanderoff said.

Sanderoff noted that the Survey U.S.A. poll was taken before Richardson “took some hits” over the $5.5 million jet his administration is buying and for a recent incident in which Richardson’s driver refused to stop for an Albuquerque police officer.

“The jet story was really the first (Richardson controversy) that has gotten to the point of water cooler talk,” he said. “Something like that probably would affect his rating by three points or so.”

The poll on Richardson was conducted May 6 through 8 of 600 New Mexicans. The margin of error is 4.1 percent.

According to Survey U.S.A., the most popular governor is North Dakota’s John Hoeven, a Republican, who is approved by 71 percent of his people. Hoeven had a 20 disapproval score. The least popular is Ohio’s Robert Taft, also a Republican, whose approval rating was a mere 19 percent and disapproval a whopping 74 percent.

Popular senators: Survey U.S.A. also rated all 100 U.S. Senators earlier this month. Both Republican Pete Domenici and Democrat Jeff Bingaman scored high.

Domenici’s approval rating was 61 percent, just one point higher than Bingaman’s. Thirty two percent disapproved of Domenici, while 28 percent disapproved of Bingaman, who is running for re-election next year.

This poll was taken June 10 to 12 with the same number of people called and same margin of error as the company’s other polls.

Betting on Bill: So what are the odds of Richardson actually making it to the White House? According to the posted odds to one sports betting Web site Wednesday, the odds are 13 to 1.

According to the Canada-based SportsInteraction.com — reportedly the first internet sportsbook in North America — Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has the best odds of winning the presidency in 2008 — 5 to 1. In second place was former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, whose odds are 7 to 1. Former North Carolina Senator and 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards has 9-to-1 odds. Richardson is fourth, while Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. follows with 15-to-1 odds.

{Note: As of about 7 p.m. Wednesday, all the individual candidate bets disappeared from the SportsInteraction site. All that was left in the political section was a bet on whether Hilary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice will get the nominations of their respective parties. (The odds there are 21 to 1, which I think is way way low.) I called the helpline and a woman told me the page was just being updated and that all the candidate bets would return in a few minutes. But as of 12:01 AM Thursday, they were still missing.}

R.I.P. BOUNCER

My old high school vice principal died Sunday.

I first met Bouncer Sena in August 1968 on my first day at Santa Fe Mid High. He saw my name and asked if my mother was Mary Ruth. When I said yes, he said, "I knew her in high school. She was the prettiest girl in school. I knew your dad too."

Later that day, there was a school assembly. Bouncer informed us that students were no longer welcome at Josie's Restaurant. Something to do with a firecracker incident the previous school year.

I took him seriously.

In fact I was probably 30 years old when my pal Paul Milosevich asked if I wanted to meet him for lunch at Josie's.

It took me a second. I almost blurted out, "I'm not allowed in there."

Here's the obit for Bouncer I wrote for this morning's paper.


A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 29, 2005

He was a coach, an educator, a politician, a family man, a high-school football star and a lifelong Santa Fean. Anyone who knew the sometimes-gruff but ultimately big-hearted authority figure for two generations of local high schoolers knew him by his childhood nickname: “Bouncer.”

John “Bouncer” Sena died Sunday. He was 77.

Sena had been hospitalized with pneumonia and other ailments. “He was in the hospital for a little over a month. Then he came home (about two weeks ago) and was very happy,” his daughter, Melinda “Jo Jo” Tarnoff, said Tuesday.

“He was always an inspiration,” said Orlando Baca, a retired Santa Fe High School typing and math teacher. “He was one of those tough old guys like (longtime Santa Fe High School principal) Joe Casados. But they always had a heart and treated everyone with dignity and respect. That’s why they got so much out of their staff and the students.”

Sena was born in Santa Fe in 1927, the youngest of eight children of Abran and Elena Sena.

He was raised on Agua Fria Street near Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. His father worked for the state Highway Department.

When he was about 11, Sena got dubbed with the nickname that would stay with him for life. “There are various stories on how he got that name,” Sena’s son Frank Sena said. “He was a big kid. His brother told him he looked like a bouncer when they were boxing.”

As a sophomore at Santa Fe High School in 1943, Bouncer Sena was on the Demon football team when they won the state championship.

“He was the tackle,” said lifelong friend and former College of Santa Fe athletic director Bob Sweeney, who was fullback on that champion team.

Sweeney said he and Sena were involved together in various athletic pursuits through the years. Sena was manager for the College of Santa Fe basketball team when Sweeney was coach. And in recent years the two were golf buddies.

After graduating from high school, Sena attended college at The University of New Mexico. He graduated in 1951 from the College of Santa Fe with a degree in business administration.

But it was in the field of education where he would find his career.
Baca recalled that when he was in high school “Bouncer” Sena was teaching driver’s education and coaching.

“He coached everything,” Frank Sena said. “Football, track, anywhere they needed a coach, he’d do it. I grew up in locker rooms, press boxes and on the sidelines. It wasn’t bad.”

When the current Santa Fe High School campus open in the mid 1960s, the old school building — currently the location of City Hall — became Santa Fe Mid High. “Bouncer” Sena became vice principal of the school.

“He was a steadfast, loyal employee and colleague,” said Don Casados, who was Mid High principal during that period. “He set high standards of honor, morality and integrity. He earned respect from faculty, staff and parents. His main concern was the students.”

While his dedication to students was unquestioned, Sena also had another interest — politics.

He made unsuccessful stabs at running for a state House seat in 1972 and 1974. The first time he lost the Democratic primary to Eddie Lopez by two votes.
“They didn’t let him put the name ‘Bouncer’ on the ballots that time,” Frank Sena said. “A lot of people didn’t realize it was him.”

But “Bouncer” Sena twice won a County Commission seat in the mid ‘70s. In 1978 he was named commission chairman. “They did a lot during those years,” Frank Sena said, noting that the Stephen Herrera Judicial Complex was built during his father’s watch.

State Sen. Nancy Rodriguez, D-Santa Fe, who worked in the county manager’s office during those years, has fond memories of Sena. “I could always tell when he was in the building,” she said. “I could hear him singing as he came up the stairs. He was always so pleasant and full of energy.”

After his two terms on the commission were up, Sena made two more unsuccessful runs for Legislature. He ran for state Senate in 1980 and 1984.

Shortly after he retired from Santa Fe High School, Sena was named a “Living Treasure.”

In recent years, Sena worked part-time at Sam’s Club. He worked there the day before he was hospitalized, his son said.

Sena is survived by his wife Bernadette of 47 years; son Joe Frank Sena of Santa Fe, daughters Dolores Greenwood of Los Angeles, Melinda “Jo Jo” Tarnoff of Ribera and Rebecca Abbo of Albuquerque; and six grandchildren.

UPDATE 4-25-07: I have updated the link to Bouncer's page at the Living Treasuers Web site.