BUCK: He could well be the next governor of the great state of New Mexico. Mark Ronchetti is with us now. Mark, appreciate you joining us, sir.
RONCHETTI: Gentlemen. My pleasure.
BUCK: So, I’m hearing you could actually get this one done. Not a lot of national-level attention. As you know, you’re on about 430, 440 radio stations right now across the United States, but who’s counting? So just tell everybody nationally speaking — or, rather, who’s been looking at the national political landscape — what’s at stake in New Mexico, and why is it a place that a lot of people write off as being pretty blue? Why is it you can actually pull this off?
RONCHETTI: Well, I think a couple of things, you guys. First of all, when you look at the state as a whole, we are more conservative than a lot of these deep blue states. But what we have is a lot of people in especially northern New Mexico and even here in the Albuquerque area who once knew a Democratic Party that they could identify with. But what’s happened is you’ve seen, as the Democratic Party’s gone farther and farther left, it doesn’t align as much with the values of the people of the state. And then you have a governor who’s done some things that have been absolutely inexplicable. In the middle of a huge crime wave, she goes and removes qualified immunity from police and makes it easier to be a criminal than to be a cop.
She shut us down as much as any state in the country, and we’re a small business state, so that crushed our small businesses. We’ve got crime that’s completely out of control and we have a school system that’s 51st in the country when you count Washington, D.C. So as you start to wrap all these things up and you look at the liberal governance that’s in place right now, I think people are starting to realize the Democratic Party that they used to vote for doesn’t exist, and if they don’t put their foot down, we’re heading in a direction I think that a lot of people are pretty frustrated with here, and I think that’s why we’ve gotten so much momentum behind the campaign and why I think we’re in to win this thing in a few weeks.
He is dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporter — I’m gonna give a shout-out to Krishna who listens every single day — but what is occurring in New Mexico seems to be what’s occurring everywhere, which is a rising tide of frustration over all of the insanity, and Buck and I talk about this a great deal: New Mexico was one of the most restrictive covid states in the country, and a lot of people don’t know that. I’m sure that’s also motivating some of this blowback that you’re seeing as well.
RONCHETTI: Oh, Clay, it absolutely does. You just talked about your doctor friend. Let me just give you one crazy example of what’s happened here. Over the last two years, this governor signed a bill which pushed up malpractice caps on doctors up to $6 million in the state of New Mexico. To give you an idea, if you go to Texas, you can see up to $250,000. In New Mexico, you’re going to be able to sue up to $6 million. So, doctors like your friend are like, “Wait a minute. What are we doing?” And all of sudden, wait times are extending here and it’s a mess. And then you talk about covid. We were shut down as much as any state in the country, but yet we were sixth in overall deaths.
CLAY: And most people don’t realize that because you guys were under the radar.
RONCHETTI: Yes.
CLAY: But I think for our audience that’s listening right now and would get frustrated and would hear so much about that, I think people would like to know listening in Albuquerque on KIVA-AM and on KSVP out there as well. Give sort of an indication of how crazy she was on covid and how restricted you guys were.
RONCHETTI: Oh! (laughing) So it was crazy, guys. Let me just give you this. The worst part of it is the hypocrisy. But so, we were shut down and our kids were out of school as much as any kids in the country. And again, we’re last in the country. We lost 40% of our small businesses during covid and we’re trying to build that back now with no real plan to, not only catch businesses back up to where they were, but kids back up, too.
But here’s the part that I think really frustrates people in this state. We had a governor who stood up on September 18th, 2020, and she wagged her finger in everybody’s face and said, “We’re in this together. Do not leave your house!” That very day, she had her state police detail go rent an unmarked car from Albuquerque, take her up in Santa Fe, and then she and her friends went up to Navajo Lake in northern New Mexico and partied for the weekend while we were all locked down.
CLAY: Of course they did!
BUCK: I guess she didn’t stop by French Laundry with Gavin Newsom just to really complete the circle.
CLAY: These people are such hypocrites! That alone should get her ass kicked out of office. I mean, that’s infuriating.
RONCHETTI: Oh, it is infuriating, and it’s not the only one, Clay and Buck. We also had a situation where she shut down our small businesses, right? They’re all literally completely closed down. She calls up a friend at Lilly Barrack Jewelers in Albuquerque, comes down to Albuquerque, goes jewelry shopping while the rest of us are locked down; then goes back to Santa Fe. So it’s issue after issue where we see this hypocrisy where they live one way, and then they expect us to live another way in a New Mexico. In a state like this, which is tribal, which is a very diverse state with a high Hispanic, Native American populations, people just want to be treated with respect and want to play by the same rules as their governor. And right now, that’s off the charts, not the case. And, of course, that doesn’t even get into the sexual assault allegations.
BUCK: We’re speaking to… Whoa.
CLAY: Mark Ronchetti.
BUCK: Sorry, he threw me there for a second with the… What sexual…? What was the sexual assault allegations?
RONCHETTI: Well, so this is something two years ago when the governor — actually, it was 2018, the governor — was running to be elected the first time. And her communications director and her and her staff were in a meeting. And during the meeting, she walks over to one of her staffers — his name is James Hallinan, and he’s gay — and she goes up to him. She puts water on his crotch, and then she grabs his crotch, and it was clear for everyone to see. She ends up settling with him for $150,000, makes him sign a nondisclosure agreement to never talk about it again.
Two months later, she then signs a bill in the state of New Mexico outlawing nondisclosure agreements. So she literally goes in, slides in, and gets this guy to be quiet — by paying them off with campaign money, by the way — and then makes it so nobody else in the state of New Mexico can do what she just did. You know, if you think the Michael Bloomberg story is bad, this is even worse, and this is part of that narrative with her, especially where she feels like she’s not accountable, it doesn’t matter — and this is another one of those cases.
BUCK: So, Mark, what is the crime situation like in your state? You alluded to that before. You said there’s been a crime wave. How bad has it been and what has the Democrat Party — in charge of, I’m sure, the major population centers and then, of course, state government with a Democrat in office. What have they been doing?
RONCHETTI: Well, what they’ve been doing is emptying out the prisons, which is exactly what we’ve seen. So our issue is this: We’re the second most violent state in the country right now behind Alaska, and we’ve set year over year records for murders in the Albuquerque metro area in the past couple of years. Since this governor took office, we had 26% fewer people behind bars than we did when she came into office. So they have no doubt been emptying out these prisons. And to give you an idea, a couple of weeks ago, the FBI had their largest fentanyl bust ever in the South Valley of Albuquerque.
More than a million pills. And when they asked the great drug cartel that was running this, “Hey, why are you here?” Because it’s the Sinaloa drug cartel. They’re usually based out of California and then out of Mexico. They said, “Why are you in New Mexico now?” and they said, “Because it’s easy to be us here. We can do what we want to do,” and that’s what soft laws have done. We’ve got a governor who’s been releasing people early from prison for the better part of two years under covid orders.
It just stopped two weeks ago when we were hammering her with ads, and so that’s why the people of the state have just had enough. These are not political issues. I don’t care if you’re Republican or Democrat or an independent. You realize with crime out of control the way it is and the way they’re operating. If we don’t do something about this, this is going to become unlivable, and most people — not only in Albuquerque, but across the state — are realizing that.
BUCK: Mark Ronchetti. Mark, where can people go if they want to donate? Help out your campaign in this final stretch.
RONCHETTI: Yeah. Look, we have received a huge groundswell of support. Numbers look great, and we would love your help. We are based on small-dollar donors. We’ve had some of the biggest numbers in small-dollar numbers across the country. And you can go to MarkRonchetti.com. It would be huge for us. We’re going to roll up this thing and win it in three weeks. And you guys, I appreciate talking to you. By the way, it was interesting cause I told my wife I was coming on the show and she’s like, “Oh, my God. You’re going on with the OutKick guy and a porn star!”
CLAY: (laughing)
RONCHETTI: And I was like, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. That is not… No. Seriously. I don’t know.
CLAY: (laughing) Ooooh!
BUCK: You may be down one small donation now, Mark, after that one.
RONCHETTI: Noooo, Buck, come on.
CLAY: (laughing)
RONCHETTI: Let’s not let this send us off the rails. You guys are incredible. We love listening to you…
BUCK: Thank you so much, man. Good luck to you. Good luck to you in the final stretch here. Pull it through, please. Make it happen.
RONCHETTI: Will do. Thank you.
CLAY: That was awesome, by the way.
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