This week New Mexico in Focus looks ahead to Albuquerque's mayoral election.
In an effort to fairly give all seven candidates airtime over the next few weeks, the NMIF team set a threshold for who would qualify for a one-on-one interview based on fundraising and petition signatures. Those interviews are forthcoming.
This week, correspondent Cailley Chella sits down with candidates Daniel Chavez and Eddie Varela to get their thoughts on crime, housing and Albuquerque's sanctuary city status.
In Albuquerque and Santa Fe, mayoral and city council candidates have an opportunity to fund their campaigns with taxpayer money if they qualify for public financing. In Albuquerque, just one candidate for mayor reached the threshold for public dollars: incumbent Mayor Tim Keller. Senior Producer Lou DiVizio met with one of the people who originally crafted Albuquerque's public financing system, former city councilor Eric Griego, to ask him if it's still working.
For decades, David Abbey had a hand in crafting New Mexico's state budget as the director of the Legislative Finance Committee. Now retired, Abbey reflects on his time in Santa Fe with former state Senator Dede Feldman, and tells us about his new book, "Forty Years in the New Mexico Roundhouse."
Earlier this summer, a group of students from the Albuquerque School of Excellence competed in a national documentary competition put on by National History Day. Those four students went through a rigorous research and production process to tell the story of Unit 731, a classified human experimentation project in Japan during World War II. In this segment that first aired in June, two members of that student documentary team sat down with host Nash Jones to tell us about what they learned, and what it took to bring their short film to the national stage.
NMiF airs on NMPBS 5.1 (KNME HD) on Friday, Sept. 5, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 7 at 7 a.m. and streaming on the PBS video app. Involved, informed, in-depth media: watch New Mexico in Focus again online shortly thereafter.
Host: Nash Jones
NMiF Segments
ABQ Mayoral Candidates Chavez and Varela on Housing, Sanctuary Status
Correspondent
Cailley Chella
Guests
Eddie Varela, mayoral candidate
Daniel Chavez, mayoral candidate
How Public Financing is Out of Reach for Most Political Candidates
Correspondent
Lou DiVizio
Guest
Eric Griego, Ph.D., former Albuquerque city councilor, UNM adjunct professor
David Abbey on New Book, “Forty Years in the New Mexico Roundhouse”
Correspondent
Dede Feldman
Guest
David Abbey, author, former Legislative Finance Committee director
Student Documentary on Unit 731 Gets National Recognition
Correspondent
Nash Jones
Guests
Nicole Briceno Gabauer, Albuquerque School of Excellence
Masara Algburi, Albuquerque School of Excellence
New Mexico in Focus is the New Mexico PBS prime-time news magazine show covering the events, issues, and people shaping life in New Mexico and the Southwest. NMiF takes a multi-layered look at social, political, economic health, education, and art issues and explores them in-depth with a critical eye to give them context beyond the "news of the moment."
NMPBS Executive Producer, Public Affairs is Jeff Proctor. New Mexico in Focus's senior producer for public affairs is Lou DiVizio. Host and producer of New Mexico in Focus is Nash Jones. Producer is Antonio Sanchez. Multimedia journalist is Cailley Chella.
Funding for New Mexico in Focus is provided by the McCune Charitable Foundation and Viewers Like You. Funding for the Your New Mexico Government Project comes from the Thornburg Foundation and New Mexico Local News Fund. Funding for Our Land: New Mexico’s Environmental Past, Present & Future is provided in part by the Neeper Natural History Programming.
