JARRATT APPLEWHITE LAUNCHES INDEPENDENT CAMPAIGN FOR THE STATE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DISTRICT 50 Lamy, NM This candidacy is focused in two issues: Bringing Back The Estancia Valley and Fixing Our Democracy. Bringing Back The Estancia Valley District 50 was shamefully redrawn after the last census to make it a safe Democratic seat. For decades it had been a center-of-New-Mexico farm and ranch district encompassing the broad Estancia Valley. When it was redrawn in 2011, that community of interest disappeared. Over 4,000 voters from Valencia County were added in a suburb of Belen (an area separated from the balance of District 50 by the Manzano Mountains). Those people should be voting with other residents of the Rio Grande corridor. Approximately 6,500 hundred voters in the suburban community of Santa Fe called Eldorado were also added. And most of the Estancia Valley was left out, including the entire city of Estancia and much of the city of Moriarty. “Setting aside the issue of whether legislators or, as I prefer, nonpartisan experts should be doing the map-making for political jurisdictions, it is impossible not to recognize the unfairness of the current boundary of District 50. A huge percentage of its voters are disenfranchised,” Applewhite says. Fixing Our Democracy Our democracy has devolved over the past two decades. Political polarization and partisanship are increasing. Extreme viewpoints are drowning out moderate voices. Compromise is a dirty word. Younger voters don’t participate; many of us are disgusted. Politicians increasingly seem to put party interests ahead of the common good. We need a fairer and more transparent system, one that encourages more people to vote and more candidates to run. Fixing our Democracy has three simple components, many of which have been adopted in other states. 1. Repair Gerrymandering - this is self explanatory. 2. Open Primaries - taxes contributed by voters who do not belong to a party are used to pay for the current closed primaries and, yet, unaffiliated voters can’t participate in them. 3. Ballot Access is also simple — there’s no reason to make it harder for nonpartisans to become candidates than party members. “I’ve got a steep hill to climb. New Mexico has the highest percentage of unopposed races at the State level in its general elections in the nation. The major reason for that is how hard to is for nonpartisan candidates to have their voices heard. In the 40 years since the courts forced NM to allow independent candidates to run, only 16 candidates have been able to get on the ballot — through 2014 there had been 1638 races! As an independent, I’ll need to get ten times as many nominating petition signatures as if I were a Republican and, because I’m not registered with a party, I can’t start collecting them until March when the petitions are published. I’m going to work as hard as I can to create a new way to invigorate our democracy,” says Applewhite. For Further Information: www: applewhite4nm.com email: info@applewhite4nm.com phone: (505) 365-9512