Roundhouse Roundup:

KISSing Up to the Governor

Gov. Gary Johnson is in Los Angeles today to tape a segment of the
political/ comedy talk show Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher,
who, like our governor, is an advocate of decriminalizing marijuana.
This will be Johnson's second appearance on the show.

Among Johnson's fellow panelists will be Gene Simmons, bassist and all
around monster for the band KISS. The governor, a confessed John
Denver fan, said the only KISS song he knew was School's Out. The
trouble is, that's a song by another heavily made-up '70s shock
rocker, Alice Cooper.

Unfortunately for New Mexico viewers, the show with Johnson and
Simmons will air at 2:05 a.m. Friday on KOAT, Channel 7. (In most
markets, Politically Incorrect airs right after Nightline.)

Free Taos?

Johnson might be an unusual politician, but he sure dodged
a question Tuesday during an interview on KKOB's Jim Villanucci show.
A caller asked the governor where he stood on the question of allowing
snowboarders access to the Taos Ski Valley mountains.

Johnson hedged, saying he liked snowboarding but was glad he didn't
have to make the tough call.

Rio Arriba vote-count error: Ultra-conservative state Sen. Rod Adair,
R-Roswell, won the Republican Party nomination for lieutenant governor
in last week's primary election. But his margin of victory thinned
Wednesday as the state Bureau of Elections sifted through the
primary-election results.

On election night, Adair held a solid 10 percent lead over both of his
opponents, according to the unofficial election results. Those
results, often typed in by weary election workers long after even the
candidates are asleep, contained an error in Rio Arriba County.

Rather than the 214 votes Adair received in the Democratic stronghold,
the candidate was mistakenly given 2,114 votes - more than three times
the number of Republicans who voted in the Rio Arriba primary.

The revised tallies still give Adair a solid victory over the other
candidates in the race. But the mishap might have been the first time
in political history that an election mistake in Rio Arriba County
helped a Republican candidate.

'Manny's Way' revisited: During the recent flap over Republican
governor candidate John Sanchez and "Manny's Way" - Sanchez's attack
that claimed GOP rival Lt. Gov. Walter Bradley was the shameless
lackey of Democrat Sen. Manny Aragon - lots of folks, including
prominent Dems like gubernatorial candidate Bill Richardson and state
party Chairman Jamie Koch, came to Bradley's defense.

However, nobody spoke up for Aragon, the floor leader for Democrats in
the Senate.

Sanchez's controversial campaign literature was a slap at Aragon as
well as Bradley. Aragon, Sanchez's mailing said, is responsible for a
"liberal special-interest agenda" of "corruption, mismanagement and
higher taxes."