Candidate forums can be quite instructive to a prospective voter. For example, I was privileged to see the candidates for Santa Fe City Council District 4 recently and learn how they work and how they think. Carol Robertson Lopez stood out as one who has done some serious homework and thinking on every issue presented by audience questions. I found particularly encouraging her frequent use of "we" instead of the all-self-important "I." She knows that all of us need to work together to solve problems in our city, that the campaign "promises" of a single person ring hollow.

She might assume a leadership role, but she can't do it all, and she can't promise the moon. Her message is that, working together, we can accomplish many of those goals. I, for one, am eager to participate in such an enterprise.


Stimulus succeeded

Annette Coffman's Jan. 30 letter, "Since stimulus, we're deeper in debt," once again trots out the old lies from the ads run by conservative groups. She states that the stimulus failed. FactCheck.org dealt with the same claim in a June posting, stating that "the ad also says that the economic stimulus has 'failed,' but that's a matter of opinion.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office's latest analysis, published in May, said that the stimulus had "lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.6 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points and increased the number of persons working by 1.2 million to 3.3 million."

Coffman talks about a national debt of $9.5 trillion when Obama took office. The Federal Reserve economic data give $11.1 trillion for the quarter ending on Jan. 1, 2009, before President Barack Obama took office. Additionally, gasoline prices are not under the president's control in the short term.