Roswell Daily Record
Vol. 121, No. 218 75¢ Daily / $1.25 Sunday
INSIDE NEWS
DEBATE OVER $60M MEMORIAL COST NEW YORK (AP) — A debate over balancing the need to honor the memory of Sept. 11 with the enormous costs of running a memorial and museum at ground zero has been reawakened ... - PAGE A7
THE VOICE OF THE PECOS VALLEY
September 11, 2012
TUESDAY
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Crucial Ohio at the heart of presidential campaign
MANSFIELD, Ohio (AP) — It’s all about Ohio — again. The economy has improved here, and so has President Barack Obama’s standing, putting pressure on Republican Mitt Romney in a state critical to his presidential hopes. No Republican has won the White House without winning Ohio, and Romney hopes to catch Obama here by slashing at his jobs record in working-class regions. “America doesn’t have to have the long face it has had under this president,” the Republican shouted Monday to a cheering audience in hard-scrabble
Mansfield, just weeks after Obama visited. “We can get America rolling again, growing again.” In a sign of the state’s importance, hardly a week goes without the candidates appearing in Ohio. Same goes for their running mates; Republican Paul Ryan was campaigning in the Appalachian southeast Wednesday, following a similar weekend trip by Vice President Joe Biden, who is to return to the state Wednesday. Less than two months from Election Day, both parties say their internal campaign polling shows Obama with a narrow lead in Ohio, a Midwestern state
that offers 18 Electoral College votes and has played an important role in determining every recent White House race. Numbers tell the story of the high stakes and, perhaps, show why Obama has been able to maintain an edge — and why Romney remains within striking distance. The candidates and supportive outside groups have spent a stunning $112 million on TV advertising in the state — one-sixth the total spent nationwide. And Obama and groups that support him have been outspending Romney and See OHIO, Page A3
AP Photo
HazMat cleanup not yet done
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney campaigns at PR Machine Works in Mansfield, Ohio, Monday.
TOP 5 WEB
For The Past 24 Hours
• Fatal accident • Semi carrying hazmat overturns • Powell recording about more than email • Lack of funds causes Foundation to close • What a difference a week makes
INSIDE SPORTS
Julia Bergman Photo
Lauren Smith, 13, and her mother Rosemary Mendoza, and Luz Lathrop joined by her son Paul, 12, and daughter Brittni, 13, study GEAR UP pamphlets prior to an orientation about the program at the Civic Center Monday evening.
Area middle-schoolers gear up for success JULIA BERGMAN RECORD STAFF WRITER
Seventh- and eighth grade students joined by their parents flocked to the Roswell Convention and Civic Center, Monday evening, to learn of a program that aims to invest early in their schooling,
SWEET IS HAAC SETTER OF THE WEEK
often providing them with a free post-secondary education later on. Eastern New Mexico UniversityRoswell hosted an orientation for area middle school students to introduce them to the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs
TODAY’S OBITUARIES
HIGH ...96˚ LOW ....63˚
TODAY’S FORECAST
INDEX CLASSIFIEDS..........B6 COMICS.................B4 FINANCIAL .............B5 GENERAL ..............A2 HOROSCOPES ........A8 LOTTERIES ............A2 NATION .................A7 OPINION ................A4 SPORTS ................B1 WEATHER ..............A8
program provides communities with a comprehensive and research-driven initiative to prepare its students for higher education. Since its inception in 1999, GEAR UP has had significant success in
See GEAR UP, Page A3
Chicago teachers stage a strike in bitter contract dispute
Missouri Valley College junior Tarrah Sweet, a 2009 Goddard alumna, was named the Heart of America Athletic Conference Setter of the Week last week. Sweet, an athletic training major, helped the Vikings to a 1-1 mark ... - PAGE B1
• William F. “Bill” Gardner • Jack Verhines - PAGE A7
Federally funded by the U.S. Department of Education and sponsored by ENMU-R, GEAR UP usually targets students at the sixth- and seventhgrade level, and helps them to strengthen their academic per for mance and prepare for a postsecondary education. The
JESSICA PALMER RECORD STAFF WRITER Cleanup efforts are still in progress following a hazardous material spill that occurred after a semitruck going southbound overtur ned on the on-ramp from US 70 and 285, Friday. Immediately after the incident, officials reported that the containers carrying sodium borohydride and sodium hydroxide had not been breached. However, District 3 New Mexico State Police Capt. Dina Orozco reported Monday there had been considerable leakage. New Mexico State Police issued a voluntary evacuation as a precautionary measure, Friday, in an area encompassing the Roswell
AP Photo
A public school teacher cradles his baby while picketing outside Amundsen High School with other teachers, Monday, in Chicago.
CHICAGO (AP) — For the first time in a quarter century, Chicago teachers walked out of the class-
room Monday, taking a bitter contract dispute over evaluations and job security to the streets of the
nation’s third-largest city — and to a national audience — less than a week after most schools opened for fall. The walkout forced hundreds of thousands of parents to scramble for a place to send idle children and created an unwelcome political distraction for Mayor Rahm Emanuel. In a year when labor unions have been losing ground nationwide, the implications were sure to extend far beyond Chicago, particularly for districts engaged in similar debates. The two sides resumed negotiations Monday but failed to reach a settlement, meaning the strike will extend into at least a second day. Chicago School Board President David Vitale told reporters that board and union negotiators did not even get
around to bargaining on the two biggest issues. “This is a long-term battle that everyone’s going to watch,” said Eric Hanuskek, a senior fellow in education at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. “Other teachers unions in the United States are wondering if they should follow suit.” The union had vowed to strike Monday if there was no agreement on a new contract, even though the district had offered a 16 percent raise over four years and the two sides had essentially agreed on a longer school day. With an average annual salary of $76,000, Chicago teachers are among the highest-paid in the nation, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality. But negotiators were still divided on job security
See HAZMAT, Page A3
measures and a system for evaluating teachers that hinged in part on students’ standardized test scores. The strike in a district where the vast majority of students are poor and minority put Chicago at the epicenter of a struggle between big cities and teachers unions for control of schools. Teacher Kimberly Crawford said she was most concer ned about issues such as class size and the lack of air conditioning. “It’s not just about the raise,” she said. “I’ve worked without a raise for two years.” The strike quickly became part of the presidential campaign. Republican candidate Mitt Romney said teachers were turning
Can there be a politics-free 9/11? NMFA keeps executives NEW YORK (AP) — The Sept. 11 anniversary ceremony at ground zero has been stripped of politicians this year. But can it ever be stripped of politics?
For the first time, elected officials won’t speak Tuesday at an occasion that has allowed them a solemn turn in the spotlight.
It’s a sign of the entrenched sensitivity of the politics of Sept. 11, even after a decade of commemorating the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. From the first anniversary in 2002, the
date has been limned with questions about how — or even whether — to try to separate the Sept. 11 that is about personal loss from the 9/11 that reverberates through public life.
The answers are complicated for Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles was the pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon. She feels politicians’ involvement can lend gravity to the remembrances, but she empathizes with the reasons for silencing officeholders at the New York ceremony this year.
“It is the one day, out of 365 days a year, where,
when we invoke the term ‘9/11,’ we mean the people who died and the events that happened,” rather than the political and cultural layers the phrase has accumulated, said Burlingame, who’s on the board of the organization that announced the change in plans this year. “So I think the idea that it’s even controversial that politicians wouldn’t be speaking is really rather remarkable.” Officeholders from the mayor to presidents have been heard at the New York
See 9/11, Page A3
See STRIKE, Page A3
on leave over fake audit
SANTA FE (AP) — The New Mexico Finance Authority is keeping two top executives on administrative leave during investigations over a fake financial audit that has led to arrests by state securities regulators. The authority’s governing board on Monday met in a private executive session for more than an hour to discuss what to do about CEO Rick May and Chief Operating Officer John Duff, but no action was taken later during a public meeting to change their suspension from last month. May is on leave while receiving his $150,000 salary. He sent a letter to the board last week threatening possible legal action “to preserve and protect my longstanding reputation for honesty and integrity.” One option for the board is to fire May and Duff. However, May wrote the board that it would be “arbitrary and unjustified” to make a final decision on his employment until investigations are completed into the falsified audit. See AUDIT, Page A3