Ever since New Mexico Speaker of the House Ben Luján, (D-Nambe) won his primary by a fewer-than-100-vote squeaker last June, there has been much talk about the possibility of losing his leadership position.
Shortly after the November general election, a challenger emerged in the form of Joseph Cervantes (D-Las Cruces). With a House divided 37-33 (last session, the split was 45-25), Cervantes needed a coalition made up of the 33 Republicans plus three Democrats, himself included, to win the speaker’s seat.
A similar coup d’etat took place 10 years ago in the Senate when Richard Romero (D-Albuquerque) with the help of a coalition of all the Republicans in the chamber plus two Democrats, removed Manny Aragon (D-South Valley) from the President Pro Tempore position.
This coalition, however, had different dynamics. The incoming House members, and most of the recently re-elected Republican representatives, were allied with the NM Tea Party, which rejected the notion of being allied with a Democrat.
After an email-writing and phoning campaign over the weekend prior to the start of the legislative session, the Republican leadership was convinced to forgo the coalition and put forth its own candidate: Tom Taylor (R-Farmington).
Predictably, Taylor received only the 33 Republican and no other votes. The only surprise was that Cervantes’ most vocal supporter, Andy Nuñez (D-Hatch) abstained making the final tally 36 for, 33 against and one abstention. Recently, Nuñez had been expressing, in no uncertain terms, his prediction of the Speaker’s imminent demise to various publications and blogs throughout the state.
I don’t know where Republican Governor Susana Martinez was while all of this was going on, but one could argue that she had enough political clout to make the coalition work. There has been no mention anywhere that she ever stepped into the fray. This means that either she was too busy elsewhere (unlikely), she doesn’t yet have the political savvy to engage the representatives of her own party (but her advisers sure do, especially Keith Gardner, the former Minority Whip and Heather Wilson, the former U.S. Congresswoman) or she had a reason not to interfere – even though the new dynamics means difficulties getting bills passed by the House. A friend made me wonder if Luján’s son, U.S. Congressman Ben Ray, had anything to do with it. We’ll never know.
As a result, the 33 Republicans and Governor Martinez have no sympathetic ears in House committee leadership. The fallout from this attempted coup is that Nuñez lost his chairmanship of the Agriculture and Water Resources Committee and his membership in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. For his part, Nuñez is calling foul and is said to be reconsidering his membership in the Democratic Party. If he were to swing over, that would give Democrats the slimmest margin ever: 36-34, giving Republicans an opportunity to get right-leaning bills to pass the Democratically controlled House with only two Democratic dissenters.
