New Mexico Politics As the Post-Trump Era Begins:  The View from Southern New Mexico

Three elements to keep in mind as the holidays beckon, the pandemic surges throughout NM, and a new president takes office in January:

1.  New Mexico continues to be polarized between Democrats in most of the North and Republicans in most of the South.  Statewide, Democrats continue having an edge but.....read on.

Biden beat Trump in NM by 100,000 votes out of about 900,000 votes cast--a gap of nearly 11%, not quite a landslide, but close.  Hillary won New Mexico in 2016 by only 8%, with only 700,000 votes cast, so the overall verdict on Trump in NM this year was negative.  However, Trump got about 80,000 more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016; Biden got about 115,000 more votes than Hillary.  Both the House and the Senate continue easily under Democratic control--more about this below.

Normal North-South partisan polarization in New Mexico in 2020 is evident in the Biden-Trump numbers:  In the North (18 counties) Biden got 60.5% of the vote, but only 41.7% of the vote (15 counties) in the South.  And without the huge numbers in Doña Ana County the vote for Biden in the South would have dropped from 42% to 33%.  (But remember that Doña Ana County is not AOC country.  Hillary beat Bernie in the 2016 primary here by whopping 56%-44%.  This is relevant to a point I will make below)

Democrats cannot take the sunny weather for granted.  Republicans have occupied the governor's mansion for fully16 of the past 26 years, and were able to control the NM House for two years during the Martinez administration, for the first time since the 1950s.  The only two Democratic US Representatives elected from the South since 1978 (Harry Teague and Xochitl Torres Small) each lasted only one term before being replaced by Republicans.

2.  The Pandemic and State Government:  Toast in Twenty Two?

After the disasters of the Trump mal-administration, voters may be more inclined to judge elected officials on their ability to govern well, rather than to spout rehearsed or defiant nonsense.  This puts pressure on the Governor's performance next year, given lackluster results so far.  Like Bill and Susana before her, the lure of Washington occupied too much of her time  After getting off to a classy start earlier this year, lately the governor appears to have been winging it.  In spite of outstanding talent at the NM Dept. of Health Michelle's recent decision-making about covid 19 seems strangely off-base.  At the moment NM is in the embarrassing position of running out of hospital beds as people with possible symptoms struggle to negotiate an inadequate, crazy-quilt testing regime--while the administration bickers endlessly with the Restaurant Association about miniscule details of opening and re-opening. The test of leadership is how well you handle the crises.  If the governor is unable efficiently to deliver vaccines and other pandemic assistance throughout the state--and begin to articulate a coherent approach to our many critical problems for the next five years--she could end up toast in '22 should someone serious decide to run against her.  In order for this to happen, however, the Republican Party of New Mexico would have to prove that it still believes in republicanism as opposed to crass tyrannical rule.  The test of leadership is how well you handle the crises.  At the moment the state Republican Party is paralyzed, apoplectic, unable to respond to the critical conditions of the state or to imagine the possibilities inherent in the messes before us.  It has forgotten that politics is about governing.  More about this in future postings.

3.  Most New Mexicans are More Moderate than Partisan.  The political balance of power among Democrats within the legislature this year shifted decisively to the North and away from moderation. This may set in motion powerful forces we've seen play out before.

The liberal wing of the Democratic Party in the North, led by Eric Griego and Paul Gibson, indulged in the mischief of unseating fellow Democrats in key Senate primary elections in the South.  The ostensible motive was to make the Senate more responsive to progressive legislation, but the outcome was to shift political power from the South to the North, and to weaken the party's appeal to the average New Mexico voter who for many decades has proven to be decisively in the moderate camp.  In 2021 the Democratic Party will no longer have bragging rights for harboring three of the strongest champions of moderation--Senators Mary Kay Papen, Senator John Smith, and Senator Clemente Sanchez--to keep both parties in check.  They were replaced by inexperienced persons now beholden to their out-of-district funders.

Each political party in New Mexico forgets to its own peril that the state is overwhelmingly moderate.  We've seen this movie before.  When Walter Martinez, Speaker of the House in 1977 engaged in the mischief of dis-empowering moderate-to-conservative Democratic legislators from the South, he was ousted as Speaker in 1979 by a coalition of moderate Democrats and Republicans.  Within a decade, the entire East Side of the state had switched party allegiances, and voter registrations, and today it is the center of gravity of conservative Republicans in New Mexico.

The middle-finger insult Griego and Gibson threw at moderate New Mexican voters throughout the state may come back to haunt the Democratic Party at the statewide level should moderate Democrats in the Southwest conclude, like their counterparts to the East long ago, that party loyalty will be abandoned when loyalty demands turning your back on the will of your constituents.  Gibson and Griego are outraged about recent national Republican willingness to indulge in blatantly anti-democratic practices.  But who are they to complain?  The balance of power held in the South until now was legitimately earned by senators who held the line of moderation against the extremes of both sides--just what most voters in New Mexico wanted.  By playing dirty tricks against three powerful moderates who represented their Southwestern districts faithfully, they have effectively disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters throughout the state--just the kind of blatant anti-democratic behavior they piously attack at the national level and that lost the Southeast of NM to the Republican Party long ago.   Will forces to counter this insult to moderation and democratic practice gin up to do something about it?  Veremos.