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Luján, Garcia also consider bipartisan coalitions
The Roundhouse in Santa Fe (Photo by Heath Haussamen)
There are now two Democratic House members exploring the possibility of forming coalitions with Republicans to unseat Speaker Ben Luján, and Luján has also reached out to Republicans in an attempt to shore up support.
House Minority Leader Tom Taylor of Farmington said Saturday that Thomas Garcia of Ocate has talked with some Republican members about forming a coalition to become speaker. And Luján has called some Republicans to seek their support, Taylor said.
I’ve already reported that Joseph Cervantes of Las Cruces has been in touch with Republicans about possibly seeking their support to become speaker.
House Republicans discussed the situation during their meeting on Saturday. Taylor said they made no decision about which Democrat, if any, they might support.
Thomas Garcia
“From a caucus standpoint, we’re just kind of taking a wait-and-see attitude at this point,” he said.
Democrats meet Saturday to decide who they want to be speaker. Since they hold the majority of House seats, if members of the Democratic caucus come out of that meeting united, their choice will be speaker.
Republicans picked up eight seats in the recent election, meaning Democrats only hold a four-seat advantage, 37-33. Cervantes has received pledges of support from three of his Democratic colleagues, giving him enough votes to become speaker if all members of the Republican caucus – or even all Republicans except one – agree to support him.
No Democratic members have said publicly that they will support Garcia if he chooses to challenge Luján.
Ben Luján
How will this end?
Many sources have been reluctant to predict how this will end. The fact that Luján is exploring the possibility of forming his own bipartisan coalition to keep his job indicates that even he doesn’t know what will happen.
“The speaker obviously has some folks on the other side who have been verbal about not supporting him,” Taylor said. “I imagine he’s looking for three or four other folks on the other side.”
Neither Cervantes nor Garcia has formally declared an intention to run against Luján, but either or both might do so this week, in advance of the Democratic caucus meeting. Most Democrats – other than those who have declared their support for Cervantes – haven’t said much publicly about the situation. Cervantes has declined to comment, and Garcia hasn’t returned a call from NMPolitics.net.
Traditionally, leadership battles are treated as internal, private matters. The public vote for speaker – which takes place on the first day of the legislative session – is usually a formality because Democrats have already met in secret and announced their unanimous decision of who will be speaker.
Most sources see little chance that Republicans will agree to form a coalition with Garcia, but say the GOP might agree to support Cervantes if he runs. Many also don’t discount the possibility that Luján will win over enough GOP members with promises to make the entire discussion moot.
A prior version of this posting incorrectly stated that the House Democratic caucus meets Sunday.
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It would be a good deal for Democrats, AND “Squeeker” Lujan’s son Ben Ray, if Lujan Sr were to step down or be voted out. I think the strong challenge to Congressman Lujan’s re-election bid was partly fueled by dislike of his father.
Joe Cervantes is a fine man, and one of the two House members (Ken Martinez is the other) who rescued Senator Mary Jane Garcia’s bill (SB 166, the “Baby Brianna bill”) from its SJC gutting, according to this blog. I sure would like to see Cervantes chosen as Speaker.
Some one tell me please, why any legislator of character and courage,
would support Ben Lujan’s continued speaker-ship.
Some one tell me why anyone would endorse more of the same old, same old.
What was the point of the elections?
Who could reasonably step up as a Speaker for the people?
What do we do to see that s/he is installed?
Ben Luján is exploring the possibility of forming his own bipartisan coalition
Now this has got to be the joke of the day. Like that is ever going to happen. As poorly as he has treated the House Republicans I do not think he will get even one member to support him. When House Republicans long for the day to have Rep Raymond Sanchez back as Speaker you know that they are not going to support Ben.
“Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear / And he shows ‘em, pearly white” …accordingly one can hardly imagine the sorts of promises (and thinly veiled threats) that are now being made behind closed doors.
Martinez is wrong to think that the oil and gas companies left the state because of environmental rules. Just today a spokesman for some gas company in Farmington was talking about moving to Pennsylvania. Gas and oil only care about profit. They put Martinez in the Round House to get rid of environmental rules so that after they pollute the ground water in states like New York,Pennsylvania and West Virginia they can come back here and do the same. Of course this is several years down the road and Martinez will be long gone. The way to balance the budget is by rolling back the Richardson tax breaks, not by thinking that oil and gas revenues are going to go up.
This is predictable, Ben knows how to form coalitions. If he could promise to support measures the GOP and Gov. Martinez want, like dissolving the EIB and NMED and repealing the GHG ruling as well as repealing the pit rules, that would go a long way toward keeping Ben in office. This could be a very interesting version of “Let’s Make A Deal”.