House GOP picks Taylor as leader

House Republicans on Saturday elected Rep. Tom Taylor of Farmington as minority floor leader.

They also elected Rep. Dan Foley of Roswell as minority whip and Rep. Anna Crook of Clovis as chairwoman of the Republican caucus.

I told you back in May that Foley would be whip, but predicted that Rep. Brian Moore of Clayton would be the minority leader. Moore decided not to seek the position after careful consideration of his position on the appropriations and finance committee and other issues.

Rep. Terry Marquardt of Alamogordo planned to seek the leadership post, but he lost his bid for re-election last week.

Taylor beat out Rep. Larry Larranga of Albuquerque. Foley was unopposed, and Crook beat Rep. Janice E. Arnold-Jones of Albuquerque.

The GOP had hoped to go into the 2007 legislative session with 31 seats in the 70-member House, but voters didn’t allow it. Republicans picked up a couple of seats and lost a couple of others, and overall hold 28 seats, just like they did before the election.

At 31, there would be a greater balance of power on committees in the House.

While we’re on the subject of the Republican Party, I want to comment on a news release it sent out last week.

The release is headlined “NM GOP Holds Its Own, New Mexico Republicans Buck National Election Trend.” It claims that, as GOP officials were voted out of office across the nation, the same wasn’t true in New Mexico.

For example, it pointed out, New Hampshire’s Democratic governor won re-election with 78 percent of the vote and Democrats gained ground in that state’s legislature, while “Gov. Bill Richardson and the state Democratic Party failed to alter the political landscape in New Mexico.”

The party cites the re-elections of Steve Pearce and Pat Lyons to office and the likely re-election of Heather Wilson. It also points out that the GOP picked up two seats in the House, but fails to mention the other two it lost.

One very true statement in the release points out that the GOP “for the first time in 20 years fielded a full slate of statewide candidates, most of whom ran competitive races against a Democratic Party that has controlled the legislature and state government for seventy-seven years.”

If you look at it that way, the GOP did hold its own. However, coming off the felony convictions of the last two Democratic state treasurers and other scandals that have rocked state government in recent years, voters in New Mexico had as much reason to send Democrats packing as they did Republicans who were plagued by scandal at the federal level. The political landscape was different here than it was across much of the nation.

Despite that, in Doña Ana County, Democrats made gains, picking up two House seats, one county commission seat, and a seat on the state Public Education Commission. The treasurer scandal received far less media coverage here than around the rest of the state.

In a year in which both parties were plagued with scandal, either could spin this election as a victory, because they both held their own. The reality is that it was just about a zero gain for either party statewide because it was a victory for neither.

New Mexicans went for the status quo.