Richardson gets involved in House speaker race, which both sides are now calling a dead heat

The race for speaker of the House is nearly tied and, with the apparent entering of Gov. Bill Richardson into the fray, a lot could still happen before Monday’s leadership vote.

Former Rep. Hector Balderas, D-Wagon Mound, resigned on Thursday. As the state auditor-elect, Balderas didn’t seek re-election to his House seat, and his term was set to expire at the end of the month.

As I’m sure you recall, Balderas jumped into the auditor race so late that there was no one on the ballot for the House seat in November, so it will be filled by a Richardson appointee.

Balderas’ resignation gives Richardson time to appoint a replacement who can cast a vote when House Democrats meet Monday afternoon to elect leaders. The governor can only consider the names of those nominated by county commissions within House District 68.

The speaker race is apparently so close that the vote of the District 68 representative has become critical to whether Ben Lujan of Santa Fe keeps the position or Ken Martinez of Grants takes over. Sources tell me Richardson is pushing for a Lujan victory.

House District 68 encompasses five counties in Northern New Mexico. On Monday – just four days after Balderas’ resignation – the Guadalupe County Commission voted to send the name of Thomas Garcia, deputy district director for U.S. Rep. Tom Udall, to the governor for consideration. On Tuesday, the San Miguel County Commission did the same.

The Colfax, Mora and Taos county commissions are expected to send names to the governor by Thursday. Richardson will likely appoint the new representative before Monday’s caucus meeting.

Sources tell me Garcia, a longtime friend and supporter of Lujan, is almost certain to get the appointment.

In a state where government moves slowly, the fact that five county commissions will act within a four-day period on such short notice is evidence of how close the speaker race is. Let’s hope the commissions properly noticed their meetings.

Richardson’s office didn’t have any immediate comment Tuesday afternoon, and Lujan didn’t return a call. Balderas said there’s a good reason he resigned on Thursday that has nothing to do with the speaker battle.

He said outgoing Auditor Domingo Martinez offered him an immediate job so he could access personnel files and begin the transition. But Domingo Martinez thought it would be awkward to have a legislator going through personnel files in the auditor’s office, so he wanted Balderas to resign his seat first. Balderas waited until committee meetings finished, then did that.

“Now I have access to the office,” Balderas said. “This probably would have happened regardless of the speaker’s race.”

As to whether there is a plan to replace him with a Lujan supporter, Balderas said he has “not been a part of any discussions of that type of strategy.” He also said he could not have predicted the impact his resignation might have on the speaker battle.

Several sources on both sides confirmed that Lujan and Ken Martinez are separated by two or three votes at most, with several legislators on the fence. Many veteran lawmakers are apparently supporting Martinez, but some freshman House Democrats, including Jeff Steinborn and Nate Cote of Las Cruces, remain undecided, or at least noncommittal.

Cote told me he is leaning toward supporting Lujan.

Another swing vote could be that of Peter Wirth of Santa Fe. He is generally known as a more independent Democrat, but he has to work closely with Lujan on local issues, so he’ll be pressured to support his bid for speaker.

The vote will be by secret ballot. In past years, House Democrats wrote the names of those they supported on ballots, but this year, the ballots will be pre-printed and require a checkmark or circle, so representatives won’t have to fear that they’ll be identified by their handwriting.

Martinez said he’s confident he will be elected speaker.

“It’s my sense that we’re winning. We have both the numbers and momentum,” he said Tuesday night. “I’m in it to win it.”

Lujan has made similar public proclamations – and even said he has a comfortable lead – but the lengths he and others are going to in an attempt to secure the vote of the vacant House seat don’t inspire such confidence in his existing support.

Martinez, who spoke publicly for the first time about his decision to seek the speaker position, said every two years, a group of supporters have asked him to consider running for speaker, and every time he’s deferred to Lujan.

Until now.

“It just seemed that this year the support and circumstances made this the time to do it,” he said, without elaborating. “I’m in it to win it.”

In response to the House District 68 situation, Martinez said he hopes the governor isn’t getting involved.

“If the governor’s getting involved in a legislative leadership race, it’s a bad idea for both the executive and the legislative branches,” he said. “When you start blurring the lines between the branches of government, you start losing your checks and balances.”

Richardson doesn’t have to make an appointment before Monday’s caucus meeting. Several sources told me they were under the impression that Richardson would wait until new county commissioners took office in January and then begin the process of filling the seat.

That apparently changed. If he does appoint Garcia before the caucus meeting, Richardson will be endorsing Lujan.

That would be a gamble for a governor who wants to be president. Lujan has worked closely with Richardson for the past four years, so the governor might want him to continue in the leadership position. He might not want the position to go to Martinez, who led the charge several years ago to override the governor’s veto of money appropriated for Legislative Council Services – money the governor vetoed because he was upset that the Senate defied him.

But Lujan has been linked, albeit tenuously at this point, to the massive state housing authority scandal. The Albuquerque Journal reported recently that Lujan’s secretary had been living rent-free in a home provided by a lobbyist who is a close friend of Lujan – a lobbyist who was also, at the time, running the housing authority that owned the home.

The Journal is working on another article exploring ties between Lujan and that lobbyist, former legislator Vincent “Smiley” Gallegos. The newspaper plans to publish the article before Monday’s caucus meeting, I’m told.

Does the governor want to risk siding with Lujan when it could come back to bite him? Some Martinez supporters told me they think the governor should consider what would happen if scandal erupts around Lujan in a few days, weeks or months. Talk of the scandal would have begun long before Richardson helped Lujan keep the speaker position.

If the governor does fill the vacant House seat this week, there will be 42 Democrats casting votes on Monday, so it will take 22 to elect a speaker. If he doesn’t, it will take 21 votes.