“If they bust me up, so be it. I’ve been on the back row before,” Sen. Tim Jennings, D-Roswell, told me in November.
The majority of Senate Democrats made public their intention to do just that on Sunday by nominating Sen. Carlos Cisneros, D-Questa, to replace Jennings as the Senate’s president in January.
Jennings has been under fire from members of his own party since he recorded a robocall and radio ad denouncing attacks against outgoing Senate Minority Whip Leonard Lee Rawson, R-Las Cruces, just before Rawson lost his re-election bid on Nov. 4. Rawson was a top target of the governor and many other Democrats, but he was part of a loose coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats — including Jennings — who have been the only real check on the governor’s power in recent years.
The secret-ballot vote to oust Jennings took place at a caucus meeting at the Isleta Casino and Resort outside Albuquerque. At the meeting, Senate Democrats voted to keep Michael Sanchez of Belen as their majority leader, Mary Jane Garcia of Doña Ana as their whip and David Ulibarri of Grants as their caucus chairman.
The question now is whether the Senate’s Republicans and conservative Democrats will join forces to try to stop the attempt by the majority of Senate Democrats to replace Jennings with Cisneros. The vote on who will become Senate president won’t take place until the Legislature convenes in January, when there will be 27 Democrats and 15 Republicans in the Senate.
Those Democrats generally considered to be among the group of conservatives who might band with Republicans to keep Jennings in the leadership position include John Arthur Smith of Deming and Mary Kay Papen of Las Cruces. One question will be whether, if Cisneros becomes president, Smith is able to retain his position as chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee.
Cisneros, who has been a senator since 1985, told The Santa Fe New Mexican that he doesn’t believe enough Democrats will join with Republicans to keep Jennings in the position, but Jennings indicated to that newspaper and the Albuquerque Journal that he intends to fight for the job.
Sanchez told The New Mexican that he hopes to have the matter resolved before the formal Senate floor vote at the start of the session — which, since he is the majority leader, means he hopes to ensure that Cisneros gets the job.
There’s precedent for what Jennings apparently intends to try to do. In 2001, Richard Romero, backed by a bipartisan coalition, ousted Manny Aragon to become the Senate’s president.