The Roundhouse in Santa Fe (Photo by Peter St. Cyr)
Legislative sessions focused on redistricting force state lawmakers to consider how much longer they want to serve. It’s a time when some decide to call it quits.
The question is, who’s planning to retire from the Legislature next year?
One retirement is well-known: State Rep. Al Park, D-Albuquerque, will give up his House seat in 2012 to run for the Public Regulation Commission. Because everyone knew he was retiring, Park was redistricted out of his legislative seat in the plan approved by the lawmakers last week.
What about others? There are all sorts of rumors, but they’re clearly not all true. Several lawmakers told me last week that they were certain Rep. Dianne Hamilton, R-Silver City, planned to retire next year. In fact, according to reporter Milan Simonich, Minority Leader Tom Taylor announced Hamilton’s retirement publicly last week.
But Hamilton shot that announcement down quickly.
“If I don’t get my voter ID bill through, I will run again,” Hamilton was quoted by Simonich as saying shortly after Taylor’s announcement. Hamilton has pushed voter ID legislation for years, thus far without success.
So Hamilton’s future is up in the air.
Here’s one question I can answer: Rep. Mary Helen Garcia, D-Las Cruces, told me last week that she will seek another term next year. Rumors that she might retire were widespread.
What about the speaker?
One of the big questions is whether House Speaker Ben Luján, D-Nambé, will seek re-election next year. Conventional wisdom suggests it might be a good time for him to bow out.
For starters, he nearly lost his primary race in 2010 against a little-known challenger who worked hard and showed that there’s a hunger in Luján’s district for new blood.
Internal Democratic Party politics are also an issue. Luján survived a challenge for his leadership position from Rep. Joseph Cervantes last year, but the challenge and the new dynamics in the House – 36 Democrats, 33 Republicans and one independent – mean Luján can’t rule with an iron fist like he once did.
Under that new reality Luján has looked at times like he’s lost, unable to build consensus among his members and unsure of what to do about it. The most recent example was the House’s failure to pass a congressional redistricting plan because a handful of Southern New Mexico Democrats didn’t want to give up the 2nd Congressional District to Republicans.
Some speculate that Luján has hung around this long because he wanted to protect his son, U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján, in congressional redistricting this year. Redistricting is heading to the courts and out of Luján’s hands, and it’s unclear what the state’s three U.S. House districts will look like at the end of the battle. Will the younger Luján’s 3rd District keep its large Democratic majority, as his father wants? Or will the 2nd District get more Democrats, as Cervantes wants?
Time will tell. In the meantime, the elder Luján’s 2012 plans remain a topic on the minds of many at the Roundhouse.