{"id":691,"date":"2006-10-10T07:35:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-10T13:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/10\/sun-news-says-richardson-should-debate\/"},"modified":"2006-10-10T07:35:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-10T13:35:00","slug":"sun-news-says-richardson-should-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/10\/sun-news-says-richardson-should-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Sun-News says Richardson should debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Las Cruces Sun-News on Monday joined the choir of news organizations calling on Gov. Bill Richardson to debate Republican challenger John Dendahl. You can read the newspaper\u2019s editorial by clicking here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Since Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> has not agreed to a debate, here\u2019s another column written by Dendahl. The article about former New Mexico State University Student Regent Felicia Ybarra\u2019s battle with Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> was published in the Albuquerque Journal<\/a> on Aug. 21, 2003, and was taken directly from Dendahl\u2019s Web site<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Student Regent Put NMSU Duty First<\/p>\n

By John Dendahl<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cFelicia Ybarra is a young mother, the student member of the New Mexico State University Board of Regents and an appointee who does not bend gracefully to the governor\u2019s will.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cYbarra has lived nearly all her 22 years in Las Cruces<\/st1:city><\/st1:place>. She has attended NMSU for four years while working part-time to pay her way, and told me in a phone conversation of her long devotion to her university.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cGov. Bill Richardson appointed Ybarra. Like all but one other of his appointees as university regents, she provided the undated letter of resignation he demanded.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWhether Richardson<\/st1:city><\/st1:place> can date one of those and \u2018accept\u2019 the purported resignation is an important constitutional question. Ybarra has loaded that course with political peril.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIn addition to Ybarra, Richardson has appointed two other NMSU regents \u2014 Steve Anaya, a nephew of former Democratic governor Toney Anaya, and Robert Gallagher, an adviser to Richardson when he was secretary of energy.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIt might have been a foregone conclusion that these three Richardson<\/st1:city><\/st1:place> appointees would control the march at NMSU. Sometimes, though, things don\u2019t work out quite as planned. First, together with holdover regent Laura Coniff this lineup comprised four Democrats, one more than the three-of-one-party constitutional limit. Ybarra was told she would have to change her registration.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThat took several weeks because voter registrations in Do\u00f1a<\/st1:placename> Ana<\/st1:placename> County<\/st1:placename><\/st1:place> were closed for a local election. Her confirmation by the Senate was completed after the registration delay.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cGallagher was clearly the governor\u2019s choice for board president. He pressed for a meeting on the earliest date specified for this election. Coniff, however, was nominated by the other holdover regent, James Manatt, and was elected president. <\/p>\n

\n

\u201cYbarra voted with the majority in a 3-2 decision, thus exercising the independent judgment expected of a university regent. Gallagher refused nomination as vice president, saying he didn\u2019t have time for that position.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe governor\u2019s men, Anaya and Gallagher, since have found themselves in the minority on one 3-2 vote effectively deferring election of an interim president and another on a tuition increase.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cYbarra cast a soundly-reasoned vote in each case, one that was in the best interest of her university rather than an implied political directive from the governor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cNMSU lost its accreditation about 70 years ago on account of being corrupted by politicization. Now, Ybarra says she is feeling intense political heat.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cSummoned to a meeting with the governor near the end of July, she went to his office accompanied by her mother. She says the governor\u2019s deputy chief of staff sat through the meeting, but her mother was barred.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cYbarra says Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> told her to resign from the NMSU board and accept a position on the Commission on Higher Education; she politely declined.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201c\u2018Flabbergasted\u2019 is how the governor\u2019s office characterizes his reaction. \u2018Furious\u2019 probably comes closer.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe governor is likely pondering that undated letter of resignation. As he does, he\u2019d better have the right answer to this question: <\/span>If it were the intent of the people that the governor run our universities, why does their state constitution:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2022 \u201cEstablish regents of these institutions with terms of specific duration;<\/p>\n

\n

\u2022 \u201cEnumerate three specific grounds for removing a regent, among which one cannot find anything resembling or even suggesting disagreement with the governor;<\/p>\n

\n

\u2022 \u201cGive the state Supreme Court exclusive jurisdiction over proceedings for a regent\u2019s removal?<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cFelicia Ybarra\u2019s stand may encourage other regents to act as if their duty is owed to the universities, not to the man who holds their resignations.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Las Cruces Sun-News on Monday joined the choir of news organizations calling on Gov. Bill Richardson to debate Republican challenger John Dendahl. You can read the newspaper\u2019s editorial by clicking here. Since Richardson has not agreed to a debate, here\u2019s another column written by Dendahl. The article about former New Mexico State University Student […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}