All Signs Point to Lujan Return as Speaker

“Off the record” was the theme of the day on Friday as Newsnm continued to survey elected officials from around the state regarding the prospects for a change in the Speaker of the House. On Thursday this site posed the following question: “Is Tom Taylor (NM House Minority Leader) a Leader or a Spectator? We think we now have enough input to suggest that neither Tom Taylor nor Minority Whip Keith Gardner have organized a cohesive unit of politically instinctive Republicans in the House. Instead, it appears that Republican House members are a fragmented and disorganized collection of individuals. Newsnm contributors Heath Haussamen (NMPolitics.net) and Rob Nikolewski (Capitol Report New Mexico) suggested this might be the case over the last two days in our discussion segments on the radio show. 

Tom Taylor

The bottom line? It seems that House Republicans are not the least bit inclined to choose leaders that will band them together to vote for an alternative Democrat in the Speaker position despite the fact that this step would enable them to take a seat at the policy making table as apportioned equals.

Naturally Newsnm draws these conclusions without the benefit of “on the record” comments we can publish. Fearing vindictive backlash from current speaker Ben Lujan, nearly all of the input we received was the "off the record" variety. Often we were forced to corroborate multiple second hand inputs from various sub-sources. Still, the consistency of descriptions we received regarding the passive attitudes of the House Republicans was unmistakable. They strongly suggest that their voters have leadership in place that is hardly ready to advance its fortunes via across the aisle cooperation and consensus building. The preference seems to be to "sit back" and see what happens.

Keith Gardner

Accordingly, constituents in this state that delivered eight new Republican House members for leadership to work with are likely to have to wait for the next generation of leadership. One week ago, on November 13th, the House Republican caucus gave the first signs of its intent to render the numerical advancement of the 2010 balance in headcounts as a mere footnote in New Mexico political history when it opted for a passive approach to their increased numbers. What is likely to happen in Santa Fe today is the emergence from a relatively mild behind the scenes fray of a weakened but still triumphant House Speaker Ben Lujan. And in the words of one observer we spoke to (of the record of course), because the House still seems to always do what it always did, “Each and every member in the New Mexico House of Representatives will richly deserve to continue to always get exactly what they have always got.”

All Signs Point to Lujan Return as Speaker