A tug-of-war in ‘Little Texas’
Windfall from New Mexico’s oil boom exposes deep rifts between liberals, conservatives.
LOCO HILLS, N.M. — At the diner she manages in the heart of New Mexico’s oil country, Joni Moorhead talks to roughnecks all day long about potholed roads, cramped lodging camps, soaring rents — and state politics.
“I’d load up my guns for the fighting if we could just secede and join Texas,” said Moorhead from Loco Hills, population about 125. “They love the money from our oil up in Santa Fe. But they treat us like dirt.”
Moorhead, 42, may sound more extreme than most. But go just about anywhere in southeastern New Mexico, the deeply conservative oil-rich region known as “Little Texas,” and people are seething over a political shift to the left in the state capital.
A frenetic oil boom is laying bare this divide, while suddenly lifting one of the poorest states in the country into the top ranks of global oil producers. Normally that might be cause for celebration, but Democrats now in power in New Mexico are coming under fire on two fronts: from oil patch conservatives, for pushing to hike oil royalties and spend the windfall on progressive causes; and from environmentalists on the left, for allowing the oil boom to materialize in the first place.
After Democrats swept elections in New Mexico in 2018, they quickly enacted a “mini Green New Deal” requiring that by 2045, all electricity in the state must come from renewable energy. Going further, Democrats sought to assert greater control over the oil industry with proposed legislation to hike oil royalties and ban hydraulic fracturing.
Those bills unleashed fury in southeastern New Mexico before stalling in the state Legislature, and revealed an intensifying source of tension: Republicancontrolled areas of the state produce the state’s oil wealth, while Democrats decide how to spend it.
New Mexico recently surpassed Alaska, Oklahoma and California in oil production, and is now the third-largest oil-producing state. Skyrocketing production is bolstering the state’s traditionally fragile finances, generating a projected budget surplus of $1.3 billion for 2019.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, is moving fast to use the bonanza. New Mexico increased spending this year on early childhood programs, raised teacher salaries and, in one of the boldest state-led efforts to expand access to higher education, unveiled a plan to use surging oil income to make tuition free at public universities.
Conservatives in southeastern New Mexico have reacted with a mixture of resentment and alarm over such plans. Some question why the rest of the state should benefit from their work when their own roads and schools need funds. Mark Veteto, an oilman who is among New Mexico’s largest political donors, argued that a fracking ban could have a draconian impact.
“I’m hearing from friends in Texas, ‘What the hell is going on in New Mexico?’” said Veteto, a Republican. “We’re a pillar of the economy, we’re thriving, so it’s hard to understand why they’re going after us.”
At the same time, Lujan Grisham is facing an outcry from progressives about boosting production of fossil fuels that contribute to global warming.
“New Mexico simply needs to keep all of its oil in the ground,” said Mariel Nanasi, executive director of New Energy Economy, a Santa Fe group promoting clean energy sources. Taking aim at the plan to use oil revenues to cover university tuition, she asked, “Why does a college degree frankly matter if someone is graduating into a world of climate disaster?”
With moderate Democrats now largely in control, the multifaceted debate reflects the rearrangement of political power in what has traditionally been a swing state. The 2004 election marked the last time a Republican presidential candidate carried the state. In 2018, Democrats won every statewide office and flipped the congressional seat representing southeastern New Mexico.
Stephanie Garcia Richard, a Democrat elected last year as state land commissioner, acknowledged that people in southeastern New Mexico were chafing at her efforts to tighten control over the oil industry.
“People saw a forked tail and horns coming out of my head and they thought, ‘Garcia Richard gets elected and the entire industry dies,’” said the commissioner, a teacher who is the first woman and Latina in the post.
“We’re holding people’s feet to the fire, absolutely we are,” she said, emphasizing that her proposal to raise oil royalties to 25 percent, hotly contested by oil producers, would only match the rate in Texas. “But this state matters to me.”
After doubling output in the past two years to 900,000 barrels a day, New Mexico now produces more oil than OPEC members Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon combined.