Legislative roundup.
Days remaining in session: 0 Invoking Teddy: Rep. Bill McCamley, one of the Roundhouse’s more verbose lawmakers, gave a long, emotional farewell speech Thursday.
Actually, McCamley recited former President Teddy Roosevelt’s speech from 1910 about being in the arena.
Roosevelt said (and McCamley quoted): “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming …”
At least one legislator every session cites or recites Roosevelt’s speech. McCamley did not mention his source, but Rep. Paul Bandy, R-Aztec, stood to credit the onetime Republican president.
McCamley is leaving the House of Representatives to run for state auditor. It will be a different arena for him, running statewide in a contested primary without a daily press corps covering him.
Cheering Egolf: House Republicans were effusive Thursday in praising Speaker of the House Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe.
Minority Leader Nate Gentry, R-Albuquerque, said Egolf had visited Republican strongholds and listened to the people. Then Egolf delivered for those communities, including obtaining funding for an airplane hangar for Roswell, whose delegation is made up entirely of Republicans.
“You made their priorities your priorities,” Gentry said.
Egolf also received kudos for making the House a place with more civility and more camaraderie.
A bit embarrassed, Egolf said did not deserve credit. Everyone, he said, pulled together in the interest of helping the state.
Times have changed from the days when Egolf, as a rookie committee chairman, so angered Republican members that they all walked out of a hearing because they considered him preachy.
Quote of the day: “I sat in the conference committee for the budget yesterday and it wasn’t half as confusing.” — Rep. Derrick Lente, D-Sandia Pueblo, during a meeting on a bill on local elections that totals more than 300 pages.