RINGSIDE SEAT
Welcome to New Mexico, the Land of Stagnation.
If I’ve learned anything about governors, it’s that some of them don’t want to govern. It sounds strange, but it’s true. Some governors love campaigning — the pulse of the crowds, the meetings with affluent donors, the thrill of the chase. Then, once elected, they’re bored by the administrative duties of the office.
New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez was a good campaigner who never got beyond the handful of talking points she used in appealing for votes. If she wasn’t bored by the job, she fooled me and plenty of others.
Now Martinez is hosting the National Governors Association’s summer convention in Santa Fe. Shoptalk will flow about good government, best practices and all the weighty matters of running a state.
The conventioneers aren’t likely to learn much about the host state and its troubles. So here’s an inside look at how Martinez performed.
She promised the most transparent administration in state history. She delivered one of the more opaque, stonewalling governments anywhere.
Martinez had no original thoughts, so she followed the formulaic Republican playbook. She vetoed a $1 increase in the statewide minimum wage of $7.50 an hour. About the same time, she cut taxes for corporations. Weak-kneed Democrats in the Legislature helped her implement the corporate tax breaks.
These cuts threw state finances into chaos for two years. New Mexico couldn’t pay its bills, and its credit rating was downgraded.
Martinez said the tax cuts would attract more companies and create good jobs. Instead, New Mexico’s unemployment rate has been among the highest in the nation.
This was no regional downturn. Neighboring states boomed while New Mexico competed with Alaska to avoid last place in joblessness.
Any hope of building a diversified economy died in Martinez’s first term. New Mexico is as dependent as ever on oil drilling and federal installations.
Martinez copied former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s program of grading public schools on an A-through-F scale. The formula Martinez’s administration devised to grade schools is so arcane that almost nobody understands it or believes in it.
Following Bush’s lead again, she attempted to hold back third-graders by the thousands, saying they were unprepared to go forward because they couldn’t read. Her proposal failed in the Legislature for eight consecutive years. But, in a turnabout just last week, Martinez claimed credit for what she characterized as improved scores on standardized achievement tests. All those illiterate kids somehow found success, at least according to Martinez.
She has tried to take credit for even the most ordinary work of government, such as revising and signing the state budget.
Martinez still spreads her big lie about inheriting “the largest deficit in history” and then balancing the budget.
First, there was no deficit. Martinez took office in January 2011, the middle of a fiscal year. The budget she inherited was balanced because of deep cuts made during the national recession by state legislators and her predecessor as governor, Democrat Bill Richardson.
Second, legislators in 2011 crafted a plan that balanced the budget for the forthcoming fiscal year, and they did it before Martinez finished her first week in office. She did none of the heavy lifting.
Martinez surrounded herself with sycophants. Her first Cabinet secretary of education, Hanna Skandera, had never worked a day as a teacher or a school administrator. Skandera had served in Bush’s Department of Education in Florida. She told Martinez what the governor wanted to hear about the greatness of charter schools and the sloth of large, traditional public school districts.
Martinez regularly appointed political donors and hacks to university boards of regents, continuing the sorry habit of Democrats and Republicans who served as governor before her.
The five regents she placed in power at New Mexico State University pushed out well-regarded Chancellor Garrey Carruthers this summer. Carruthers, himself a former Republican governor of New Mexico, had guided the school through Martinez’s miserable tax cuts and the declining revenues that followed.
Martinez also vetoed funding for colleges and universities in 2017, a mindless maneuver that hurt the state’s economy. Legislators and Martinez later restored funding for higher education, but Martinez’s veto hampered universities trying to retain students and recruit faculty members.
Ten of her other vetoes were executed so incompetently that the state Supreme Court overturned them. This allowed a bill for research of industrial hemp to become law. Martinez had twice vetoed this potential jobcreating measure, claiming she was worried that police might confuse hemp with its more intoxicating cousin, the marijuana plant.
Martinez spent much of the 2016 campaign season criticizing fellow Republican Donald Trump. But after Trump won the presidency, Martinez heaped praise on him.
Her attempt to gain favor with Trump has continued during one of his administration’s more shameful periods. Martinez supported Trump’s policy of separating young, immigrant children from their parents and then caging the kids in detention centers on America’s southern border.
Martinez’s two terms as governor are a time that many state residents would like to forget. The convention that has brought her colleagues to town is her last hurrah in Santa Fe.
Her fellow governors might not know it, but they are in the Land of Stagnation. That is the sad state of New Mexico after more than seven years under Martinez.