Ambitious senator is shadow of old self
State Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto won’t talk publicly about his goal, but he wants to ascend to president pro tem of the chamber.
That’s not the only reason Ivey-Soto has a lean and hungry look.
He’s lost more than 50 pounds since the regular legislative session ended Feb. 20.
“This morning I was at 167,” he said Wednesday upon his return to the Capitol. “At the end of the last session I was hovering between 220 and 225.”
Ivey-Soto, D-Albuquerque, arrived for a special legislative session absent all his old baggage. He instead carried plenty of one-liners, many of them inspired by the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“I social distanced from my refrigerator,” he said to fellow senators. “Tough to eat with a mask on,” he wrote in a text message.
Ivey-Soto told me his real motivation was personal responsibility.
“I have a 6-year-old daughter, and decided I need to be here for her,” he said.
At 53, he is in his eighth year in the Senate. Ivey-Soto has become so well known for picking apart legislation that colleagues have turned his name into a verb.
“They Ivey-Sotoed my bill,” legislators will say, never with happiness.
Sen. Mark Moores, R-Albuquerque, once saw one of his bills shelved by a persnickety committee of the House of Representatives. “What happened?” other senators asked.
“It was like being in a room with 10 Ivey-Sotos,” Moores said.
Ivey-Soto is a former prosecutor, former teacher and former state elections director. In addition to his part-time work as a nonsalaried senator, he is executive director of the group representing the state’s 33 county clerks.
Most of the clerks wanted to conduct this month’s primary election by mail-in ballots. They said that system would be safer than in-person voting during the pandemic.
The state Republican Party, on a losing streak and always eager to claim mail-in ballots would lead to election fraud, sued to stop the initiative.
Ivey-Soto argued the clerks’ case before the state Supreme Court. The justices dealt him a rare defeat in a 5-0 decision. They said state law did not allow for an election carried out by mail.
In the last decade, Ivey-Soto had faced off many times with Republican legislators who wanted to pass a state law requiring photo identification to vote. He bested the Republicans each time.
They had scant evidence of in-person voter fraud. But a photo identification requirement for voters in nursing homes and impoverished communities might have suppressed turnout in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans.
Since this month’s primary election, Ivey-Soto’s name has been associated with another high-profile story.
He is interested in what some consider the top job in the Senate, that of president pro tem.
Political newcomer Carrie Hamblen this month defeated Sen. Mary Kay Papen of Las Cruces in the Democratic primary. Papen, 88, has been president pro tem of the Senate since 2013.
Ivey-Soto is among a few senators who have told colleagues they want to succeed Papen in the leadership position.
The president pro tem can be influential in shaping the priorities of the Senate. Whoever holds the job also plays a role in deciding who chairs Senate committees, where legislation can fly at jet speed or die from inattention.
The process of lining up support already is underway, even though Papen’s term runs through the end of the year.
Ivey-Soto won’t talk about his ambition.
“No comment,” he said when I mentioned his interest in being president pro tem.
His reasons for holding back are good ones.
He faces a Republican opponent, Sandra Rausch, in the November general election. Open talk of wanting the pro tem job would seem presumptuous.
In addition, all 42 senators, Demo
crats and Republicans, vote for the president pro tem. A Democrat trying to find supporters in the rival party tiptoes as much as possible.
Papen, a conservative Democrat, won the job of president pro tem in part by gaining support from Republicans.
But Republican backers might not be as important as they were when Papen outmanuevered Sen. Pete Campos, D-Las Vegas, for the job.
Democrats control the Senate 26-16. They are likely to hold a solid majority again after the fall election.
Primary voters swept out Papen and four other conservative Democrats. It’s possible Ivey-Soto, a senator who’s in step with the liberal wing of the chamber, won’t need to seek favor from Republicans.
The new Ivey-Soto has a lot of politicking to do, before and probably after the general election.
Slender and faster on his feet, he looks like he could go 10 rounds. The bell hasn’t rung, at least not officially, but Ivey-Soto is in the fight.