A good walk spoiled by state land commissioner
Old Santa Fe Trail should be a splendid sight at this time of year. With the state Legislature in session for its final six days, hundreds of pedestrians and motorists traverse the street each day on their way to the Capitol.
Shops, eateries, a quaint inn and Loretto Chapel dot the path. Old Santa Fe Trail also contains the downtown area’s second-worst eyesore.
State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard continues defacing a public building with a tacky 8-foot-long political sign that pays homage to herself.
Garcia Richard’s staff used boards to fasten the sign above the entryway of the Land Office at 310 Old Santa Fe Trail. The sign says the agency raised $5.4 billion for schools since 2019. That was Garcia Richard’s first year in office.
A Democrat, Garcia Richard made sure to emblazon her name on the sign. The print seems a bit smaller than on the original sign she foisted on the Land Office, but her commitment to self-promotion remains steady.
State lands leased for oil drilling and other commercial purposes have generated vast sums of money since New Mexico became a state in 1912. In oil’s boom cycles, more cash flows into state coffers. This is one of those times.
Land commissioners come and go every four or eight years. No matter who’s in office, money arrives from public lands, especially the oil fields of the Permian Basin. Only Garcia Richard has plastered her name on promotional signs.
Self-aggrandizement also led Garcia Richard to create a coloring book about the Land Office’s most heroic figure — herself.
Garcia Richard used public employees, state money and equipment in the Land Office to design and print the coloring book. Every page depicts Garcia Richard as a sinewy replica of
Wonder Woman.
I previously wrote a column about her coloring book. Garcia Richard at the time sent me a statement saying she had good reason to highlight herself.
“As the first woman and woman of color to be elected as New Mexico’s Commissioner of Public Lands, I feel a deep responsibility to be a powerful role model to young girls everywhere,” Garcia Richard wrote.
Deep indeed. Last week alone, I received three complaints from pedestrians bothered by Garcia Richard lauding herself with a sign on a state building.
Inappropriate as her sign is, downtown Santa Fe has one object that’s worse.
A wooden box on the Plaza hides what’s left of the Soldiers’ Monument that outlaws destroyed in 2020. Mayor Alan Webber and the City Council spent about $265,000 for consultants to help generate ideas to replace the box with something meaningful. The Plaza still has nothing to show for such lavish spending.
To be seen is whether the Soldiers’ Monument will be rebuilt or replaced before Garcia Richard leaves office. She has three years and nine months to go before a less ostentatious commissioner is sworn in.
As for the obelisk that once stood on the Plaza, it had competition not so long ago as the most controversial monument in town.
Weeks before Webber took office in March 2018, a group began pressuring city government to remove a 6-foot-tall stone tablet of the Ten Commandments that stands in Ashbaugh Park.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation said a display of the Ten Commandments didn’t belong in a park or any other public property.
“It is grossly inappropriate to insinuate that the Ten Commandments are associated with the City in anyway,” Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, wrote to the city attorney.
I phoned Gaylor’s organization, based in Madison, Wis., to inquire about what had become of its complaint. Jaunty recorded music filled the time I was on hold. A man sang, “We’ve got to fight the battle of church and state, or the walls come tumbling down.”
A friendly woman told me Gaylor wasn’t available. No one rang me back, either. The weatherbeaten Ten Commandments slab remains in place on Cerrillos Road, the last known opposition in another time zone.
An inscription on the Ten Commandments tablet says the Fraternal Order of Eagles donated the monument to the city on July 13, 1968. Protests at that time centered on the war in Vietnam.
The Ten Commandments tablet in Santa Fe never drew the attention or the legal challenges a nearly identical monument did in Bloomfield, N.M. Lawsuits targeted Bloomfield’s government, which displayed the Ten Commandments in front of city hall.
A judge ruled the monument violated the First Amendment, as Bloomfield’s government appeared to promote religion.
On Cerrillos Road, Santa Fe’s monument of the Ten Commandments goes unnoticed by almost everyone. Cars speed by. Visitors to Ashbaugh Park pay it no attention. The monument is in front of a fire station rather than spots familiar to joggers or families.
As a politician working downtown, Garcia Richard’s signs probably have received more views in four years than Santa Fe’s Ten Commandments monument did in half a century.
She has location on her side. The public is another matter.
Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at msimonich@sfnewmexican. com or 505-986-3080.