Meeting on a battleground
Visiting Democrats see N.M. as pickup opportunity; GOP tries to keep state in its column
Gov. Susana Martinez has been front and center as host for this week’s gathering of governors from around the country, but her counterparts visiting from other states have been busy making a pitch for the candidates they would like to see take over as New Mexico’s next leader.
As voters choose governors in 36 states this year, Democrats see a chance in nominee Michelle Lujan Grisham to win the top job in New Mexico after eight years of GOP leadership. In turn, they have argued the post is a potential bulwark on issues from health care to abortion and gerrymandering.
For Republicans backing nominee Steve Pearce, the New Mexico governor’s race is a matter of holding ground. And they contend that tax increases are on the line.
Ultimately, it will be up to New Mexicans.
But the interest of governors passing through has made clear that
political leaders beyond New Mexico are eager to see the Land of Enchantment swing into their column come November.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who chairs the Democratic Governors Association, told reporters Friday he is “very, very confident” about Democrats’ prospects for winning the governor’s office in New Mexico.
“This probably is the best pickup opportunity for Democrats,” he said.
The nonpartisan political newsletter Inside Election has labeled New Mexico’s gubernatorial contest as leaning Democratic, as have national political prognosticators like Larry Sabato and Charlie Cook.
And the Democratic Governors Association has given Michelle Lujan Grisham thousands of dollars’ worth of in-kind support.
Moreover, with President Donald Trump’s approval rating at 42 percent in New Mexico, according to the research firm Morning Consult, Democrats obviously see in the state an opportunity to parlay frustration with him into victory at the state level.
Inslee pointed to health care, noting that Martinez expanded access to Medicaid.
“Now, the Republican candidate — you can’t trust him on health care,” Inslee said of Pearce.
“He’s approached this from an ideological standpoint rather than the standpoint of getting people in New Mexico health care,” Inslee added.
Inslee went stumping for Lujan Grisham later that morning, appearing with her at Santa Fe Community College’s Solar Lab to talk about energy.
The Albuquerque congresswoman rolled out a 22-page clean energy plan for New Mexico designed to significantly increase production of energy from renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, biomass and geothermal. It would require that half of the power produced here come from renewable energy by 2030 and 80 percent by 2040. These proposed percentages “should be a floor, not a ceiling,” her plan says.
It also calls for restoring the solar energy tax credit, which Martinez let end in 2015 by vetoing bipartisan legislation to extend the program.
Lujan Grisham said at her event that her clean energy plan would create “incredible economic opportunities” as well as “real jobs, meaningful jobs that are sustainable over the long run in rural communities in our state.”
Inslee used the energy issue to again take a swipe at Pearce.
“You have no greater contrast
between herself and the retrograde, antediluvian, 18th-century candidate who just continues the backward-looking approach of the existing governor,” Inslee said.
Lujan Grisham’s event in Santa Fe came as Martinez, just a few miles away, took the stage at the National Governors Association for a panel discussion on women in leadership with — among others — Pat Vincent-Collawn, chairman, president and CEO of PNM Resources.
Martinez also participated in a panel on addiction and will take part in another discussion Saturday on commerce and the arts before the event ends later that evening with a party at Bonanza Creek.
Just a few minutes before the campaign event started, Pearce’s campaign blasted both Lujan Grisham and Inslee in an email saying Grisham’s energy plan would “bankrupt New Mexico.”
The email said, “New Mexico voters deserve answers from their elected leaders on where they stand on raising new taxes on energy. Instead, Lujan Grisham gives them a partisan sleight of hand while planning job-killing regulations and an energy program certain to bankrupt the state.”
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, is hosting a fundraiser for Pearce. The association blasted Inslee as a “Seattle Liberal” and “a major advocate of carbon taxes that would crush working families.”
Pearce is going into the race with more money in the bank than Lujan Grisham and the advantage of having run unopposed in the primary election. But he faces the headwinds of the political season.
Inside Politics, for example, shows several red states leaning Democratic but no blue states tilting to the right.
No one seems to want to call the midterm elections a referendum on Trump, though.
“Trump’s a factor,” Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy said, “but you’ve got to speak to the future.”
And, of course, Republicans almost inevitably will still hold the governor’s office in a majority of states after November.
Still, Inslee acknowledged that Democrats had for too long overlooked state-level races while Republicans consolidated control of Legislatures and governors’ offices around the country over the last decade.
“We have been behind the curve,” he told reporters. And it came at a cost. Democrats had what he acknowledged as a terrible year in 2010, losing ground and in turn losing a handle on the decennial redistricting process that defines the political map in states across the country.
Heading into another round of redistricting after 2020, Democrats are spending big so as not to be blown away again.