Special session was a disastrous waste of money

Turns out, Democrats have a mind of their own.

You can see it in the fallout from Joe Biden’s weak debate performance, when the president showed his age.

And you could see it in last week’s special session of the New Mexico Legislature, when Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham attempted to run roughshod over her party with poorly vetted legislation.

It should have been a humbling experience from our second-term governor, who has been getting things done her way for nearly six years now. But instead of coming out, hat in hand, to apologize for her failed party leadership this time around, she declared that lawmakers “should be embarrassed” for their lack of “courage” to, well, do what she wanted them to do.

Of course, if anyone should be embarrassed, it’s the governor. She’s the one who failed to listen to her fellow Democrats when they told her they weren’t ready to pass her crime package. Instead, she behaved more like a bully, telling the lawmakers to do it anyway and forcing them into a special session they weren’t ready for. The result was a five-hour session and a single, beefed up “feed bill” (to pay for a useless session and provide relief to wildfire victims in the Ruidoso area, among other stop-gap measures) that was passed and sent to the governor.

Then, the Democratic majority chose to shut down the session and go home.

Of course, the governor can call up another special session and I won’t be surprised it she does. But if she doesn’t take another tact, 2024 could be the most embarrassing year of her tenure as governor.

No one disagrees that violent crime in this state needs to be addressed, especially in the Albuquerque area, where a recent report showed violent crime to be three times higher than the national per-capita rate.

How to go about addressing the issue is where the disagreement begins.

A week before the special session, a coalition of typically Democrat-friendly organizations sent a letter to the governor urging her to nix the session, saying there’s a lack of a consensus on the governor’s plan to address homelessness and mental health as they relate to crime. But the governor’s office minimized the letter and the governor continued full speed ahead to hold the session.

This whole thing reminds me of Bill Clinton’s career in politics. In his first term as Arkansas’ governor, he moved too far left and was thrown out of office after only one term. He made a comeback as a centrist Democrat and became far more effective as the state’s governor and Democratic Party leader. 

That helped to vault Clinton onto the national stage and, in 1992, he was elected president. Then, after two years with a friendly Congress, he ran up against the Republicans’ “Contract With America” and lost the House majority, and, again he pivoted to the middle and became more effective in getting things done. It also got him re-elected.

Maybe Lujan Grisham’s been spoiled with a too-friendly legislature. As governor she’s always enjoyed supermajority Democratic Party control over the state Legislature.

Maybe she needs to be humbled before she sends her party over a cliff.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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