When Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham talks about John Arthur Smith, the powerful chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, she notes they like to rib each another.
“I like to tease that, that guy never supported a single thing I asked for,” Lujan Grisham says of Smith. “We have a good relationship and so I capitalize on that.”
Entering her second year as New Mexico’s chief executive, it’s clear Lujan Grisham prides herself on the ability to win people over. And she’ll likely discover just how powerful her persuasive powers are later this month with the state Senate, a wary group that wasn’t known for giving her what she wanted in her first year as governor.
In the 2020 legislative session, the governor knows she will need to capture the hearts and minds of Senate Democrats — particularly more conservative ones like Smith — who were key to blocking progressive legislation she supported a year ago.
Those proposals included the legalization of recreational marijuana, an “extreme risk protection” gun bill and efforts to find long-term funding for early childhood education. Eight Senate Democrats also joined all 16 Republicans in voting down a bill that would have repealed an anti-abortion law.
The governor is putting most — but perhaps not all — of these same initiatives on her agenda again for the session that opens with her State of the State address Jan. 21.
These items — popular in some corners, problematic in others — likely will be the benchmarks that determine whether her 2020 legislative agenda triumphs.
In a wide-ranging interview with The New Mexican last week, Lujan Grisham suggested her relationship-building in the past year has helped turn a corner with influential legislators such as Smith on issues like early childhood education.
“I have no doubt that we will get a fair hearing in Senate Finance,” she said, referring to one of the committees that will hear about a bill to create a new fund for early childhood education. “And while I can’t tell you that Senator Smith will vote for $320 million, he will vote, in my opinion, on a fund for some sizable amount.”
“And I say that’s a win,” she added.
Compared to 10 months ago, it is a turnaround.
Smith, a Deming Democrat whose command of the state’s budget is prodigious, is a fiscal conservative who last year refused to put to a committee vote a proposal to use a larger share of the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund to pay for prekindergarten programs — even after Lujan Grisham advocated for it before the panel with her 3-year-old granddaughter in tow.
The governor acknowledged getting the funding she wants from Smith and the Senate Finance Committee hasn’t been easy.
“When he is holding and balancing that checkbook and worried about the state’s revenues, it’s a very tough situation for someone like me to be in because he wants to know when we stop spending money,” she said. “We don’t stop.”
Yet the governor has made inroads with the senator, at least on early childhood funding. When asked last week, Smith confirmed he was supportive of the bill — in fact, he’s even co-sponsoring it.
Instead of using the land grant fund, which Smith still opposes, the proposed legislation would create a new permanent fund that receives distributions from the state’s oil and gas emergency school tax and revenue from federal mineral leases.
“I’m on board and that’s a modification,” Smith said. “And, quite frankly, I think her position is probably a modification. And if you put those together, that’s true compromise.”
What changed Smith’s mind? First and foremost, it was the state’s unprecedented oil revenues. He noted he was never against finding more funding for early childhood education; he just believed the land grant fund should not be touched.
Now that the state has more money at its disposal, it can create a different source of funding for early childhood, he said.
He added that recent conversations on the issue have been more “civil” than in previous years, when he received angry phone calls from advocates and even faced a student protest at the University of New Mexico where law enforcement was called in.
Lujan Grisham said she’s made an effort to approach the issue from a fact-based position rather than with personal attacks.
“As soon as I committed to have it just be professional, I got a different response out of that committee,” she said, referring to the Senate Finance Committee.
The “teasing” with Smith was just one example the governor gave as she described her efforts to build relationships with lawmakers — and not just Democrats, who hold overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate. Last week, she said she had dinner with conservative Republican Rep. Bill Rehm and his wife to talk about his crime legislation.
There was also the time she tried to persuade Sen. Richard Martinez to support an “extreme risk” gun bill, pleading with him that her youngest daughter had just been “locked in a supply room” to hide from a nearby shooting threat in California. Martinez, D-Ojo Caliente, still said he wouldn’t support it, but the governor plans to try again.
“We’re assuming he’s still going to be a no, but we’re going to talk to him,” she said. “Every single legislator.”
Nevertheless, it’s clear Lujan Grisham believes she has made progress on a so-called red-flag bill that would allow law enforcement to obtain a court order to remove guns from people considered dangerous. Stymied in the Senate a year ago, she said she now sees a “clearer path” to its approval in the Senate.
That’s partly because Roberto “Bobby” Gonzales, whom the governor recently named to fill the Senate seat that had been occupied by the late Carlos Cisneros, plans to vote for the bill, while Cisneros had opposed it, Lujan Grisham said. The legislation might also benefit from Martinez’s decision to step down as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee after he was convicted last month on charges of aggravated drunken driving and reckless driving.
The Senate Judiciary Committee might now get a chairman who is more favorable to the bill. In fact, Sen. Joe Cervantes of Las Cruces, defeated by Lujan Grisham in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 2018, is sponsoring the gun legislation in the Senate, and could potentially succeed Martinez as chairman.
Asked about this, Cervantes said he did not know who the Senate Committees’ Committee would choose as the next chairperson — a decision the panel is expected to make shortly after the start of the session.
He did say he appreciated the governor’s efforts to reach out to senators on key issues ahead of the session.
“The governor is right to recognize that we’re all going to accomplish a lot more working together,” Cervantes said. “I’m confident as time goes on those relationships will strengthen.”
Another potential convert, the governor said, could be Senate President Pro Tem Mary Kay Papen.
Papen, D-Las Cruces, said she couldn’t comment until she read the bill. But she did say she had been meeting often with the Governor’s Office.
“I think the working relationship has improved,” Papen said. “It’s not always about changing people’s minds, but working together.”
However, no matter how much relationship-building the governor does, it doesn’t mean efforts like the gun bill will prevail. Even if the planned early childhood fund goes through, Lujan Grisham could still face an uphill battle in winning approval for other issues she’s prioritizing.
Lujan Grisham said she’s not sure whether an abortion bill will be on her agenda, but the gun and cannabis efforts will.
Support in the House isn’t much of a worry. Democrats have a 46-24 majority, and some important bills the governor is putting on her call already passed in the House last year before failing in the Senate.
“It doesn’t mean the House won’t play an important role,” said Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, “but these bills that didn’t get over the line last year, they’re back and the question is: Can we get them over the line?”
The Senate, its denizens note, is a far different body.
“If you go to the House chamber, you might find two or three Democrats that are mavericks, but for the most part it’s do as instructed,” Smith said. “The Senate doesn’t operate that way. They’re independent mavericks.”
Papen didn’t strike an overly optimistic tone on marijuana legalization, saying she has “been skeptical in the past” on the issue. She added she wants to hear more debate on potential negative effects of such a measure.
“Everyone talks about the upside,” she said. “What is the downside?”
For his part, Cervantes said he has previously “taken the position that New Mexico is not ready to legalize cannabis fully.”
On the cannabis issue, it’s not only about Senate Democrats. Several Republican senators have favored the proposal in the past and could do so again. Three of them even sponsored marijuana legislation last year.
Even if some of her proposals don’t get to her desk this year, the governor said she is determined to keep building relationships and aiming for smaller wins in hopes of getting bigger ones down the road.
“I realize I won’t win everything at first effort — we keep building,” she said. “If you can have a fourth floor that operates that way, you minimize bad relationships in a Legislature.”
Last year’s efforts on early childhood education, for example, ultimately led to a compromise going into this year’s session, Lujan Grisham pointed out.
“If you never get a first down because you just have this fight and nothing changes, then guess what?” she said. “Nothing changes.”