Second in Command

Does anyone care about the lieutenant govenor?

The constitution of the state of New Mexico gives little thought to the post: Run for office with the governor, fill in when she's gone and be president of the Senate. That takes care of about a year out of a four-year term.

State law goes a little further in figuring out just what the lieutenant governor should do to earn the $85,000 annual salary. In 1971, the Legislature wrote out a set of additional duties that read a lot like an ombudsman. While the notion of having a public official elected to help people deal with state government might seem quaint, the idea is rather noble.

The job description is also rather broad, however, and should one decide to not do very much with the post, well, the Roundhouse is his or her oyster. The chairs seem like they'd be comfortable and the A/C is reliable.

Three Democrats—State Sen. Howie Morales, former Rep. Rick Miera and Doña Ana County Commissioner Billy Garrett—have plans for the office. As they have with Steve Pearce and the governor's race, Republicans have coalesced around a single candidate: Michelle Garcia Holmes.

"It's kind of an invisible office," University of New Mexico Political Science Chairman Tim Krebs offers bluntly. "It tends not to be the stepping stone to governor … anywhere."

Indeed, New Mexico has never had a sitting lieutenant governor elected to the governor's office.

That's not to say Krebs thinks the job is unimportant; there's a lot that's not laid out very well, though. For example, state law also contains a short other-duties-as-described section: "Perform any other duties that may from time to time be assigned him by the governor."

There's the rub, and the reason many see to rewrite the way New Mexicans elect their lieutenant governor. Right now, those running for the state's second-highest office are elected in separate primary elections from gubernatorial candidates, but forced to run together on the party ticket. What if the lieutenant governor and the governor, both duly nominated in the primary election, don't get along? What if they don't even agree on the issues?

Last session, lawmakers passed a bill that would have put the burden for choosing a lieutenant governor on political parties rather than voters. Its sponsors, a pair of state senators from Albuquerque—one Republican, one Democrat—saw it as a way to solve a potential ideological divide between the top and bottom of the executive ticket. The bill passed both houses, but was never acted on by Gov. Susana Martinez, effectively a veto.

"I mean, look at the national model," Sen. Mark Moores tells SFR. He's the Republican who carried the bill with Democratic colleague Daniel Ivey-Soto. "We've had very powerful vice presidents, and vice presidents who've just sat out on the sidelines. And when the president and the vice president actually work together as a team, I think it actually helps the administration and the executive branch work better."

A chief of staff for former Lt. Gov. Walter Bradley, who served with Gary Johnson, Moores knows what he's talking about. He doesn't have a strong feeling on whether the office's statutory role of ombudsman is appropriate, but he says it's bound to work better, along with everything else, if the the governor and lieutenant governor are on the same page.

Though the bill passed the Legislature, the House and Senate debated how best to change the way lieutenant governor candidates are picked. The original bill, as Moores says, let parties choose the way they select their nominees. A floor amendment in the Senate switched it to the presidential model, where the governor would get to pick a running mate. The House changed it back to political parties.

"Our process was just to look at [the national system] as a model," Moores explains, "That whomever was elected or nominated by the parties for governor would then be able to work with their parties for their nomination for lieutenant governor, so that way they can be more of a team in campaigns and also with their administration, working together as opposed to the current arranged marriage system that New Mexico has."

Moores says he'll run the bill again in 2019, when New Mexico has a new governor and lieutenant governor.

The vague description of the office's duties doesn't cut only one way, UNM's Krebs says. Students his department has sent to intern at the Legislature have reported back with positive things to say about Lt. Gov. John Sanchez, who could not be reached for an interview by SFR.

"He seems like a guy who's devoted to bipartisan solutions and devoted to getting things done. He's respected and generally seen as professional," Krebs says.

But make no mistake: Sanchez isn't part of the Martinez crowd. When he announced plans to run for the US Senate in 2012, the governor quickly ostracized him with a terse press release stating she planned to give him no other duties beyond those outlined in the constitution and state law.

The net effect is that even if Sanchez decided to be the best ombudsman lieutenant governor the state has ever seen, it's doubtful anyone would be listening.

SFR's Pema Baldwin contributed reporting.

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