House Voters and Elections Committee Chairwoman Mary Helen Garcia, D-Las Cruces, and Vice Chairwoman Danice Picraux, D-Albuquerque, listen to public testimony on redistricting Wednesday. (DEAN HANSON/JOURNAL)
Minority Republicans in the state Senate have largely agreed on a redistricting plan that would not require any incumbents to run against one another.
The proposal, introduced Wednesday, is one of the first signs of movement in the 9-day-old special session on a major task facing lawmakers: redrawing the boundaries of their own districts.
Senate Democrats, meanwhile, were expected to introduce their version of the map of new districts as early as today.
Members of the House and Senate have spent much of the session’s first week and a half huddled behind closed doors in party caucuses discussing new district lines.
It’s been so slow at the Capitol — from the public’s vantage point, anyway — that Rep. Paul Bandy, R-Aztec, showed up on the House floor Wednesday with golf clubs, a jab at majority Democrats for not doing more.
Democratic leaders have made it clear they want to focus first on redistricting and then worry about a list of bills Republican Gov. Susana Martinez wants them to tackle.
In addition to legislative districts, lawmakers must redraw districts for Congress, the Public Regulation Commission and the Public Education Commission.
So waiting in the wings are Martinez’s requests that lawmakers halt driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, keep third-graders from being promoted if they can’t read proficiently, expand government authority to ban fireworks, and more.
Senate Minority Leader Stuart Ingle, R-Portales, said there’s general agreement on the GOP-backed legislation, which was signed by 13 of the 15 Republican senators.
“Everybody got to look at it, and they made some changes. … You never have everybody liking everything,” Ingle said.
Basically, the map stretches many existing districts westward or northward, to account for population changes over the past decade.
Explosive growth on Albuquerque’s West Side is posing a predicament for lawmakers in both houses, who must create new legislative seats there. That means doing away with them somewhere else — perhaps pitting incumbents against one another when districts are combined.
For GOP purposes, that was resolved by the impending departure of Sen. Kent Cravens, a Republican from northeast Albuquerque.
Cravens confirmed to the Journal in a recent interview that he plans to resign after the dust from redistricting has settled, to take a governmental affairs job with the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association.
In the GOP plan introduced Wednesday, Cravens’ existing district would be carved up to bolster neighboring Republican senators’ districts — William Payne and Mark Boitano, for example, each have districts that are currently 14 percent below the ideal number — and Cravens’ district number, 21, would re-emerge in the Rio Rancho area as a new, Republican-leaning district.
At least one other senator, Democrat Eric Griego, may not be back after next year: He plans to leave the Senate to run for Congress.
— This article appeared on page A6 of the Albuquerque Journal
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