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Gov. Susana Martinez will travel to Arizona next week to deliver a speech at a conference focused on economic growth in the Mexican border region.
The nation’s first elected Hispanic female governor will travel to Arizona on Sept. 24 and deliver the address that night, her office confirmed Thursday. She is scheduled to return to New Mexico the following day.
Martinez will take a commercial flight to Arizona for the event. Her travel costs will be paid for by the state, Martinez spokesman Scott Darnell said.
Former Gov. Bill Richardson, who proceeded Martinez in office, also has been invited to speak at the event, according to the conference’s website.
The conference will be held at a Tempe conference center and is being co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce and Arizona State University.
It will be held just one week before the annual Border Governors Conference, which brings together elected leaders of ten states along both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. That gathering will be held from Oct. 3-5 at the Marriott Pyramid Hotel in Albuquerque.
Lt. Gov. John Sanchez will be traveling even farther next week, as he has signed on to a trade mission to Germany.
Sanchez will join the lieutenant governors of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Iowa and the U.S. Virgin Islands on the trip, which begins Sept. 22 and runs through Sept. 30.
The delegation – which includes both Democratic and Republican lieutenant governors – will visit several German cities during the trip. While abroad, Sanchez said in a statement he will seek to lay the groundwork for more German companies to come to New Mexico.
The trip is being paid for by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom and the National Lieutenant Governors Association, according to Sanchez’s office.
Secretary of State Dianna Duran will temporarily serve as the state’s acting governor while both the governor and lieutenant governor are outside New Mexico’s boundaries next week.
— This article appeared on page C2 of the Albuquerque Journal
