Gov. Has Lost Much of Original Cabinet, Top Staff

Gov. Susana Martinez begins the second half of her four-year term with a Cabinet and top staff that look much different than when she took office.

Martinez has lost about one out of four of her original Cabinet appointees, as well as about half of her initial hires in the Governor’s Office, including two deputy chiefs of staff.

Martinez spokesman Enrique Knell, who became the governor’s communications director last month after serving as a spokesman for the Children, Youth and Families Department, put a rosy spin on the turnover.

Knell said the average tenure for Cabinet secretaries at the state and federal levels is two to three years.

“Gov. Martinez is confident that her Cabinet is full of talented, hardworking employees who are fulfilling their mission of reforming New Mexico,” he said.

The Cabinet is made up of 23 department secretaries, with the governor appointing 22 of those. The 23rd, the agriculture secretary, is selected by the New Mexico State University regents.

The size of the Cabinet was expanded from 15 members to 23 under Martinez’s predecessor, Bill Richardson.

In his first two years in office, Richardson lost two of his original Cabinet appointees and two other Cabinet members whose agencies were elevated to Cabinet status shortly after he took office.

Martinez’s Cabinet appointees who have come and gone:

♦ Former U.S. Sen. Harrison “Jack” Schmitt withdrew his nomination in February 2003 to head the Department of Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources.

Schmitt withdrew in a dispute with the Senate Rules Committee over a background investigation, saying he didn’t want to waive his legal rights should his personal information be misused.

The former astronaut also had come under public scrutiny for some of his views, including his belief that some policymakers are using global warming as a means to gain authoritarian control of society, that the right to work has been usurped by minimum wage laws and other government actions and that President Barack Obama wants to change the nation into “some mystical, socialist utopia.”

♦ Finance and Administration Secretary Rick May was shuffled off in September 2011 to serve as chief executive officer of the New Mexico Finance Authority.

As head of Finance and Administration, May was Martinez’s top-ranking official on state budget matters but was shut out of the governor’s inner circle.

When a scandal over a fake audit broke at the Finance Authority last year, May was gone for good. The authority board, controlled by the governor’s appointees, fired him.

♦ Lupe Martinez, the first woman to serve as secretary of the Department of Corrections, resigned in September 2011.

The resignation came a few days after the governor asked State Police to investigate an incident in which the secretary’s live-in fiancé, also a Corrections employee, allegedly fired a weapon at rattlesnakes outside the couple’s home on the grounds of the state Penitentiary in Santa Fe.

Lupe Martinez, no relation to the governor, previously served as warden of state prisons in Grants and Hagerman.

♦ Catherine Torres, a pediatrician from Las Cruces, quit in October 2012 as head of the Department of Health.

Torres was wildly unpopular among many department employees and was the target of harsh attacks posted on a website with an address of www.nmdohcrisis.com. Advocates for the disabled also had been critical of her.

Torres said she wanted to spend more time with her family.

♦ Michael Duvall, head of the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, resigned in January 2012, saying he was taking a job with the National Nuclear Security Administration.

As the state’s top emergency management official, Duvall had been in charge of the government’s response to crises, including a natural gas outage due to cold weather in 2011 and wildfires.

♦ Transportation Secretary Alvin Dominguez retired from state government at the end of last year.

Dominguez, who is in his early 50s, had risen through the ranks at DOT. A Las Cruces resident, he had been commuting to Santa Fe.

As for the governor’s top staff, at least 10 of Martinez’s original 21 hires in the Governor’s Office are no longer there.

The departed include three of the seven initial members of the governor’s executive leadership team, including deputy chiefs of staff Brian Moore and Ryan Cangiolosi and Matt Kennicott, director of policy and planning.

Moore, a former state representative and Clayton grocery store owner, was moved in July 2011 to Washington, D.C., to serve as the governor’s liaison to federal government.

Moore stayed a year in Washington before resigning from the administration, saying he missed home.

Cangiolosi left the governor’s staff in November to take a newly created job with the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center.

Kennicott was transferred to the Human Services Department, where he serves as communications director.

Scott Darnell, formerly Martinez’s communications director, and Jessica Hernandez, who worked as her general counsel, were promoted to deputy chiefs of staff late last year.

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Thom Cole at tcole@abqjournal.com or 505-992-6280 in Santa Fe. Go to ABQjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal