Four Trump administration officials to travel to Santa Fe for regional governors event

SANTA FE — New Mexico’s capital city frequently touts its art galleries, restaurants and progressive policies, but there’s a different brand of politics coming to the City Different.

Four Cabinet secretaries from President Donald Trump’s administration will join seven western governors — including Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham — later this month at the Western Governors’ Association’s summer meeting in Santa Fe.

The two-day event, which starts June 23 at a luxury downtown hotel, will feature discussions about housing shortages, outdoor recreation and wildfire response efforts, according to an online agenda.

It will also allow attendees to mingle with corporate sponsors of the event, and travel to the Santa Fe Opera and other local spots.

The Trump administration officials slated to attend the meeting are Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin.

All four will headline the group’s annual meeting as keynote speakers, a WGA spokesman confirmed Friday.

Burgum, the former governor of North Dakota, took over as Interior secretary from former New Mexico congresswoman Deb Haaland in January, after Trump won the election.

As for the governors slated to attend the event, the list includes Mike Dunleavy of Alaska, Jared Polis of Colorado, Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, Spencer Cox of Utah, Mark Gordon of Wyoming and Arnold Palacios of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Five of those governors are Republicans, with Polis and Lujan Grisham the lone Democrats. Additional governors could also end up attending.

As for Lujan Grisham, who will be the event’s official host, the governor has vowed to work with Trump administration officials when possible, even while criticizing a Republican-backed plan to trim federal spending on Medicaid and other programs.

“My job is to create stability in every single relationship in the federal government,” she said during a Bloomberg TV interview last month.

The Western Governors’ Association is a bipartisan group that includes 19 states and three U.S. territories — American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Previous WGA annual meetings have been held in Olympic Valley, California, and Boulder, Colorado.

Meanwhile, Santa Fe has also hosted big political gatherings in past years, including a National Governors Association summer meeting in 2018. That event included a Western-themed reception and a private burning of Zozobra for governors and their family members.