OPINION: Former lieutenant governor's privilege peddling must be overturned so the kids can play

You don’t have to be a man to be part of the Ole Boys Club in New Mexico politics. You can be a 70s-something female, too.

Thanks to another explosive report about Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham from KRQE’s Jessica Garate, we learned last week that former Lt. Gov. Diane Denish was able to use her personal relationship with the governor to quash proposed playground equipment at an Albuquerque park in Denish’s neighborhood.

It was, as Journal SpeakUp! writers put it, “everyday crap New Mexico politics and disgusting,” the “ugly side of politics” and the “lowest of low.” (See page C5)

One has to be a bit of an Ebenezer Scrooge to oppose playground equipment. Unfortunately, Denish, who was removed from the political landscape by voters in her failed bid for governor in 2010, fits the role well.

After losing in a blue state to Republican Susana Martinez by nearly 7 percentage points, the humiliated Denish has had a chip on her shoulder ever since. And she got back at us good, she apparently thought, until Garate exposed how Denish is using her influence and privilege in Democratic Party circles 14 years after being forced into political retirement.

Garate reported how Denish killed a proposed playground in her neighborhood with a phone call to her good friend, the governor.

“I worked hard to get that position,” Denish told KRQE. “I worked hard to be in a place where I had a public voice. And I worked hard for many of the people that have been elected.”

After getting that phone call, Lujan Grisham exercised her line-item veto authority to strike $200,000 for playground equipment at Netherwood Park, which was buried in a $2 billion capital outlay bill passed by lawmakers in February.

Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, who requested the $200,000 capital outlay, said he was blindsided by the governor’s veto, the only capital project in Bernalillo County that Lujan Grisham used her line-item veto to reject.

“It was just out of nowhere, a bolt of lightning that left us all very shocked,” Ortiz y Pino told KRQE. “This is just a very peculiar attitude for somebody to take proprietary ownership of a public facility, and to get away with it. That’s the astounding thing.”

Astounding, yes. Atypical for New Mexico, no, sadly.

The equipment for the playground at the park between Indian School Road and Interstate 40 has been in the works for years. But a group of residents against the playground sent emails to the city to try and kill it, KRQE reported. It didn’t work. In total, the city received 83 emails — 61 for and 22 against.

“I’m really more upset with the governor for not checking with me, with other people who might have known about this, but just taking the former lieutenant governor’s word for this and vetoing it and killing $200,000 that could have been put to good use,” Ortiz y Pino told KRQE.

Denish tried playing her “expertise card” to the TV station, but she sounded as out of tune as Usher at the Super Bowl.

“I have worked for years in early childhood and child development with all kinds of policy issues and early childhood,” she bragged to the TV station. “And I’ve worked with various kinds of play areas and raised money for them. And what I know is the most creative way that kids play is on their own; they don’t necessarily need a slide or swing.”

That’s right: Kids don’t need slides or swings, just a little imagination about what it’s like to glide through the breeze.

We wonder how the neighborhood kids would have voted, although they lack the years of Denish’s back-breaking and grueling work raising money for play areas.

“I don’t apologize for having a lifetime of public service where I’ve known these people,” the former lieutenant governor under Bill Richardson told KRQE. “I’ve worked hard for New Mexico and being able to call them and having a conversation about something that’s important to me.”

Denish said she and other Scroogies living closest to the park want to keep it devoid of playground equipment.

“This is a very unique open, unobstructed park, and it has been for 75 years,” said Denish, who, coincidentally, is 75 years old herself.

Ortiz y Pino is understandably critical of what happened behind closed doors.

“I’m really more upset with the governor for not checking with me, or with other people who might have known about this, but just taking the former lieutenant governor’s word for this and vetoing it and killing $200,000 that could have been put to good use,” he told KRQE.

He has a right to be upset. And so do the neighbors, who accuse Denish of treating the park as her personal backyard. According to those emails sent to the city, at least two-thirds of families in the neighborhood support a playground at Netherwood Park.

“The loudest voice, or the voice who seems to have the most direct line of communication, is getting the response, and it’s not representative of the community as a whole,” neighbor Nadya Loughrey told the TV station.

“There’s research that shows how important local areas such as a designated play area create for community cohesion,” Galen Loughrey told KRQE. “They can create the opportunities for our children to get to know others.”

KRQE tried to get an answer from the governor about why she vetoed the playground equipment, but Lujan Grisham declined an interview, saying it was her understanding that the playground lacked neighborhood consensus.

Is there ever consensus in a neighborhood on anything? Isn’t two-thirds support enough to override a grumpy old woman’s opposition?

The governor can rectify the fiasco by busting out one of her emergency executive orders and restoring the $200,000 of funding. If Lujan Grisham thinks she has the unilateral power to ban guns in parks, she should be able to build a swing set and monkey bars in one.

If the governor finds that too mortifying, she can add the playground funding to a special session that’s being talked about on crime.

There are several routes to right this wrong, if the governor has the self-awareness to admit a mistake — at least after being called out about it by an intrepid TV reporter who also threw shade on the governor’s sketchy jewelry purchases from a so-called nonessential business that had been shut down at the start of the governor’s COVID lockdown in April 2020.

As for Denish, she should focus her golden years at yelling at kids to get off her lawn. Her time in the sun has passed, even if she just doesn’t realize she’s not the big cheese she once was. Better Denish call 311 about a small neighborhood matter than get the ear of the state’s chief executive.

And if the sound of kids having fun outdoors bothers Denish and other Scroogies in her neighborhood, they can close their windows and mumble themselves to sleep.