Roundhouse Cowboy

On Jan. 17, the opening day of New Mexico’s 2012 legislative session, longtime state House of Representatives Speaker Ben Luján, D-Santa Fe, stood before a hushed chamber. Luján, a diminutive man in his 70s who for years had controlled much of what happened at the capitol, had just announced that he had lung cancer and planned to retire from politics. The 2012 session would be his last. It was the end of an era. While many House members wept openly during Luján’s emotional speech, one politician sat quietly in his assigned seat in the back row of the chamber. A year ago, Andy Nuñez, an outspoken, drawling rancher from southern New Mexico who wears a large cowboy hat and can often be seen with a childlike smirk on his face, was the most vocal backer of a southern coalition united to replace Luján as speaker. Now, Luján’s poor health overshadowed any intraparty turmoil in the Roundhouse. But it couldn’t halt a political shift already underway across the state. Luján’s coming retirement marks the declining dominance of northern Democrats in state politics; conservatives from agricultural, oil-and-gas-dominated southern New Mexico are positioning themselves for greater influence. As a former Democrat turned independent and the champion of an effort to repeal the state law allowing foreign nationals to obtain driver’s licenses, Nuñez has become the unlikely poster child for a rising right...more

The first time I met Andy I was going to college and was a bartender at the Drive In Bar.  Andy was employed by the ASCS and was in town for a meeting.  I was a runnin' buddy of Andy's brother, Danny, so was pleased to meet Andy.  Later that night the power went out all over Las Cruces and it went dark in the bar.  I lit some candles, folks gathered around the bar, and Andy entertained us until the power came back on.  I should have known then he would become the "poster child" for something.  Way to go Andy.