The Apocalypse may be coming but it’s politics as usual in New Mexico

The coming election is the most important in our lifetime, we are told. Both parties are telling us that if the other party wins it will be the Apocalypse. Depending on which cable channel you watch, America will become either Nazi Germany or Venezuela. I am stocking up on toilet paper just to be on the safe side.

I don’t get overexcited about the wrong people getting elected because I spent most of my life in Chicago, where the wrong people got elected consistently. The city council had the highest crime rate in town and governors occasionally went from the executive mansion to the federal pen. I learned early on that getting emotionally attached to politicians is a losing proposition and developed a high tolerance for malfeasance and skulduggery. Voting while holding my nose is the way I approach most elections.

I don’t like either presidential candidate and that’s okay. I’m hiring someone to run the country, not choosing a drinking buddy. The last president I liked was George H.W. Bush, and I didn’t much like him until he took a strong position against broccoli.

As a transplanted Chicagoan, I feel right at home in New Mexico. The Albuquerque Journal’s standard questionnaire for local political candidates asks if they’ve had a criminal conviction. Two recent secretaries of state were indicted, a public regulation commissioner was convicted of assaulting a romantic rival with a rock, and both candidates in one legislative race had drunk-driving convictions.

New Mexico is not a battleground state because we have one and a half political parties. The two Congressional districts in the northern and central parts of the state are heavily Democratic because government is the biggest industry. Republicans have not fully controlled the state government since 1930 and their candidates are dramatically outspent. When I lived in Albuquerque I registered as a Democrat because the only electoral competition for most offices was in the Democratic primary.

Because both parties have purged their moderates in recent years, statewide contests generally offer the dismal choice between an ultra-progressive liberal and a rock-ribbed conservative.

My recent move from Albuquerque to Los Lunas, about 25 miles, put me in the southern Congressional district that’s the closest New Mexico has to a Republican stronghold. (So I registered as a Republican this time.) Southern New Mexico has an actual private economy because people there drill for oil, raise cattle and grow chile peppers. But because New Mexico Republicans spend most of their time fighting with each other, the district currently has a Democratic representative.

This makes it a close race that’s fun to watch. The Democratic incumbent is running as a moderate despite voting with Nancy Pelosi 95% of the time. So her campaign commercials show her shooting guns like a woke Annie Oakley. The lady running against her shoots guns in her campaign commercials, too, because it’s kind of a requirement for Republicans. All of these spaghetti-western campaign commercials suggest an interesting way to settle a contested election in the New Mexico tradition of Billy the Kid.

New Mexico’s tiny population of 2 million gives politics a small-town flavor. When I lived in Albuquerque, I met my state representative at community meetings and got a personal reply whenever I emailed him. I got acquainted with a former secretary of state and learned later that my neighbor served on the grand jury that indicted her. (She was acquitted.)

I exchanged wisecracks with our current governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, when she was running for the county commission a few years ago. I noted that her primary opponent had two Hispanic surnames to her one and asked her if that was a political liability. She replied that she grew up in Santa Fe and wound up marrying an Anglo because all the Hispanic guys she met were her cousins. (That’s not unusual here: One of my neighbors researched his family and identified hundreds of cousins.) It occurred to me that if some New Mexicans have been marrying their cousins for 300 years, that could explain the legislature.

Our Senators and Congressional representatives are active on social media and I enjoy poking fun at them on Facebook. I am accused of being a Russian troll at least once a week.

I voted in person in the primary and found it no more risky than the checkout line at Walmart. Although I have the option of applying for an absentee ballot or voting early, I plan to vote in person on election day. Just in case one of the candidates gets indicted at the last minute.