Redistricting session: thankfully the focus is (primarily) on redrawing political boundaries

Starting today and for the next two weeks (hopefully JUST two weeks), the New Mexico Legislature will be in a special session to redraw New Mexico’s political boundaries for all manner of public offices.

The good news is that the session MOSTLY will focus on the task at hand which is to draw those political lines as opposed to passing a bunch of extraneous legislative priorities.

The most notable districts to be drawn involve the Legislature and members of Congress. Speaker Egolf said he’d work to eliminate Rep. Yvette Herrell from Congress, but considering this is a partisan process and Democrats are in charge of it all, they’ll likely work to make sure that they hold on to power in Santa Fe as well.

Of course, New Mexico is a “blue” state. It has been for some time legislatively and in the last decade or so it’s Congressional representation has shifted to the Democrats as well.

But, as we just saw in Virginia, no party has a “lock” on voters. Republicans can win if they provide a solid alternative to 90 years of failed Democrat policies. It also helps that Gov. MLG and Joe Biden are not especially popular. In other words, draw the lines. It will be partisan. It always has been. It is time to convince New Mexicans to change their state. It CAN happen.

In addition to redistricting, the Legislature will have a chance to allocate money from the American Rescue Plan Act (the Biden “stimulus” bill) which a coalition of GOP and Democrat legislators won the right to distribute (as opposed to MLG acting alone).

There WAS a redistricting commission and here are some of the options they provided, but the Legislature and Gov. (controlled by Democrats) ultimately draw the maps.