Editorial: Back-in-saddle Bill doesn’t miss a beat

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1/15/2008 -

Good to be home, indeed: With those first four words, Gov. Bill Richardson yesterday began his sixth state-of-the-state address. And after only a couple more early references to the old college try he made at our nation’s presidency, the self-proclaimed “fighter for New Mexico” was back to doing just that:

 The state may be in good shape — but we can do better, he challenged the joint session of the newly reconvened 48th New Mexico Legislature.

They have just 30 days to do it. Recognizing, más o menos, the limitations of the short session, he’s limited his “call” for action beyond a mandatory budget to 60 items — with highest priority going to health care.

Every New Mexican should have coverage, he said: not socialized medicine, as some would demand — but the status quo, with 400,000 who must choose between paying a mortgage or paying medical bills, won’t do: The most expensive choice, he said, is to do nothing; a choice, he correctly noted, that we can’t afford.

“Doing nothing means more uninsured, more expensive health care, more of the state budget dedicated to health costs and less for everything else,” said the governor. “It also means that those with insurance will pay more to keep it.”

That last remark, if nothing else he said, should grab the entire state’s attention — and, in this election year, it perked up the ears of the senators and representatives, some of them already pronouncing themselves overwhelmed by the health care task, others convinced they can’t do it.

“How can we afford not to?” demanded the governor, looking only more rugged after a year on the national campaign trail.

Whether the legislators are ready or not for a rigorous session, Richardson clearly is.
He also wants energy-conservation measures, including tax credits for folks buying power-efficient heating and cooling; more efforts against drunk driving, including stiff penalties for tinkering with ignition interlocks on convicted drivers’ cars; ethics and campaign-finance reform, and — a long overdue law the finance community should gladly embrace — official recognition of domestic partnerships, giving unmarried couples, homosexual or heterosexual, the rights and privileges of married couples.

Count on legislative balking over a key provision of his health care proposal: Creation of a Health Coverage Authority that would determine such things as benefits and eligibility for state-subsidized coverage. He wants it, and its director, under the authority of the governor. That’ll be a fight.

So will his ethics-reform call, even though a good set of rules already has been laid out by a blue-ribbon task force.

He’s getting good support on many of the measures from House Speaker Ben Luján — but an already Richardson-resistant Senate will test his well-known persuasive powers.
But the guy on the podium yesterday appeared ready, willing and able to tussle: In sports terms, grayheads could compare him with the late, legendary Bobby Layne — of whom it was said he never lost a football game; time just ran out on him. In today’s terms, he delivered his speech about as accurately as the Patriots’ Tom Brady threw passes last week — and has come back from adversity the way the Packers’ Brett Favre did during the same weekend.
Clearly he was comfortable in front of the home crowd.

Then, when in these lachrymose times of Terrell Owens and Hillary Clinton he might have choked up. He didn’t. Instead, Democrat Richardson called up a quote from a Republican both parties love: Theodore Roosevelt, who said it isn’t the critic who counts; it’s the man “who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming ...”

The face in front of the House Chamber crowd yesterday clearly fit Teddy Roosevelt’s description. And, as our legislators are about to see, the Roughrider spirit remains with Bill Richardson.