#3 New Mexico is a poor place, with one of the highest proportion of people living on food stamps … Its political tradition also long had a Latin American feel, based around a padrón system of clients and bosses. The bosses ran grocery stores, gave you credit, helped you if you needed a job. And all you had to do was vote for the Democrats … New Mexican politics is still about jobs, contracts and personal loyalty, not ideology. And Mr. Richardson personifies this
True on face value, but...
New Mexico has the highest population of natives living mostly on tribal/reservation federal land in the lower 48 and the state can do nothing about the decades of what former Reagan Interior Secretary James Watts called the BIA, the model of failed welfare state. The pooling of the natives on federal reservations and everyone else into a single state average throws the statistics into a very suspect category. Those few tribes which discovered gambling and the former, native friendly, Republican governor Gary Johnson, are actually plowing their gains back into the community for vast improvements in the quality of life and opportunity. The comparison between what BIA wrought and what a few tribes themselves have done is as different as day and night. Once the tribes got some money, they discovered the incredible world of 'lobbyists. If you don't think that is important, then check the federal legislation on 'campaign reform' and look for the little exemption for tribal monies. Heh.
However, one of the nice sides to the whole situation is the animosity between the Natives and the Hispanics. The Natives still remember the oppression of their long past former Spanish masters and book no pandering to their egos by diversity proponents.
|