By MILAN SIMONICH
The Santa Fe New Mexican
Legislating under the influence of booze isn’t a crime.
State Sen. Harold Pope continues campaigning for what he believes is the next-best option. Pope, D-Albuquerque, wants a prohibition against members of his chamber drinking alcohol while they are working.
Pope for the third consecutive year has introduced Senate Resolution 1. It contains a single sobering sentence: “No senator shall consume alcohol before or during any floor session or meeting of a committee to which a member has been appointed.”
Beginning his fifth year in office, Pope said he’s seen — and smelled — enough at the statehouse to know an anti-booze resolution is needed.
“I’ve just seen things that are unprofessional,” he said in an interview. “I’ve smelled alcohol on people’s breath during a floor session. We’ve got to change the culture and knock it off and hold ourselves accountable.”
Pope, 50, wants people know he’s not grandstanding or being puritanical. He drinks alcohol in social settings.
But, he says, businesses don’t tolerate employees drinking alcohol on the job. The Senate should be held to that same standard.
His push for abstinence while senators are working has received headlines but no hearings in the last two years. Pope’s proposal each time was referred to only one panel, the Senate Rules Committee. Sen. Katy Duhigg, who chairs that committee, never gave the proposal a hearing.
Duhigg, D-Albuquerque, said this year might be different.
“The majority and minority are working on an overall Senate Rules overhaul. After that has been heard, we will hear individual proposed rules changes from members, including Sen. Pope,” she wrote Thursday in a text message.
If Pope’s proposed resolution finally receives a hearing, members of the Rules Committee would vote on whether to advance the measure to the full Senate. Then it would need support from at least a two-thirds majority — 28 of the 42 senators — for the ban on workplace drinking to be codified.
The resolution would not apply to New Mexico’s larger legislative chamber, the 70-member House of Representatives.
For sincerity, Pope gets an A. But his proposal is too stark. It deserves an F unless the measure is amended to include consequences for senators who booze it up while working.
Even then, it’s hard to imagine the Senate pinpointing and punishing wayward members.
Prominent Democrats in the chamber continued supporting then-Sen. Richard Martinez after his convictions for aggravated drunken driving and reckless driving. Martinez seriously injured two innocent people by crashing his car into their Jeep while it was stopped at a red light in Española.
Voters had better sense. They ousted Martinez in the 2020 Democratic primary election.
Martinez was one of many sitting state lawmakers who have been convicted of drunken driving. Almost all of them had an alibi.
Then-state Rep. Ray Vargas, D-Albuquerque, claimed he was a human brewery. He said he was afflicted with candidiasis, an infection that caused his organs to produce alcohol.
Another former lawmaker, Rep. Monica Youngblood, R-Albuquerque, was stopped at a sobriety checkpoint in her hometown. A police officer said Youngblood smelled of an alcoholic beverage. Youngblood gratuitously mentioned she was a legislator. When the cop proceeded to arrest Youngblood, she claimed to be a victim of ethnic bias.
Then-Rep. Joe Thompson, R-Albuquerque, was one of the few legislators who took responsibility for breaking the law against drinking and driving. Maybe he had no choice.
Police arrested Thompson for drunken driving less than 24 hours after he attended a bill-signing ceremony for a measure establishing harsher penalties for DWI. Thompson then ended his fledgling campaign for the state Public Regulation Commission.
Pope’s proposed resolution is one of symbolism. It has no teeth. I’d rather have the 112 legislators, plus every politician elected to a statewide office, sign a contract in which they would agree to resign immediately upon a conviction for drunken driving.
Everyone who’s in public office claims to be committed to making the roads safer by freeing them of drunks. Martinez, Youngblood and then-Rep. Georgene Louis, D-Albuquerque, made all the correct comments when they worked in the statehouse.
Those three were the most recent of the many self-styled law-and-order politicians arrested in drunken-driving cases. Martinez and Youngblood professed their innocence but refused to take breath-alcohol tests. Louis took the test and registered a blood-alcohol level of 0.17%, more than double the threshold for drunken driving.
Pope is within his rights to worry about senators being unfit for debate because of booze. The bigger danger is those who make laws might break them once they drive away from the Capitol.
Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at msimonich@sfnewmexican.com or 505.986.3080.
