Baggage and Compromise – Representative Easley

Representative Easley, in response to a letter to the editor, pointed out that staying in any position for to long a period of time turns the focus of doing the business of the citizens to settling scores and internal fighting. 

   “If you stay to long in the legislature, you are bound to pick that up, like if you stay to long anywhere.  You are bound to find people that have annoyed you one to many times and you don’t really want to deal with them any more  . .  .  our legislature has been stuck the last several years where they just couldn’t get much done because they just battled each other tooth and claw over everything all of the time and there seemed to be no ability to compromise to get anything done and in politics, that’s what politics is all about, compromise.  So you have to be willing to be flexible and compromise in the best interest of the citizens.

     “When you are there and you are working on legislation sooner or later you have to vote against some ones bill . . .over time members of the legislature become irritated with each other to the point to where “you are routinely voting against” others bills “just because they have made you mad so many times in the past, I have seem big grudges at the roundhouse ”  which leads to “personal enmity that builds over twenty years not really the merits of the bill . . . and that’s the baggage I was talking about.   

     “So what I was hoping that with so many new people” in the legislature, that were not carrying baggage that we could all be nicer to each other, be more polite, be more willing to think about being friendly and to be compromising” in order to do the business of the citizens of New Mexico.

From this writers view point, a great argument for the application of real term limits on the legislative level and a change on the county levels to end the rotation that goes on in lower elected offices.