Democratic state Sen. John Arthur Smith, who had served eight terms and was chairman of the influential Senate Finance Committee, announced Tuesday he wanted to spend more time with his family and leave the legislative life behind.<\/p>\n
Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth said Smith\u2019s colleague Democratic state Sen. Richard Martinez also submitted his resignation early this week.<\/p>\n
Smith and Martinez were two of the five incumbent Senate Democrats who were defeated in the June primary election. Both participated in two special sessions and various legislative interim committee meetings after being defeated.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear whether anyone will step into the two positions before the start of the next legislative session, scheduled to begin in mid-January. County commissioners in the district usually recommend replacements to the governor but Wirth was unsure if the same process would be used because of the limited remaining time frame.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t dwell on the past,\u201d Smith said of his 32 years in the Senate. \u201cI\u2019ve never been one to say, \u2018I wish I had done that,\u2019 because in most cases, I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Democratic state Sen. Roberto \u201cBobby\u201d Gonzales is expected to serve as the Legislative Financial Committee chairman for the rest of the year in place of Smith.<\/p>\n
Martinez said in his resignation letter that he was leaving the Senate with a \u201cheavy heart\u201d after nearly 20 years of service, but he cited the COVID-19 pandemic as a factor in his decision to step down early.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Democratic state Sen. John Arthur Smith, who had served eight terms and was chairman of the influential Senate Finance Committee, announced Tuesday he wanted to spend more time with his family and leave the legislative life behind. Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth said Smith\u2019s colleague Democratic state Sen. Richard Martinez also submitted his resignation early […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[815],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-50122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-associated-press-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50122"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=50122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}