It's a given that following the November election for all three New Mexico US House members will be women, a first. But there is another major change that could occur---four of the five members of the congressional delegation could also be minorities--the most since we went to five members in 1982. 

The election of Dem Ben Ray Lujan would give the state its first Hispanic US Senator since 1976; a victory by Dem Teresa Leger Fernandez or Republican Alexis Martinez Johnson in the northern congressional district will be the first there for a Hispanic woman; the re-election of Xochitl Torres Small in the southern district or the election of her GOP challenger Yvette Herrell--a citizen of the Cherokee Nation--will see minority representation there and the re-election of Native American Deb Haaland to the ABQ area congressional district or the election of her Republican challenger Michelle Garcia Holmes would keep that seat in the minority column. Only if Republican Mark Ronchetti upset Lujan for the Senate seat would Senator Martin Heinrich not become the lone Anglo in the delegation. 

The use of the term minority may be misleading. In 2000, New Mexico was officially designated a “minority majority” state--a state in which the number of “minorities” (Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians, and African Americans) exceeds the number of non-Hispanic Whites. That percentage in 2019, says the US Census, was about 65 percent of the state's population. The state's congressional delegation is catching up with that reality. 

And some more history this Monday, Gov. Lujan Grisham, commenting on the recent spike in coronavirus cases, said: 

No doubt it's serious but not yet the "most serious" in state history. That would be the Spanish Flu of 1918-19 when an estimated 1,000 to 5,000 New Mexicans lost their lives. That in a state of only about 350,000 people. Today 934 lives have been claimed by coronavirus but the state population has ballooned to 2.096 million. The per capita difference is significant. And the Spanish flu took lives of all ages--not primarily the elderly as has been the case in this pandemic. 

The death estimates of the flu vary because of unreliable record keeping then. Worldwide the Spanish Flu may have claimed as many as 50 million lives. The world death toll in this 21st century pandemic stands at 1,117,000.

For more on the 1918 pandemic in New Mexico we dug up this in-depth piece from the New Mexico Historical Review. Much of it will ring familiar. 

They did it again. For the second presidential election in a row the ABQ Journal will not make an endorsement in the presidential contest. What? Not much difference between those two guys? If the ink-stained wretches can't make a decision in one of the most divisive elections in generations, maybe its time to drop the practice of endorsements altogether. Many have.