New Mexico Front and Center

From the day Governor Bill Richardson took office in 2003, New Mexico was hurled into the national political theatre like never before.

The gregarious Richardson – who speaks the Mexico City-tinged Spanish of his mother – has been wildly popular ever since winning a Congressional seat in 1982, and the national press immediately honed in on his potential to rein in the ever-important Hispanic vote.

To be sure, 42 percent of New Mexico's population is Hispanic, and Al Gore barely eked out a victory in 2000, winning by just 366 votes. But this is an exquisitely strange state, and prophesizing the intentions of its electorate by one issue alone is myopic.

Indeed, New Mexico is a place where mammoth nuclear factories jut out behind untouched high desert cliffs; where heroin and green chile are two of the most popular indulgences; where health insurance is almost as rare as the rain; and where new-age hippies from the coasts and ancient families who claim the blood of Spanish noblemen together bemoan a dry season that hasn't broken for nearly a decade.

Here, many of America's most pressing problems are played out in dramatic fashion every day, and the governor, whose national political ambitions are no secret, has stayed busy trying to right the state's many troubles.

So, despite what the pundits say, New Mexicans are likely to go to the polls come November with a lot more than just race on their minds. The following issues weigh the heaviest:

Poverty

Despite a few garish enclaves in Santa Fe, Taos and Los Alamos, New Mexico is extraordinarily poor, especially in rural areas.

Those familiar with urban poverty wouldn't know it when traveling through the state – New Mexico's charming, frontier-style towns, nestled among cactus and mesas, seem a far cry from big-city ghettos.

Don't be fooled. McKinley and Rio Arriba counties consistently rank among the nation's most impoverished, and with 20 percent of all New Mexicans living in poverty, this is the second poorest state in the country (Mississippi is the first), says Kim Posich, executive director of the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty.

Things are even worse when it comes to children. A 2004 national study found that a staggering 26 percent of the state's kids are living below the poverty line, the highest such proportion in the nation.

The effects of such intense poverty are clear. According to a 2003 state epidemiology report, New Mexico leads the nation in drug overdoses, which jumped 22 percent statewide between 2001 and 2002. Tiny Rio Arriba, a beautiful but mournful mountainous region of 41,000, has been in the clutches of an overwhelming heroin epidemic since the late nineties, and suffers a higher rate of drug-overdoses than any other county in the U.S.

Kay Monaco, executive director of New Mexico Voices for Children, a child advocacy group, says the reasons for New Mexico's endemic poverty are numerous: There's no real industry here; the preponderance of small, family-owned business mean low-wage jobs; and providing access to social services in rural areas is difficult.

During his first two years, Richardson – whose old Congressional district included Rio Arriba – has taken the conservative approach of slashing income and capital gains taxes and killing the state's food tariff. He says such measures will keep hard-earned money in poor New Mexican's pockets, while critics argue it will only drain funding from critical state-support programs.

Meanwhile, some aren't waiting to find out. Earlier this year, Santa Fe's city council voted to raise the city's minimum wage to $8.50 to combat the rising cost of living in the capital.

"Poverty has a huge ripple affect throughout all of New Mexico," comments Monaco. "If we can fix it somehow, there'll be huge corollary benefits."