NM Impeachment Resolution to Move to Senate Floor

From Desi Brown, aide to NM Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino:
With joy and relief I can now announce that SJR 5 has passed through the NM Senate Judiciary Committee on a 5-1 vote! As a member of Senator Ortiz y Pino's staff, I can tell you that at times it felt like we were herding a bunch of wild cats in trying to get members of the public on the same page as what he and his co-sponsor Senator Grubesic were trying to portray to their fellow Senators. But yesterday you ALL (well, almost all) were PERFECT! Those who chose to speak in the hearing were eloquent, concise, and impassioned. Those in attendance were uniformly respectful and attentive to the process (almost!).

What We Need Next
Now, take a deep breath, relax, stretch for a minute and congratulate yourselves! Alright, time to get back to work and help us push through our next step -- the Senate Floor -- and beyond! Take your focused energy, your renewed faith in the process, your understanding of what this bill is about -- and try to stay away from the Senators this week! Now is a stressful time for all of them and the sponsors of this legislation will most assuredly be working hard behind the scenes to try to ensure there will be enough votes when SJR5 comes to the Senate Floor. What you can do is:

• Continue to call all 42 of the NM Senators' offices to simply show your support for the Resolution. (Click for contact info.)
• Particularly try to contact constituents and local civic/democratic groups in Senator Smith's, Jennings', and Carraro's (yes, he's a Republican!) districts to see if they will support SJR5 and forward that info to those three Senators. We are leery of direct contact between them and the public at this point so please try not to approach any of the three directly. Please honor this request by Senator Ortiz y Pino.
• Begin casual contact with Representatives on the House side in the event of passage off of the Senate Floor.
  • Keep in mind everything we have been discussing before!
• Really try to ramp up public input through letters to the editor of local and national papers, call in to radio shows, talk to everyone you know and continue spreading the word.
  • While of course staying on topic and focused on the process, not the end result.
  • Our mantra is that we are asking Congress for an investigation into possible Impeachment via a legally recognized and constitutional means provided to the people of the U.S. thanks to Thomas Jefferson and the founders of our nation.

If this Resolution passes the Senate Floor, there needs to be an IMMEDIATE and INTENSE upswing of public support in order to get it through the House side of the Legislature. We are counting on each of you to make that happen! Thanks again -- you have all been wonderful to work with so far!

I hope that those in attendance last night appreciated Senator Rod Adair's comments and respected the fact that others are entitled to their own opinions, even if they are quite different from our own. This is the first time that a Republican has openly spoke out against this Resolution and you should note that he didn't seem concerned with it on its own merits.  Rather, he focused on the rare mistakes and miscues by speakers that strayed from the direct message of the Resolution.

On behalf of both Senators and their staffs, I would like to send out a sincere thank you for all of your public support. Without your daily presence at committee hearings, without your phone calls, without your letters and e-mails, without you stalking the legislators in the halls of the Roundhouse; this Resolution would not have passed and made it as far as it has. THANK YOU!!!

Wish us and yourselves continued good luck in the coming days of this legislative session,

Desi Brown, (505)256-0668, desibrown@comcast.net

Editor's Note: See our live blogging thread from last night for a rundown on the votes. To access all our previous posts about this initiative, visit our impeachment post archive.