Five Questions
Everything you wanted to know (didn’t you?) about the impending fiscal cliff

This year marks the inauguration of SFR’s Patrón Awards (named, of course, for New Mexico’s loved and hated patron system—the good ol’ boy network that has shaped state politics for a century). The awards, first announced on Dec. 17 in the Weekly Word podcast (listen at SFReporter.com), range from seriously honorable to utterly facetious. Read on.

Oh, Susana! The rest of the country loves you.

After elections come more elections. On Saturday—just over a month after the Nov. 6 election—the Republican Party of New Mexico selected its new figurehead: a tall, deep-voiced Lincoln County party chairman who candidly urged his fellow partisans to do some “soul searching.”

Earlier this year, the state House reached what former Speaker Ben Luján, D-Santa Fe, characterized as a milestone in his farewell speech: Its members voted unanimously to pass the state budget.

“We do a lot of work. We work hard. It’s really no self-gain, but they have a thing called Big Picture when you first get there, it’s a class you go through…[you learn that] all the wrong that we did, you can’t take that back, but you can do a lot of good and balance out the scales. There’s a lot of good stuff in Big Picture,” LJ Nelson says.

Harris Silver remembers seeing his life flash before his eyes the day he almost died along an Arizona highway in 1986.

After a long and varied career in state government, another of Gov. Susana Martinez’ cabinet officials has resigned.

Back in February, after the legislative session, Gov. Susana Martinez publicly excoriated lawmakers for requesting state funds for “wasteful pork.” She called out a few projects in particular—including the Santa Fe Botanical Garden, which had requested $201,000 for construction and improvements. In March, she vetoed the funding.

Each week, Rachel Hardy spends 24 hours out in the community, sorting clothes at Goodwill and selling her paintings and drawings at VSA arts of New Mexico. Hardy, who suffers from multiple seizures each day, is compensated through Medicaid. The idea is to give her enough exposure to the outside world to live a more normal life.