State-level Democrats are environmental hypocrites, too

Yes, I know that Dems control the governor's office and both houses of the Lege in New Mexico, the Land of Disenchantment.

But? Look at the money they rake in from the oil and gas world, per Capital & Main. Yea, the independents and wildcatters still give more to Republicans, but the oil majors? They tilt Democrat because they're paying for "access."

Now, paying a ConservaDem like George Munoz, one of the barons of the New Mexico Senate? Understandable, as is his taking the money.

Paying Nathan Small in the state House? Yeah, understandable if he'll take the money.

But, on his side? As Capital & Main notes, he's also an organizer withe New Mexico Wild. Let's read his touts there:

Nathan first joined New Mexico Wild in in 2004, after graduating with dual degrees in Philosophy and English from the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio. Nathan is a third generation New Mexican who comes from a family of ranchers and educators. Nathan was a key team member working to secure and then safeguard National Monument protection for the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and continues to work on additional landscape scale protections in Southern New Mexico.. Now there are 10 new wilderness areas in the OMDP.

Big environmentalist, right?

Back to Capital & Main.

First, his rake:

Not bad, eh?

Rep. Small received $16,100 from the industry in the 2022 election. For his 2024 election, that rose to $87,451 (of just over $385,000 in total donations), making him No. 3 in the state among Democratic recipients of such funds, after House Speaker Javier Martinez and Senate Finance Chairman George Muñoz. Between 2020 and 2024 he was promoted to chair the House Appropriations and Finance Committee, which also made him vice chair of the overarching Legislative Finance Committee, two of the most powerful positions in New Mexico’s Legislature. And he is one of the few top money recipients to have a contested race this year, which he won by 544 votes out of 14,244 cast in his race.

His babbling aside:

Does the combination of conservation work and oil and gas money make him uncomfortable? “No,” he said. “I want to have an open door and a large table for folks who see challenges and want to propose and bring solutions to those challenges.” Does he solicit campaign donations from oil and gas companies? “I engage with stakeholders, and certainly will, in appropriate ways, during campaigns, ask for support from a wide range of stakeholders for campaign efforts,” he said.

“At the state level, over the past five years, and particularly in the past three or four years, [we] have significantly increased enforcement of our common sense [oil and gas] rules,” Small said. “That’s resulted in significantly more fines for folks who are doing the wrong thing.”

He's a fricking hypocrite. He knows the oil and gas world causes climate change, has been in denial about that, and today is in the land of pretending to do something about that. That's even as Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham touts environmentally dirty blue hydrogen for hydrogen-powered cars because it's based on natural gas.

And, he's married to former ConservaDem Congresscritter Xochitl Torres Small. (Read some of the links at her Wiki page for her being a sellout to the awl bidness. Here's one to get started.) The piece didn't mention that, but it should have, that they're married.