Speaker of the House Ben Lujan (D-Nambe)
New Mexico Speaker of the House Ben Luján has died after a long fight with lung cancer. He was 77.
A spokesman for the speaker’s office sent out a news release Wednesday morning reporting that Luján died at approximately 10:45 Tuesday evening after a short stay at Christus St. Vincent’s hospital.
His wife Carmen, children including Congressman Ben Ray Lujan and their grandchildren were all at his bedside. He died peacefully without complications.
Funeral arrangements are pending. He was a member of the House since 1975 and served as Majority Whip, Majority Floor Leader and House Speaker.
On opening day of the 2012 legislative session, he announced that he was not going to seek re-election and disclosed that he had stage 4 lung cancer.
We’ll have more and post reaction to Speaker Luján’s life and career as the day progresses.
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We spoke to Rep. Rick Miera (D-Albuquerque) Wednesday morning to get his thoughts. Rep. Miera has been in the legislature since 1991 and this past week he was elected by the House Democratic caucus as the new Majority Floor Leader:
We also talked to a Republican member of the House, Alonzo Baldonado, who summed up Luján’s tenure as Speaker of the House this way: “Small in stature, big gavel.”
Here’s Rep. Baldonado:
Capitol Report New Mexico spoke on the telephone Wednesday to the man who is a virtual certainty to replace Luján as the next Speaker of the House, W. Ken Martinez (D-Grants).
“I was saddened by the news,” Rep. Martinez said. “It’s kind of an irony that a person has had this struggle and then it still comes as a great shock … I spoke to the congressman (Ben Ray Luján) and he (Speaker Luján) had suffered greatly. He was a tireless fighter and if anyone deserves rest and peace it is Ben Luján.”
W. Ken Martinez (D-Grants)
Martinez, who just last Friday was selected by acclamation as the House Democratic Party caucus choice as Speaker of the House for the upcoming 60-day session, said he was constantly amazed by Luján’s stamina.
He recalled a marathon special legislative session during the tenure of then-Gov. Bill Richardson.
“There were four bills, they were controversial for some reason, I don’t exactly remember,” Rep. Martinez said. “And he had us go through and debate all four of those bills one night, each one going through the 3-hour debate rule we have with each bill. We started at 9 p.m. and didn’t finish until 9 a.m. We went all night … We took a little break in the middle of the night and he gaveled us back at 3 in the morning. And he led us through the whole thing and he never had a hair out of place. He looked so fresh. That was my picture of him.”
When Luján announced on the first day of the 2012 session that he was suffering from Stage 4 lung cancer and that he was retiring at the end of the year, only his family members and closest friends and political confidants knew.
Martinez, the House Majority Floor Leader, told Capitol Report New Mexico that Luján told him right after the holidays last year.
“He said, ‘I’m going to need your help steering the ship. I’ll need a little more help’ … but he presided every single day” of the 30-day session. “(Republican House leaders) Tom Taylor and Rep. (Don) Bratton did a good job helping us get the Speaker home by 5 or 6 (p.m.). Some people wondered if the sessions were adjourning by some kind of party prearrangement but a lot of that was done through an understanding about the Speaker’s condition and I thank Tom Taylor and Rep. Bratton for helping us get him home at 5 or 6 those days.”
All told, Luján spent 38 years in the Roundhouse and 12 years as Speaker of the House, one of the longest tenures in New Mexico legislative history.
“He saw us through redistricting,” the once-every-10-years process of reapportioning voting districts in the state, Martinez said. “He saw us through the boom years when the state had lots of money and he saw us through the bust years and the recession. He led the House when we had divided government between the governor’s office and a Democratic House and Senate. He did it all.”
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A brief biography:
You have to go back a long ways to find a time when Ben Luján wasn’t deeply enmeshed in the political scene in New Mexico. His tenure in the Roundhouse covered five decades, starting in November of 1974, when he successfully jumped from the Santa Fe County Commision and won his first 2-year term as state rep in House District 46.
The son of a sheepherder, Ben Luján grew up in Nambé where he spent the rest of his life.
According to a biographic sheet from Luján’s office, his father was one of the first laborers recruited for the Manhattan Project and Luján attended St. Michael’s High School for a time before graduating from Pojoaque Valley High School in 1955.
While at Pojoaque, he played on the varsity basketball team and current state Rep. Jim Trujillo (D-Santa Fe) recalled that as a boy he remembered Luján as “a fierce competitor, a leader on the court and a true sportsman.”
In a story posted last winter here at Capitol Report New Mexico, Luján’s wife, Carmen, shared pictures from the Pojoaque Valley yearbook which — unsurprisingly, given Luján’s dapper appearance — revealed that Luján’s classmates voted him best-dressed. He later attended the College of Santa Fe.
Once in the Roundhouse, Luján quickly ascended to party leadership.
He was the longest consecutive serving House Democratic Party Whip in Roundhouse history before becoming Floor Leader for two terms and then becoming Speaker of the House in 2001. No other legislator has served all three leadership positions sequentially.
Luján owned B&B Construction Corporation of Española and retired as an iron worker in 1984. After learning he had developed lung cancer, Luján said he suspected he contracted it through years of working with asbestos.
He and his wife raised four children, including current US House of Representatives member Ben Ray Luján (D-New Mexico).
At the end of last year’s 30-day session, while talking to reporters about his battle with cancer, Luján said, “We’re praying to the Good Lord in restoring my health.”
Speaker Luján had not been seen in the Roundhouse in recent months and at interim committee meeting hearings, he would occasionally take part by speaker phone.
The last time Capitol Report New Mexico spoke to Luján in person he said he was feeling “pretty good” and taking each day as it came. ”We don’t have any guarantees in life,” he said.
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