Morales Adds Visibility to Lieutenant Governor’s Role

By Andrew Oxford, Santa Fe New Mexican – A bell on a desk greeted visitors to the lieutenant governor’s office during Howie Morales’ first couple weeks on the job. Ring for service, a sign said. Not particularly glamorous, it seemed to sum up the office of lieutenant governor, which comes with few official duties and even fewer prospects for higher office. But Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in her early days in office has handed Morales a more expansive profile than many of his predecessors. She asked the former state senator, teacher and high school baseball coach to oversee the Public Education Department until she names a cabinet secretary. Following a lieutenant governor who kept a low profile outside the Capitol, Morales and the flurry that surrounds him in his fourth floor Capitol office could you leave you wondering whether the job might just matter again. For the last two weeks, at least, Morales has had the job of re-setting the relationship between educators and the Public Education Department. He says the department should be a support and resource for districts. “Many school districts have not viewed the department in that way,” he said in what might be an understatement in describing the often intense battles between the reform-minded administration of Republican Gov. Susana Martinez and teachers unions as well as some districts. Morales has a doctorate in education from New Mexico State University. He has taught special education and coached winning teams at Cobre High School in Bayard. A father of two children, ages 6 and 9, he got into politics when was elected Grant County clerk. Later appointed to a seat in the state Senate representing part of Southwestern New Mexico, he became a reliably liberal voice on issues ranging from education to tobacco taxes to health insurance. And when Sen. Michael Padilla dropped out of the race for lieutenant governor at the end of 2017, leaving the contest up for grabs, Morales jumped in and emerged as the front-runner. Morales had good name recognition, having run for governor in 2014. Now the Public Education Department will have a big role to play as the Lujan Grisham administration proposes putting another $500 million into public schools. The state faces a judge’s order to devise a plan for improving the quality of education for groups of students most at risk of failing. The new administration’s approach was clear when Morales sat alongside the governor in the Cabinet room on Jan. 2 as she signed an executive order that ended PARCC standardized testing and an unpopular system of evaluating teachers. Lujan Grisham also announced Morales would take a supervisory role at the Public Education Department. Scrapping the old testing and evaluation system rankled some, particularly Republican lawmakers who say such measures are crucial as the state plans to pour hundreds of millions of dollars more into schools. How else, the reasoning goes, will the state know whether the money is going to the right place or making a difference? Morales, though, has argued that the department needs to take a different approach to schools. And his rise in the new administration is novel in recent New Mexico history. The last lieutenant governor, Republican John Sanchez, kept a low profile. That was probably easy enough. He had a strained relationship with Martinez, kept only a few staff around and rarely sought out headlines. Technically, the lieutenant governor’s duties include presiding over the state Senate when it is in session, acting as governor when she is out of state, sitting on various