Democrats in New Mexico and D.C. aren’t quite sure what to make of Martinez. | Alexander Burns/POLITICO Found: First post-Obama Republican

SANTA ROSA, N.M. – Mitt Romney publicly hailed Susana Martinez as a “model” for the Republican Party. Karl Rove swooped into the state this month for an unannounced Martinez fundraiser, urging donors to help flip control of the statehouse to help the governor in her second term. And at a private event in Las Cruces early this summer, former Vice President Dick Cheney veered from his remarks on national security to praise Martinez’s record on education.

For a politician who stays out of the spotlight, steering well away from the national GOP’s most divisive crusades, Martinez has no shortage of high-powered admirers these days.


In this land of open skies and ragged desert flats, the former border-county prosecutor has achieved a distinctive feat: She is the country’s only Republican governor in a heavily blue state who is sailing through a contested reelection campaign. Her winning formula, an idiosyncratic mix of personality politics and relative moderation, sets her apart from other GOP state executives who have waged partisan warfare in their first terms and now appear set to pay a price in November.

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Martinez is, in a sense, the first post-Obama Republican: an up-and-comer who has thrived in a heavily diverse, liberal-leaning state, dodging the most explosive national debates of the day and concentrating on a narrow agenda of issues where the center-right has politically popular ideas.

In an extended interview in suburban Santa Rosa, perched on a rock in a public park, Martinez repeatedly stressed the virtue of moving on from the wedge issues that have severely limited the reach of the Republican Party.

Martinez declined to fight a court ruling making gay marriage legal in New Mexico; she argues education policy and economic development were “more important” to the state. A personal friend of Jeb Bush, she says that under no circumstances will she join other Republican governors who have dropped support for Common Core education standards under pressure from the right. The governor makes no apology for accepting federal health care support under the Affordable Care Act, calling Obamacare a fact of life, at least for now.

“It’s the law. It’s the law,” Martinez, 55, says, repeating herself for emphasis. “There’s so many issues – and that may be one of them – but I hope we don’t get hung up on one and forget all of the important issues that impact families every day.”

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And in a season when Republican Senate and House candidates are hammering their Democratic opponents for supporting “amnesty” and failing to fence off the Mexican border, Martinez calls for a more “respectful” GOP tone. Herself the granddaughter of immigrants from Mexico – and the daughter of an El Paso lawman – Martinez says it’s essential that the next president pass a large-scale immigration overhaul. She blames President Barack Obama for not prioritizing immigration reform early in his presidency.

“Our president said he was going to have a comprehensive immigration reform in his first year and we’re in year six,” she says, describing a wrenching visit to a facility housing undocumented minors and divided families in Artesia, N.M. “You have moms choosing between children, because there’s been somebody in the White House that doesn’t have the leadership or the courage to do something about immigration in a comprehensive way.”

Martinez has faced no fallout from national Republicans for her substantive and rhetorical deviations (Romney campaigned with her on Thursday despite her past criticism of his rhetoric on immigration and federal safety-net spending.) On the contrary, party leaders describe her as 2014’s best example of how to compete on rough turf, in a state that looks a lot like America’s future.

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A majority-minority Sun Belt territory where Latinos make up 46 percent of the population, New Mexico has voted only once in the last quarter-century for a Republican presidential candidate – the vocal immigration-reform backer George W. Bush in his 2004 reelection.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who raised Martinez as a vice-presidential contender during his own 2012 presidential campaign, held her up as a template for “being a conservative in a deep-blue place.”

“I don’t want to say it’s easy in red states, but the difficulty factor of executing a successful governorship in a deep-blue state is considerably higher,” said Pawlenty, who now helms the influential Financial Services Roundtable in Washington. “She’s going to be on everybody’s list for future VP candidates and future presidential candidates, and should be.”

Martinez rules out any interest in going national. Asked if she would consider a presidential campaign after winning reelection, she answers with a smirk: “Me, running for president? No.” Pressed on her answer, she makes clear that she’s entirely serious.

“Never,” she says. Vice president? “No.” Under no circumstances? “No.” Will she definitely serve a full, four-year term if reelected? “Yes.”

Democrats in New Mexico and Washington aren’t quite sure what to make of Martinez, viewing her as something of a local phenomenon in a party that has trended increasingly toward the hard right. Her popularity in New Mexico stems in part from her policy agenda – including business tax cuts and teacher performance reviews that she implemented – but also from a personal identity and political style that other Republicans cannot easily emulate.

How, Democrats wonder, could any other Republican really fashion themselves after the first Latina governor, a law-and-order prosecutor who vaulted into high office in the aftermath of an ethically challenged Democratic administration? And if her incremental policy accomplishments – regulatory and tax adjustments, and a battle with teachers’ unions – play well in New Mexico, do they really amount to a national launch pad?

Alan Webber, the wealthy publisher who sought the Democratic nomination to challenge Martinez, argued that the governor had largely traded on the strength of her personality and had little in the way of real results to show for it. Her reputation, he said, benefited from her well-received speech at the 2012 GOP convention in Tampa that Webber called “a nice set-piece of political theater.”

“If you actually ask the question — ‘What has she done as governor that she can take credit for?’ — I think the answer, realistically, is virtually nothing,” Webber said. “She just doesn’t seem to have a clue of what to do about these problems of poverty, underperforming schools and low-paying jobs.”

The man to whom Webber lost the Democratic nomination, state Attorney General Gary King, has struggled to make that case to a majority of New Mexicans. Martinez has outraised him by a towering margin. In the immediate aftermath of the Democratic primary, the Republican Governors Association buried him in hundreds of thousands of dollars in television ads, widening Martinez’s lead from the high single digits well into the teens.

If Martinez’s unique identity can’t be grafted onto other Republicans, it’s plainly working for her here. At a morning stop in the Route 66 town of Tucumcari, she switches back and forth between English and Spanish as she greets the workers of the Tucumcari Mountain Cheese Factory. Clad in the mandatory, jeans-and-boots uniform of a Western governor, she mouths to one woman: “I love your hair.” (Another woman, standing in line to meet the governor, murmurs to her friend: “She’s got the personality.”)

Two hours later, Martinez is introduced at an environmental event by two Democratic officials who gush with praise. Santa Rosa Mayor Joe Campos, a Democrat who ran for lieutenant governor in 2010, pronounces Martinez’s visit (her fourth this year) “totally awesome.”

“She has helped our community. She has helped our county. She has helped us in many ways,” says state Rep. George Dodge, a Democrat in the closely divided New Mexico House. Asked if he would cast his ballot for Martinez on Nov. 4, he replies: “I haven’t decided yet, but you know what, I’m definitely leaning that way.”

It’s a scene that’s impossible to imagine in Scott Walker’s Wisconsin or Rick Scott’s Florida. Or, for that matter, in Washington, a place Martinez says, with some credibility, that she strenuously avoids.

Asked who she contacts when she needs help from the nation’s capital – New Mexico, with its four military bases and multiple national labs, is a huge recipient of federal dollars – Martinez answers haltingly. She mentions Eric Cantor, the former House leader who lost his seat over the summer, and grasps for the name of another lawmaker – “Senator – what’s his name? Michael–?” – before an aide furnishes the name of California Rep. Kevin McCarthy.

“Yes, yes, yes – McCarthy,” Martinez says, shifting back into the Beltway-shy pose in which she’s more comfortable. “I haven’t had to reach out and say, ‘I need you to help me with an issue, a particular issue.’ I know that I could. I look, of course, to my colleagues [among the governors] because it’s just different.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story mischaracterized Martinez’ grandparents’ immigration status. While the governor said in 2011 that her grandparents appeared to have been undocumented, the subsequent discovery of additional government documents has shown that they entered the country legally.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Libby Isenstein @ 10/26/2014 09:09 AM CORRECTION: A previous version of this story mischaracterized Martinez’ grandparents’ immigration status. While the governor said in 2011 that her grandparents appeared to have been undocumented, the subsequent discovery of additional government documents has shown that they entered the country legally.