I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Albuquerque’s James Lewis will be just one of the thousands of screaming supporters who’ll likely pack Denver’s Invesco Field on the evening of Aug. 28 to watch Barack Obama accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president of the United States.
For Lewis, it will be highly political and certainly historic…but it will be personal, too.
Lewis, 60, made New Mexico history 22 years ago when he became the first African-American to win statewide office. His election in 1986 as state treasurer was only the beginning. After several prestigious stints in state and municipal government, he bookended his career by getting elected state treasurer again in 2006. A tireless volunteer and speaker, Lewis, a lifelong Democrat, remains one of the most respected and genuinely-liked public figures in the state.
And he speaks with authority when he expresses his respect for what Obama has been through.
"I was told that I could not be elected because I was African American the first time I ran, and the second and the third," the Roswell native told me. "But I held in there, and so did he."
Lewis said he first felt a kinship with Obama soon after the freshman Illinois senator declared his candidacy and people immediately began saying he was too young and inexperienced and needed to wait. That feeling intensified among many in the party as Obama battled it out in the primaries with early-on favorite Hillary Clinton.
"Being a candidate myself many times, I was familiar with people saying, ‘It’s not your time,’" he said. "He had to be strong in the face of entrenched political power system to overcome that system. I know exactly what that’s like for them to say, ‘No, you have to wait while we anoint someone else.’"
And while Lewis freely admits that much of his excitement at Obama’s candidacy comes because he is a fellow black man, his admiration for Obama was never all about race. Black or not, Obama is simply an astonishing political candidate, he said.
"I support him for three reasons. First, I’ve never seen anyone who is able to galvanize young folk like he has, to get out and get involved and vote. Second, he raised enormous amounts of money. And third, they said he couldn’t get the white vote, and he won Iowa and all those states."
Still, Lewis is keenly aware of the importance of breaking historical barriers.
As he attends the convention in his official capacity as an elected-official delegate of New Mexico’s Democratic Party, Lewis admits he expects to feel estatic as he watches as Obama makes his historic acceptance speech and maybe… just maybe… moves step closer to becoming America’s first black president.
And Lewis knows he will feel undeniable pride in the fact that Obama is breaking the same kind of barriers he broke — and is still breaking — in America today.
"The eyes of the nation are upon us — the eyes of the entire world," said Lewis. "I only hope that one day it will become commonplace, and we won’t be talking about the first or the second or the third."
