Reps. John Heaton and Ben Lujan (with Nick Salazar) in a committee meeting during the 2009 special session.

New Mexico state lawmakers struggled to pass a mid-year state budget fix last week, but in a possible sign of how difficult things may become politically, at least one public employee union is already throwing out a seldom-used threat in New Mexico: Democratic lawmakers, we’ll work to unseat you if you cut education.

“We are making it very clear to separate those who want to use education as a slogan and those who want to do something constructive,” said Christine Trujillo, president of the American Federation of Teachers of New Mexico (AFT-NM).

Union representatives and members will grade lawmakers on how they vote on education funding during the regular legislative session in January, Trujillo said.

While AFT’s threat applies to Democratic lawmakers in general, the practical effect falls most heavily on Democratic House members, who are elected every two years and face re-election next year.

But several House Democratic lawmakers sounded unfazed by the potential challenge late last week.

“That’s their prerogative. But I think we’re the only friends that they have,” House Speaker Ben Lujan, D-Santa Fe, said of AFT’s aggressive tone.

“You’re looking at the people that’ve been carrying their bills for 20 years,” said the chairman of the House Education Committee, Rep. Rick Miera, D-Albuquerque.

Rep. John Heaton, D-Carlsbad, said coping with such challenges comes with Democrats controlling the New Mexico Legislature.

“We have to be responsible,” Heaton said. “When you are the majority party, all of the obligations fall on your shoulders to try to do the right things. That responsibility comes with being in the majority. That’s just part of it.”

The union’s increasingly aggressive tone comes as state lawmakers and Gov. Bill Richardson prepare for what many predict will be the most difficult legislative session in decades. State lawmakers and Richardson may face a $1 billion shortfall when they meet in Santa Fe in January to write next year’s state budget.

Some state lawmakers predict that deep spending cuts and tax increases will be part of the debate in January.

New Mexico state legislators do not often have strongly supported opponents in primary elections; they are usually only opposed by members of the opposite party in general election votes. But judging by recent history, AFT’s threat to support challengers in a primary may not be an idle one.

The educators’ union broke with other public employee unions last year to endorse challengers running against sitting Democratic incumbents prior to the June 2008 primary. Then Rep. Dan Silva and Sens. James Taylor and Shannon Robinson lost to Eleanor Chavez, Eric Griego and Tim Keller, respectively.

“They did endorse Tim Keller and Eric Griego. They contributed and a number of their employees did get involved,” recalled Neri Holguin, who managed Keller’s and Griego’s campaigns. “I was particularly grateful for their endorsement.”

In recent days New Mexicans have caught a glimpse of how bad the state’s financial situation could become. Joe Williams, the state’s corrections chief, said two prisons would close and hundreds of non-violent inmates would go free if he had to cut $21 million, or 7.6 percent, from this agency. Meanwhile, state lawmakers and their staff jousted with the Richardson administration over whether or not the budget fix the Legislature passed last week exempted the government’s low-income health insurance program from cuts.

Among the measures the Legislature passed last week to help address this year’s $650 million shortfall was one that ordered Richardson to cut 7.6 percent of spending at dozens of agencies under his control. The governor can reach that 7.6 percent threshold by cutting deeper in some places than others, state lawmakers and legislative staff have said. In other words, he has the discretion to trim spending at one agency deeper than another as long as the 7.6 percent is cut in total.

Throughout the special legislative session, Trujillo and other AFT members often touted a poll showing a majority of New Mexicans opposing education cuts.

And sometimes they appeared to be recruiting individuals to run against incumbent lawmakers.

“’Want to announce early for one of these conservative Democrats’ seat in the House and win in Nov 2010?’” John Ingram, also of AFT-New Mexico, commented during a live blog hosted by the Independent during last week’s special legislative session.

K-12 education was largely protected from cuts during the recent special legislative session, although the legality of a fund transfer that would help cushion local school districts from cuts remains unclear.

Trujillo acknowledged that AFT is thinking ahead to guard against deep cuts in K-12 education and at colleges and universities in January despite the state’s increasingly bleak finances.

“The weekend before the special legislative session, 3,200 people showed at the Capitol,” Trujillo said. “Three thousand people got up on a Friday morning when they could have done something else. Three thousand people felt compelled to go to Santa Fe and tell legislators how serious this was. If those politicians don’t understand the depth of their concern, I don’t know what else to do.”

But Nash writes that Richardson is standing firm in his opposition, insisting the tax cuts are an economic development tool. The 2003 tax cuts lowered the top state income tax rate from 8.2 percent to 4.9 percent. The state phased in the reductions in over several years.

Richardson has basically held the line for weeks against repealing the 2003 tax cuts as a way to address what is projected to be a $441 million shortfall in the state’s budget for the year that ends June 30.

The governor told me the same thing two weeks ago, although he said he was open to looking at closing some tax credits and tax incentives. That openness didn’t extend to incentives the state offers the film industry, however.

“We need to take a look at them, to look to see if some may have outlived their usefulness,” Richardson told me then.

At the time Richardson didn’t specifically name any tax credits or incentives that he’d be open to closing.

Nash quotes a statement from Christine Trujillo in today’s story in which the AFT-NM president says “Personal income tax cuts for the wealthiest New Mexicans, (those with incomes of $295k or more) capital gains tax cuts, and tax loopholes for big out-of-state corporations are costing the state $1 billion a year in education funding. The governor must leave New Mexico with a better legacy and insist the state rid itself of tax breaks which have outgrown their usefulness. Additional tax revenues must be invested in schoolchildren,”

Richardson has said he does not want to cut public schools spending to make up this year’s budget shortfall, a goal some top lawmakers have questioned.

Nash reminds us that the teachers’ organization isn’t the first, and likely won’t be the last, group to call for the repeal of the 2003 tax cuts.

She writes:

New Mexico Voices for Children is among the groups calling for reversal of the tax cuts.

The group’s research director, Gerry Bradley, said those who make the most can most afford to sacrifice.

“Our lowest paid people are being asked, essentially, to make the largest sacrifice, while those who could most afford to sacrifice aren’t being asked to give up anything,” Bradley said last month.

In addition, Nash writes, several Democratic state lawmakers also have suggested Richardson make such a change.

Who knows if the move to repeal the tax cuts will gain momentum? We’ve still got a month or more before the special session scheduled to address this year’s budget shortfall is called into action. And politics, like much of life, is a balancing of competing interests.

So the answer given today by an elected official may change tomorrow, if there’s a dramatic change in the dynamics at play. But at this point the governor appears firm in his opposition to repealing the tax cuts. He likely derives some fortitude from the fact that some top lawmakers agree with him that repealing the 2003 income tax cuts may not make the most economic sense during the recession.

So the repeal of the income tax cuts appear unlikely this year. But politics is a strange, unpredictable business. Stay tuned.

Members of the American Federation of Teachers New Mexico said Wednesday the petition drive has garnered roughly 3,000 signatures in Albuquerque alone and now the union will expand the drive to Belen, Grants, Taos and Española.

“People are literally outraged over this,” said John Ingram of AFT’s political action committee, C.O.P.E.

Added Jeff Carr, a history teacher in Taos: “We’re just getting started. We’ll get more than 10,000 signatures.”

At issue is the increased pension contributions public employees began making Wednesday, the first day of the state’s new fiscal year.

The 1.5 percent more that public employees will pay toward their pensions was part of a larger cost-saving measure the New Mexico Legislature passed this year to deal with the state’s financial problems. It is expected to save more than $80 million because the state has reduced what it pays into the pension funds by the same 1.5 percent.

What the union hopes to do is persuade Gov. Bill Richardson to place the issue on the agenda of a special legislative session that may happen this fall.

AFT members offered several options that state lawmakers could consider to pay for the cost savings that would be lost if the increased employee contributions are undone.

One possibility mentioned repeatedly was the repeal of state income tax cuts in 2003. That law reduced the state’s top income tax rate from 8.2 percent to 4.9 percent.

“There’s plenty of ways to get money that we need,” Carr said.

But an influential lawmaker said Wednesday raising taxes during a sour national economy wouldn’t get very far.

“It’s very difficult to charge more taxes when people are losing their jobs and losing their 401Ks,” said state Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, and vice chairman of the Legislative Finance Committee.

Smith also said the Legislature decided to increase public employees’ pension contributions in lieu of more painful alternatives like layoffs and furloughs.

“We were thinking we were doing education a favor by avoiding furloughs,” Smith said.

As for whether a special session would happen, Smith said he had a frank discussion with the governor last Friday. The governor indicated that he wanted to see what effect the federal stimulus funds flowing into New Mexico would have before calling a special session.

“I think that’s a responsible position,” Smith said.

A message sent via e-mail to the governor’s office asking about the special session and seeking a response to the AFT’s petition drive was not answered Wednesday.

Members of the AFT, which already has filed a lawsuit challenging the increased contributions, said they were adamant about working toward the repeal of the bigger pension contributions.

“We’re going to circulate it through direct mail, e-mail, Web sites,” Tim Crone, president of AFT New Mexico’s political action committee, said Wednesday of the petition. “We’re holding meetings and town halls to inform people of the petition and to seek signatures.”

They also will have help from other labor unions.

“An injury to one is an injury for all,” said Jon Hendry, the legislative chair to the New Mexico Federation of Labor. “This is going to be a priority for labor in the next session.”