Lewis Trondheim's place to ramble about Native topics (and Alcon's if he wants)

[WMS]

New Mexico
S is Senate, H is House. (42 and 70, of which 13 and 21 over 5%)

I did say I'd get to this one day. Slow day at work, so...*swears at the malfunctioning NM Legislature site* In 2 pieces, due to the length requirement.
Main data source, with tons of information from the time of redistricting. "A Citizen's Guide to Redistricting" in particular has some amusing historical data of how badly things were done in the past.
Note: The Natives would've had only half the House districts they do now if Anglo Rep Gov Johnson hadn't vetoed the original Dem plan - the original Hispanic-favored plan, that is. Odd bedfellows can and do show up sometimes in NM.

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There isn't "as injun" a district in the House because this area got split among 4 different House districts in order to increase the number of Native seats.

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The first one.

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As I relayed to you once before be careful in assigning the racial/ethnic status of a person based on appearance - I've known Hispanics paler than Anglo-Saxon me, and NM tends to have a lot of 'more than one race' types of people. And the surnames are all over the place as well. Anyway, the second one. I'd vote for 'Navajo enough' of a Representative.

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Not so sure about Lidio G. Rainaldi being white either.

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The third one. I'm pretty sure Patricia A. Lundstrom is actually Native, although as I said above, 100% certainty is not easy to come by.

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Yes, the Jicarilla Apache are included. And W Bernalillo (more on that below) is properly included in the district. It also includes the really, really, really low-population parts of Rural Sandoval County in the SW that I'm not certain have people in them at all.

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George J. Hanosh I'm not certain about one way or the other. On a human interest side note, I'm pretty sure I saw him in the waiting room while I was getting an endoscopy a few months back...and in the prep area...he was getting something else ending with -oscopy.

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The fourth one, in part, spun off from NW NM. As for the 'stretches onto the official rez' bit...maybe a little bit in the SW part of the San Juan part of the district, but not by much. And this time I think you're right about the Hispanic Representative part, although I wouldn't be that surprised if W. Ken Martinez had some Native blood. But you'd have to ask him.

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If the Pueblo is stronger and the Navajo is weaker, does that mean the Jicarilla Apache part is in the middle?

[WMS]

Part 2.

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Native area in the SW part of the District probably accounts for most of this.

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You forgot something. See H49. And some of the Checkerboard is Pueblo, not Navajo.

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Native area appears to be in SW of district, again.

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Actually, it stretches E almost to Bloomfield. That's important because the rural areas in between them appear to be where the Natives live.

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Native areas are mostly in the SW of the district, although it appears some Navajo Trust lands poke into S2 from the SE.

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Yup, THE Isleta Pueblo House district.

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Yup, THE Mescalero Apache House district. Good old W. C. "Dub" Williams. Nicest politician at the Legislature that I met back in 2000.

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Yup, THE Isleta Pueblo Senate district.

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"It appears some Navajo Trust lands poke into H3 from the SE."

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And a pretentious art colony for color.

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Oh yeah, good old BernCo Precinct 31. The overwhelming majority - and I mean it with the overwhelming part - of the population in this part of H12 is Navajo, from the To'hajiilee Reservation. IIRC they're a part of the Navajo Nation that wandered its way down there some time back and are kind of like a colony. While Laguna has land in this area, they have very few people here - maybe a few manning the gas station (in 2000-1 data, anyway). I think there's a casino in this area but since I don't gamble I'm not sure. Oh, I don't think it's really the Checkerboard in this area either. And that precinct should never have been attached to H12, but the arrogance of the Valley Hispanics in saving their incumbents has no limits, since that idiotic assignment had to do with what I noticed was the Prime Directive of the Dems in BernCo of keeping EVERY Democratic seat intact despite population shifts (I'm looking at YOU, H19) (although H17 was the one most at risk of getting properly squashed), and the ripple effect required the Dem in H12 to grab Pct 31 for the population. Before 2000 it was in H65, where it belongs.

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Alamo Bend Navajo Reservation, Lewis. It really should've been put in H69 but Native power was not at the top of the redistricters' agenda.

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Yup, THE Mescalero Apache Senate district.

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Indeed, some of the Jicarilla Apache are here in the W. Santa Clara Pueblo definitely is here, and it appears that a tiny bit of San Juan Pueblo (but not the really inhabited bit) is here.

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Indeed. Including what is bound to be YOUR favorite, Pojoaque Pueblo, because they are rather radical. Beginning to encroach on leftist Yupdom...

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Including San Juan Pueblo, which is the contact ZIP code given by its Representative...is this a Pueblo Representative, I wonder?

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And a pretentious art colony for color. Again.

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And some Jicarilla Apache areas.

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Ah, this area. I remember the Native American Coordinator for the Bernalillo County Clerk's Office talking about this 'area of interest'. Although I'm not 100% clear on why there is this Native cluster, the area is the poorish minority ghetto area. Mostly Hispanics, but it looks like the Natives are here as well. Lots and lots and lots of 'multi-family housing' (i.e., apartments of all types). I suspect that the Natives here are ones 'off the res' who are working in Albuquerque and this is the area they can afford apartments in (they have my sympathy on that topic, for certain).

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See S17.

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See S17.

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See S17.

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Welcome to SIPI!

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See S13.

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See S17.

There Lewis, does that help?

Quite a fascinating thread.
Which congressional district in the nation has the highest percentage Native population? Is it Arizona 2? Alaska at large? Something in Oklahoma?

Arizona 1, 22.6%, followed by New Mexico 3, 19.6%.

Under yet another revision of my old version of the 2001 Congressional boundaries (yeah, yeah, I'll post it one of these months) in which I managed to include Sandia Pueblo (the inhabited bits) in NM-3 along with all other Native areas I could find (except for one), I got NM-3 up to 22.5% Native (and for the record 38.9% Hispanic and 36.01% white - I'd love to see the Dem primaries there ). The last real Native area, the Mescalero Apaches in the SE, are too far away and surrounded by too many whites and Hispanics to include without lowering the Native percentage. So AZ-1 wins.

[WMS]

Hi!

Well hi there

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Must...resist...very...bad...joke...
Hmm, those might be good reasons why so few Natives actually represent the districts drawn specifically to represent Natives. I find it boggling that a 70.5% Native district elects a white boy, but oh well. I have my own, more cynical, view on this - the Natives do what the NM Democratic Machine tells them to do, and the Machine is run by Hispanics and Whites, and if they want to put one of their own in the Legislature, why, that's what happens! I note that this is completely consistent with your other reasons. And might I add, Hispanics aren't likely to vote for Natives either - over at Acoma Pueblo, my parents told me about a tour they took in which the Native guide gleefully told them about the many past crimes of the Hispanics against them (the whole chopping off a foot from every Acoma male over 25 part in particular upsets them - see Juan de Onate, eh King? ) and as related in my last post the redistricting tussle up here was Natives vs Hispanics more than Natives vs Whites. As for your last point...oh yeah, Navajos and Pueblo peoples have been enemies for damn near a millennium. The Pueblos' ancestors were known as the Anasazi, and the word 'Anasazi' is a Navajo word...for "enemy ancestors".

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*gasps* See my above commentary wondering how such heavily Native districts elect these people. Meh, at least I brought new information to life even if I was wrong. And the site I know you got your information from doesn't mention her mother's side at all...darn it.

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The uranium mine at Laguna was in operation from 1953 to 1983. Hanosh is a Christian Arab name.[/quote]

I still saw him at the hospital building, Christian Arab or not. And that would have to be his dad, given that he'd be all of 13 years old in November 1951. And I'm really amazed the Natives would keep voting for someone involved with the uranium mining in the area!

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Yeah, considering the circumstances in which a lot of these things happened, it's probably not high on the agenda at family reunions. Are you sure it doesn't count? Well, that's at least a metric that is more consistent, although there are tribal members living outside rez boundaries of course. I doubt the tribes make their lists available on the Internet though.

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I fully admit I was being a smartass over your leaving the Jicarilla Apaches out of your description. So how does the Jicarilla being here compare this district, H65, with S22? Does it keep the "stronger Pueblo, weaker Navajo" aspect you pointed out, or does that change with the new additions?

[WMS]

Oh yes, forgot about those Navajo enclaves.

You FIEND!

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Now that's an interesting story. And rather amusing. My radical comment was related to them being probably the most left-wing Native group in the state. Certainly over any and all issues which might impact them...casinos, roads, etc. I think they're the most AIM-ish of the Native tribes in NM. Or as I said, your type of people.

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I was going off of ESRI and government data on the San Juan Pueblo name. I figured it was one of those things where it was the typical...err, Hispanicized, I suppose...name of a 'native' place. I will note that the United States Postal Service still uses "San Juan Pueblo". Mind you, for the same ZIP code they also use "Ohkay Owingeh", the one the H40 rep used, so both names seem to be valid...and "Chamita" is not acceptable for that ZIP code. Still, the new information is always nice to know.

[WMS]

I still saw him at the hospital building, Christian Arab or not.

Yeah, there are several allusions to his health problems floating around the web.

One additional factor to mention: Native percentages of these areas are rising. Some of these people have been in office, or at least in elective politics, since back when native percentages would have been lower. Who knows who'd win an open-seat primary for Hanosh's or Rainaldi's seat?

As to machine... no. Primary elections, and turnout in general elections, in Navajo Country (at least in Arizona) are notoriously hard to predict precisely because of the lack of a functioning machine.

Well, I can confirm it in person then. Poor guy.

Interesting point. Of course, who knows what the latest gerrymandering in 2011 by the NM Dems will do up there...and yes, they will most certainly adjust the boundaries to minimize primary challenges in addition to general challenges.

Really? I think it might be different in Pueblo areas, although that is unclear. And I think the political elites in Native areas are plugged into the machines, anyway, most of the time, regardless of the populations - with notable exceptions such as John Pinto, S3, who aided the ousting of Manny Aragon in the Senate, and Ray Begaye, H4, who won my respect back in 2000 for suggesting that perhaps everyone in the Legislature, staff and politicians alike, could wear bolo ties as an alternative to regular ties, since this IS New Mexico, after all...he got shot down by stuffy liberal lawyer Raymond Sanchez, the head of the Dems in the House at the time. Which is one reason I enjoyed Sanchez going down the next election. Actually, Ray Begaye wanted to wear full Native dress in the Lege.

[WMS]

Ray Begaye wanted to wear full Native dress in the Lege.

I approve of that.

Although I can't begin to tell you how much I would approve if he were also a young attractive Yuman female.

So did I, but blame those stuffy lefty trial lawyers for shooting that down.

Well, you can't have everything.

[WMS]

Ray Begaye wanted to wear full Native dress in the Lege.

I approve of that.

Although I can't begin to tell you how much I would approve if he were also a young attractive Yuman female.

So did I, but blame those stuffy lefty trial lawyers for shooting that down.

Well, you can't have everything.

So your legislature has a dress code?
Weird.

Yup. It certainly did in 2000. I haven't been up there since then, but since the Dems still run the place...