A proposal by two New Mexico legislators to allow three counties along the Texas border to secede from the Land of Enchantment was dead on arrival in Santa Fe earlier this year, but across the border in Texas Lone Star legislators are running with the idea and holding hearings backed by Texas’ Speaker of the House.
In January, New Mexico Representatives Randall Pettigrew and Jimmy Mason, both Republicans representing parts of Chaves, Eddy & Lea Counties on the Texas border with New Mexico, introduced a draft of a state Constitutional amendment allowing “three or more contiguous counties” to secede from New Mexico. Pettigrew said at the time that he introduced the proposal to draw attention to the political differences between those more conservative-leaning counties and the Democratic majority in the legislature and state offices.
The New Mexico proposal landed flat in Santa Fe but it appears to have spurred interest in the Republican-controlled Texas legislature. The Texas Governmental Oversight Committee announced this week that it would hold hearings in late September exploring whether to annex Lea, Roosevelt and Eddy Counties. “We didn’t initiate this, state representatives from New Mexico initiated bills to remove themselves – not to become their own state – but to become part of West Texas,” Lubbock State Representative Carl Tepper, who is on the Governmental Oversight Committee, told KCBD.
Even if Texas passes a bill, a companion bill would still have to be approved in New Mexico and Congress gets the final say.