By Frost McGahey
Photo from Albuquerque Journal
https://www.abqjournal.com/news/article_698e35db-7ae1-49ac-aef5-8fdc51f5fd46.html (Photo)
Trump's winning shocked Governor Grisham and her organization. She planned to go to Washington, D.C. and join the Harris administration, but that didn't happen. Now according to Joe Monahan, she's eyeing the presidency of the University of New Mexico which pays $675,000.
According to his article, the University of New Mexico's president, Garnett Stokes, is not voluntarily retiring. Paul Blanchard, the Governor's hand-picked chair of the UNM Board of Regents, has been working hard to convince the other regents that Stokes should be replaced with Michelle Lujan Grisham. That would happen when the Governor's term expires December 2026. Stokes would leave July 2026.
According to Monahan, this would be "very unwise for our state and our flagship university. MLG's management style is chaotic and intensely personalized--not a good fit for UNM."
Also, Grisham does not have a Ph.D. which is usually a requirement for a president of a university. She does have a JD from the University of NM law school, but it's unclear if she passed the bar.
Plus she has no work experience in academia. Most university presidents rise up from the ranks with an average tenure of 24 years before becoming a president. Grisham's work experience is entirely as a bureaucrat.
Rumors of Lt. Gov. Howie Morales becoming president of Western New Mexico University have been swirling around since the ouster of Joe Shepard, which some view as a political hit job.
A search is underway for a permanent president of WNMU. The search firm Anthem was chosen, and their bid was $75,000 while other RFP proposals were in the $138,000 range.
In 2023, Grisham's former attorney general, Hector Balderas, was appointed to run Northern NM College. The campus is located in Espanola and has about 1300 students. Balderas's salary is $232,000.
As Monahan writes, "Who needs academic administrative experience earned by laboring in the fields for years when you can hop on the ex-politician escalator and ride to the top in style?"
