Coronavirus in rural America (Part XXXXII): Back to New Mexico

The Washington Post reported yesterday from Gallup, population 21,678,  and Grants, population 9,182, both in New Mexico.  These cities represent different responses to the   Robert Klemko and Griff Witte write under the headline "America’s coronavirus divide is reflected in two New Mexico mayors. One asked for a lockdown. The other defied orders."

Here's the lede, dateline Gallup:

Louie Bonaguidi had been mayor of this tiny city set among high desert buttes and Native American reservations for just a matter of hours last week when the governor called.

“I want to congratulate you on your election,” New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham told him. “And give my condolences, because we’re locking your city down.”

Bonaguidi was not disappointed to hear that state troopers would be deployed to blockade all roads into Gallup. He was relieved: This was the only way, he believed, to stop local hospitals from spinning out of control during a novel coronavirus outbreak that already had overwhelmed them.

Less than an hour’s drive east on historic Route 66, in the even smaller city of Grants, the mayor was fighting a very different enemy last week: the governor.

Mayor Martin “Modey” Hicks was screaming at state troopers he had derided as “Gestapo” and leading a rebellion against Lujan Grisham’s statewide stay-at-home orders. He was encouraging local businesses on the city’s hard-luck main drag to defiantly reopen. There was no sense shutting down the economy, Hicks said, just because of a virus that, like the flu, needed to be left to “take its course.”

It goes without saying that these mayors represent different outlooks, different politics.  Plus, Gallup was surely more in touch with devastation on the Navajo Nation, a big chunk of which overlaps with McKinley County, of which Gallup is county seat.  That highlights the issue that the two small cities are in different counties: Gallup in McKinley County and Grants in less densely populated Cibola County.  That said, both of are sparsely populated.

Another story about New Mexico and the coronavirus--this one quite positive--is here, and the prior blog post I wrote is here.