Regent Raymond Sanchez has replaced Jamie Koch as the president of the Board of Regents.
Sanchez was voted into the position during a regents meeting Friday.
Regent Jack Fortner was re-elected vice president, and Regent Carolyn Abeita was elected treasurer for 2009.
Koch resigned as president March 12 and remains on the board.
Sanchez said he was surprised when he was nominated to succeed Koch as president.
"It wasn't something that I went after. Jamie decided," Sanchez said. "Basically, he and I talked a couple of weeks ago about the fact that he was considering resigning the presidency."
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Sanchez said Koch asked if he would be interested in succeeding him, and Sanchez said he would.
"Then ... the governor and Jamie apparently had a conversation, and Jamie offered the governor the proposition that he would resign and allow the governor to recommend somebody to take Jamie's place, and the governor recommended me," Sanchez said. "But the final decision, of course, was up to the Board of Regents, and yesterday they agreed and it was unanimous."
Fortner said he was happy for Sanchez but confused by the support Sanchez received from Koch and Gov. Bill Richardson.
Fortner has been the regents vice president for five years and was president from 2003 to 2004. He said he would have liked to have been president again.
"Was I surprised? No. Was I disappointed? Yes," Fortner said. "I would think that perhaps I was likely to have been the next president, having been the president before."
Fortner said the decision to recommend Sanchez as president may have been partisan in nature. Fortner is a Republican, and Sanchez is a Democrat.
"I suspect that our governor didn't want a Republican being the president over the Board of Regents, which would have been me," he said.
Alarie Ray-Garcia, deputy communications director for Richardson, said the governor's decision to support Sanchez had nothing to do with politics.
Ray-Garcia said Sanchez was not Richardson's first pick. Richardson had initially intended to support Regent Don Chalmers, who is a Republican, she said.
However, Chalmers told the governor he was not interested in taking the position this year because he was too busy with his car dealership, Ray-Garcia said.
Richardson had considered Fortner but decided he was too conservative in spending on athletics, Ray-Garcia said.
Fortner said he will work closely with Sanchez and Koch in order to maintain a constructive relationship between the regents and the UNM community. The change in the position of regents president is a positive one, he said.
"Any time there's a change in leadership, there's going to be a change in relationships," Fortner said. "And part of it is simply the style of how Raymond will run the board or how Jamie ran the board, and I think that change is good at times."
Sanchez said he will focus on encouraging communication among UNM's constituencies.
"My personal position and the way I have always handled things is that I do not like to see walls built up," Sanchez said. "I would rather be able to have very low barriers that people can step over to be able to visit with one another, communicate their opinions, their differences of opinions, and communicate."
