Uncategorized

Focus on Judicial Public Financing, Redistricting, Open Primaries This Session

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This past year, Common Cause New Mexico—along with many other groups— spent the majority of our time ensuring that this historic pandemic did not deter New Mexico citizens from exercising their most important right: the right to vote.  For months, we worked with community partners to instruct voters on registration and absentee voting, worked with county clerks and Native American groups to ensure ballot access, ran a hotline, and fielded hundreds of election protection volunteers for the general and primary elections.  We are delighted with our state’s record (68%) turnout and our hats are off to all of the poll workers, election officials, community advocates, and especially, the numbers of engaged voters who made this happen. We hope that many of the policies that helped make voting easier this year will continue into the future. And now, onto the 2021 Legislative Session. Our first legislative priority is the expansion of public financing to district court judges. Currently, this voluntary system covers only the state Supreme Court and Court of Appeals.  Expanding our currently successful state program is the best way to ensure that our judges are protected from potential conflicts of interest.

2021 Legislative Session

Urban or rural, New Mexicans are united in push for progress

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I’m a 12th generation Nuevo Mexicana (give or take a few generations). My family can trace their presence in this region from time immemorial to well before the time this land was Mexico, a U.S. territory and eventually the 47th state. I’m as New Mexican as they get. My blood type is red or green. I will argue the virtue of the New Mexico blue sky with anyone, any day.

Uncategorized

Lawmakers Must Stabilize Revenue Streams and Send More Help to Struggling Families

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James Jimenez, executive director of New Mexico Voices for Children

We can build the kind of New Mexico we all want – one where jobs pay a family-sustaining wage and children receive a world-class education – but only when everyone does their part. That means having a stable and equitable tax system – one that asks the most from those who have the most and raises the money we need to make the investments in education, health care, infrastructure, and more that help drive our economy. It also means ensuring that our state government has the resources necessary to support families hurting the most during times of crisis. Thanks to crashing oil prices and overproduction here at home, it is clear that New Mexico does not have the kind of revenue stability that would help us sustain those investments in our people over the long-term. We cannot subject our educational system to the oil-price roller coaster and expect positive outcomes.

2021 Legislative Session

New Mexico lawmakers pursue big agenda while navigating checkpoints

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New Mexico’s legislative session begins today against an odd backdrop of optimism,  uncertainty, and vigilance, all at once. 

Planning for a largely online session has long been in the works, with the public barred from the Roundhouse until the COVID-19 pandemic is brought to heel. Now, the Legislature finds itself launching a session grappling with the twin challenges of a deadly pandemic and the spectre of violence, and no one knows exactly how it will turn out.  

The Roundhouse has been abruptly fenced off in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection in the nation’s capitol and subsequent warnings by the FBI that armed protests may occur across the country in the lead up to the inauguration of President-Elect Joe Biden Wednesday. Only approved lawmakers, staff or others with specific credentials, like media, will be able to enter, through checkpoints. In Santa Fe, national guard and state police are out in force to handle armed protests and possible violence. 

Here’s a sneak peek at our special print edition, which will be published in newspapers around the state this weekend.

2021 Legislative Session

Lawmakers will again push for capital outlay transparency

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Legislators will make another push this year to make public how individual lawmakers divvy up capital outlay money. 

New Mexico In Depth discovered back in 2015 that those decisions were exempt from the Inspection of Public Records Act, after submitting a request for a list detailing how lawmakers individually allocated infrastructure money that year. We wrote about what we’d found, and several lawmakers promptly introduced bills in 2016 to make information available to the public about how individual legislators steward capital outlay dollars. Here’s a recap of the issue:

Each year, the state Legislature passes a capital outlay budget that sends millions of dollars out to New Mexico communities to pay for infrastructure projects. To figure out how to spend that money, lawmakers divide the money three ways. The governor controls a third, state agencies control a third, and lawmakers control a third. 

How do lawmakers decide how to spend their portion?

Images show reality in El Paso that must be seen

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Workers and guards outside an El Paso mobile morgue during the COVID-19 pandemic. Claudia Silva/New Mexico In Depth

It felt surreal pulling into the cemetery next to the University Medical Center of El Paso. Large trailers with doors flung wide open are lined up outside the medical examiner’s office tucked away just down the street. The trailers house rows of shelves holding the overflow of those who have died of COVID-19. As Texas has reached over 1 million cases, the border city of El Paso has become a hot-spot, some calling it the new New York, with one of every 20 to 30 people estimated to be positive. 

As the situation has worsened the city’s prisoners have been asked to help handle the dead.

2020 Election

New Mexico State Senate makes decisive left turn

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New Mexicans woke up on Wednesday not knowing who their next president would be. We’ll stay tuned to that nailbiter of a race, which appears will be decided in a few key states. New Mexico isn’t one of them. It handily voted for Biden, but that was never in serious doubt. While Americans don’t know who will be president, one thing closer to home became clear after Tuesday night: New Mexico’s state senate will shift to the left, potentially opening a path in the Legislature for long stymied Democratic initiatives. Democrats increased their majority in that chamber by one seat in an election that saw New Mexicans turn out in record numbers — 915,376 cast ballots, shattering the previous total of 833,000 set in 2008. More significant, though, is a shift within the makeup of the parties, with a slate of more progressive Democrats replacing longtime incumbents in both parties. As uncertainty looms over womens’ right to make their own choices regarding abortion, joining the Senate will be Democrats who have pledged to repeal a long-dormant ban on abortion in state law.

2020 Election

Democrats dream of expanded majority in State Senate

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In the wake of a “progressive wave” in June’s Democratic primaries that swept out of office a group of powerful incumbent Democrats, the state Senate will look very different come January. The wins could help progressive Democrats advance key initiatives, like tapping the Land Grant permanent fund for early childhood programs or getting rid of a criminal abortion law on the books since the 1960s. 

But first, the victorious challengers must win on Tuesday or other closely contested seats largely within the Albuquerque metro area must flip if Democrats want to strengthen their 26-16 advantage in the chamber. 

New Mexico In Depth identified 10 Senate districts in which the difference between registered Democratic and Republican voters is below 4,000. We then charted out candidate spending for each race, as well as the level of in-kind contributions for each candidate. The in-kind contributions reflect spending by party leaders on behalf of the candidates, who then included the value of that spending in their own campaign reports. Four of the districts have been in Democratic hands prior to 2020, while six have been held by Republicans.

2020 Election

PACs and nonprofits fuel 2020 elections

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As is the case every year, the month or so before election day is one of the busiest of the year for both political contributions and spending. Voters begin to tune in, early and absentee voting starts, and candidates make their final pitches to the electorate. Political action committees (PACs) and other groups spend considerable amounts to influence election outcomes. This year, even with a raging pandemic, those dynamics have held. Here are the top 20 groups raising money during the Third General Reporting Period, which covered October 6th – 27th.  Political action committees or independent expenditure groups have raised an aggregate sum of $8.3 million since June.

2020 Election

Spending in New Mexico’s 2nd district congressional busts into stratosphere

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This year’s rematch between Democrat Xochitl Torres Small and Republican Yvette Herrell in New Mexico’s second congressional district is one of the most closely-watched in the nation, generating tensions within the state’s oil and gas industry and tens of millions in outside spending. Roll Call has identified Torres Small as one of the 10 most vulnerable House incumbents up for re-election this year. The respected Cook Political Report rates the race as a tossup. 

At this point, candidates and outside groups have spent a combined sum exceeding $30 million. Spending in 2018 approached $14 million, in a year when across the country record spending was recorded. According to Matt Reichbach at the New Mexico Political report, the New Mexico record occurred in the 2006 race for New Mexico’s 1st congressional district seat, at $14.8 million.