Almost as soon as New Mexico gubernatorial candidate Duke Rodriguez took the stage at the Albuquerque Journal’s ongoing town hall series Wednesday, he faced the question that’s plagued his campaign for months: Does he live in Arizona or New Mexico?
Rodriguez — a former state cabinet secretary under then-Gov. Gary Johnson, hospital executive and cannabis CEO — told a crowd in the newspaper’s auditorium that he believes the state Constitution allows for candidates to have multiple residencies. In court, he faces a challenge to the legitimacy of his campaign after surviving two similar challenges.
“I’ve heard people say, ‘Oh he’s voted in Arizona and I heard he’s done this…some of the things you’ve heard are true and some of the things are absolutely incorrect,” Rodriguez told attendees. “A person can have a home in Hawaii, in Arizona and in New Mexico and have residency.”
He told the crowd that he has deep roots in the state — his family moved to Silver City in Southwestern New Mexico when he was 14 years old and he later lived in project housing in Alamogordo. He currently owns a house in northeast Albuquerque.
A spokesperson for the New Mexico Secretary of State previously told Source NM that the state’s constitutional residency requirement for candidates mandates that they “have been continuously registered to vote here for five years” and “have maintained a residence here.” The Secretary of State’s Office previously said Rodriguez registered to vote in New Mexico in 2010, but noted that his registration was canceled in 2021 as part of a “statutory voter list maintenance process in compliance with the federal National Voter Registration Act.” He registered to vote again on Jan. 14 of 2025.
Rodriguez said he disagrees with the spokesperson’s statement and argued that the state’s Constitution was written before voter registration was invented. The document is more than 100 years old and, on its face, does not allow for women or Native Americans to vote, he said.
“How could it have said that if this Constitution was written in 1910 when there was no voter registration?” he said to Source NM before pulling a printed copy of the state constitution out of his backpack and displaying it.
In the conversation with Albuquerque Journal journalists, Rodriguez touted his experience with the Johnson administration, Lovelace Health System and Ultra Health Cannabis as evidence that he could rectify New Mexico’s long-standing health care woes if elected governor. He fielded questions both from the paper’s journalists and written questions from the audience and used his time to address the state’s struggles with health care and economic development, making pit stops along the way to criticize Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s legislative priorities.
In particular, he took aim at the Legislature’s recent medical malpractice reforms and called them “window dressing.” The reform bill puts caps on punitive damages in malpractice cases in hopes to attract more physicians and lower malpractice insurance premiums.
“Those malpractice rates aren’t going to be affected for years,” Rodriguez said.
He also criticized Presbyterian Healthcare Services, one of the state’s largest health care providers. Echoing a press release his campaign issued Monday that called Presbyterian an “an organization on the verge of collapse,” Rodriguez said Presbyterian has reported $1 billion in operating losses in the last three years and said Presbyterian should merge or partner with the University of New Mexico Health System to make use of the university’s state funding capabilities.
“Your single largest health care company is teetering,” Rodriguez told attendees.
In a statement to Source NM, a spokesperson for Presbyterian said the health care system is facing “significant industry pressures, including rising costs and ongoing reimbursement challenges in programs like Medicare and Medicaid.”
“These are well-documented trends affecting providers across the country,” the statement said.
Rodriguez said he would invest in what he sees as the state’s four largest industries: oil and gas, agriculture, health care and national security. He said he’d like to exercise leverage in high-profile developments, such as the Project Jupiter data center campus in Southern New Mexico, and require that developers take steps to invest in the state, like building desalination plants. He told Source NM after the event that he doesn’t know enough about Project Jupiter to make an informed decision on supporting or opposing it.
He also said he has presided over companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange and believes that experience gives him the necessary experience to weigh in on the private equity firm Blackstone’s proposal to acquire PNM, the state’s largest power company.
Like with the massive data center project, he said he’d be willing to tell Blackstone to build water desalination facilities or to fund early childhood programs.
“You need a governor who’s going to sit in the room and say I’m willing to evaluate this, because you know what, I might want to buy this for myself,” he said.
Rodriguez also said he “believes in” building a new stadium, as Lujan Grisham and the State Fair Board recently agreed upon, but said he has “sentimental value” for the state fairgrounds.
“I have spent some time in Arizona, if you haven’t heard the rumor…they built a massive stadium and they didn’t build it in Phoenix, they didn’t build it in Scottsdale, they went ahead and took the risk and took it to their west side,” Rodriguez told the crowd, referring to how suburban Glendale built arenas for the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes and the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals. “Sometimes we should take the risk.”
However, those developments preceded a massive downturn in the Arizona suburb. Glendale found itself on the brink of bankruptcy after borrowing $180 million to build the hockey arena and $85 million to build amenities ahead of the city’s first Super Bowl in 2008.
When asked if he was aware of the subsequent downturn, Rodriguez told Source NM that “you have bad people making a bad deal. I don’t intend to make bad deals,” echoing the afternoon’s opening remarks that he’s repeated often since launching his campaign in December.
“I do believe we are a great state. I do not believe we are a poor state,” he said. “We are absolutely a poorly managed state.”
