Bernalillo County district attorney pushes for ‘top-to-bottom’ audit of state government
Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman’s career has ventured in and out of the public sector, and he’s had his eye on the governor’s office since he was first elected DA.
He served on the Albuquerque City Council in the 1990s, where he introduced the state’s first hate crime ordinance and worked to establish a pilot program to train nurses in providing care to sexual assault survivors. He also worked for years as a private attorney. He’s made detours as a deputy state auditor, chair of the New Mexico Racing Commission and owner of the now-defunct Albuquerque Thunderbirds NBA Development League Team.
He was just a few months into his first full term as Bernalillo County when he announced his Democratic bid to be New Mexico’s next governor.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham had appointed him as the top prosecutor for the state’s most populous county in 2023, after then-DA Raúl Torrez won election to be attorney general. At the time, Lujan Grisham said Bregman would step down after serving the remainder of the term. Instead, Bregman ran to keep the seat and won in 2024. He launched his gubernatorial campaign five months later.
Bregman faces former U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in the June 2 primary election. Haaland outperformed him nearly three-to-one for delegate support at the Democratic pre-primary convention in March, and has consistently held a significant fundraising advantage. But Bregman believes his wealth of experience in New Mexico’s public and private sectors makes him the better choice for voters.
“I’ve been blessed to raise a family here and have a career — a successful career — and I want to see the same opportunities for all New Mexicans,” Bregman told Source NM from his Albuquerque campaign headquarters. “These times demand a tough person to be our next governor.”
Source NM spoke with Bregman about his campaign for New Mexico’s highest elected office. The conversation has been edited for clarity and concision.
What makes you the best choice for Democrats?
We have some real challenges in this state, and I think everybody recognizes them. We have a crime problem. We do not educate our kids well enough. We have a health care crisis. And we have a lack of economic opportunity and job growth. Affordability is an issue, a real issue, for too many New Mexicans who are suffering out there.
I think all those issues are really, really important. And I think we have to walk and chew gum at the same time — we have to work on all of these things.
What is the most pressing issue facing New Mexico right now?
Child well-being is a huge issue. We’re always ranked near the bottom in this country.
We have a behavioral health and mental health system that needs dramatic improvement both in the number of providers, but also in the coordination of that service.
And of course, we don’t make the kind of wages that New Mexicans deserve.
We should do things like double the child tax credit in New Mexico. We should be giving tax credits for every job that a small business creates. We should be having down payment assistance.
The current governor has called multiple special legislative sessions to address the Trump administration’s budget cuts. How would you approach governing through the rest of Trump’s time in office?
I plan on continuing to do everything I can with the bully pulpit and otherwise to encourage our federal delegation and our federal government to continue to fund health care in a robust way.
The state faces controversial land-use proposals right now, ranging from increased oil and gas drilling to large-scale data center projects. What tack should the state take with developments like those?
We should always make sure that we have the necessary energy and water to fund those projects. But at the same time, I’m very supportive of projects that create good-paying jobs.
The last thing we need to be doing is saying ‘no’ right off the bat. We need to look at them.
Water is a big issue in so many different respects. It’s why I want to create a cabinet-level position called the Water Resources Department.
If elected governor, what’s your first order of business in 2027?
A really top-to-bottom evaluation of state government — what things are working and what things aren’t?
We have great things like our Early Childhood Education and Care Department…and the idea that everybody’s going to have free child care. But by the same token, we have such troubling numbers when it comes to [the Children, Youth and Families Department] and education.
How would you address New Mexico’s annual distinction of having some of the nation’s highest rates of fatal police violence?
I serve on the New Mexico Law Enforcement Standards and Training Council. As a member of that training council, we go back and make sure that we are recruiting and retaining good people to be police officers, which is a high calling. We emphasize constitutional policing.
It’s one of the reasons why I’ve been so adamantly loud about what’s happening with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. What we’re seeing is not constitutional policing.
I believe that we have to hold everybody accountable, whether or not you have a badge and gun, or whether or not you’re just a regular citizen.
At one point, I don’t know that anybody held police officers more accountable and responsible than me in the state of New Mexico…I’ve represented a lot of police officers, and I’ve sued a lot of police officers.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham made a point of working with members of both political parties in the recent legislative session. Would you embrace that approach?
Yes. We all can have our differences and reasonable people can disagree on issues.
What specific public safety proposals would you push for, given your experience as a district attorney?
When I first became DA, I proposed 36 different changes to the juvenile code. We have not updated our juvenile criminal code since before the iPhone was invented. Not since 1993. Times are very different on the streets.
Crime, overall, as the DA of Albuquerque I will tell you, is starting to get better — except for juvenile crime.
We have to go after the suppliers of these guns. That’s a bill I had put forward that didn’t even get a hearing for the last two sessions. That’s got to change, and it will change if I’m the next governor.
You and your opponent Deb Haaland have had one of the more contentious races in this election cycle. What positive attributes do you think she brings to the race?
I think Deb is a very nice person and I think she deserves credit for an incredible life story, if you will. But I got nothing else.
She was secretary of Interior. That’s an amazing accomplishment. I respect all of that.
