With less than three weeks until the June 2 New Mexico primary election, the Democratic frontrunner for governor has pulled out of a public town hall event.
For months, candidates seeking to be New Mexico’s next governor have taken the stage at an ongoing Albuquerque Journal town hall series, where they’ve fielded questions from journalists and the public about how they would steer the state through the next four years. Former U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was scheduled to appear on May 22, less than two weeks before facing Bernalillo County District Attorney and fellow Democrat Sam Bregman in the June 2 primary election.
With little explanation, according to Albuquerque Journal Executive Editor Jay Newton-Small, Haaland’s campaign canceled the event.
“They just said her schedule wouldn’t allow it, even though they were the ones who scheduled it,” Newton-Small told Source NM.
In a statement, Haaland campaign spokesperson Hannah Menchhoff said the campaign “wanted to make sure Deb had the opportunity to be out on the road and meeting with voters directly.”
Bregman is set to participate in one of the newspaper’s town hall meetings on May 19, after previously speaking at one in March in his capacity as top prosecutor for the state’s most populous county. Recent polling has found Haaland has a particularly strong lead over Bregman with women and college-educated voters.
Bregman campaign announces Hispanics for Sam groupBregman’s campaign on Wednesday announced the creation of a new coalition — Hispanics for Sam — to encourage Hispanic voters across the state to support his gubernatorial bid.
The group’s advisory council includes state Rep. Doreen Gallegos (D-Las Cruces), Rep. Raymundo Lara (D-Chamberino) and former Public Regulation Commission member and Santa Fe County Clerk Valerie Espinoza, among others.
Espinoza told Source NM that she first heard about the group from Bregman’s campaign and was excited to join the cause.
“We have been ignored, especially in rural New Mexico,” she said, referring to Hispanic New Mexicans. “This is just a way to show strength and that he’s listening to those of us who have issues. I think it was a bright idea that his campaign put forth.”
A recent Albuquerque Journal poll on the gubernatorial race found that Haaland had a significant lead over Bregman among white, progressive Democrats. Her lead was slimmer, though, when it came to Hispanic voters. Brian Sanderoff, president of the Albuquerque-based firm Research and Polling Inc., said Bregman’s move “makes strategic sense.”
“I think that’s an effective way of campaigning and showing the voters that certain subgroups of people…are important to the candidate,” Sanderoff told Source NM. “Haaland was way ahead in terms of Anglo voters, but there was a narrow lead among Hispanic voters. I’m sure Bregman saw that and knows he has an opportunity.”
Super PAC backs Sanchez in land commissioner race
A Virginia-based super PAC has thrown its weight behind Democrat Juan de Jesus Sanchez III in the land commissioner primary race.
The American Energy Action Fund, which bills itself as a renewable energy advocacy organization, has paid for mailers and text messages supporting Sanchez, who is facing state Rep. Matthew McQueen and Jonas Moya in the Democratic primary.
The Virginia-based fund may have violated state law in failing to disclose spending in New Mexico, according to a spokesperson for the New Mexico Secretary of State’s Office. The fund did not respond to Source NM’s request for comment Thursday.
Sanchez told Source NM that he had no prior knowledge of the super PAC’s support and did not coordinate with them or discuss their support.
Read more about the super PAC’s campaign here.
Elections expert weighs in on voter distrust, misinformation
Source NM this week spoke with Christa Slaton, a nationally recognized elections expert and retired New Mexico State University dean, who said one of the greatest threats facing democracy stems from eroded trust in election results and elections officials — she added that it’s one of the crucial issues in the election for the next Secretary of State.
“There’s so much distrust, it’s mind-boggling,” she said in a phone call, citing reports of threats to election workers in recent years. “It literally breaks my heart to see how much effort has gone into poll worker training, the long hours. They do this work as a kind of civic responsibility, and to have them be attacked, it’s a tragedy.”
Slaton says restoring that trust is one of the crucial issues New Mexico’s next secretary of state will have to address.
Santa Fe County Clerk Katharine Clark and Doña Ana County Clerk Amanda López Askin are facing off in the June 2 Democratic primary. The winner will face Republican candidate Ramona Goolsby in the Nov. 3 general election.
Slaton, a retired dean of Arts and Sciences at New Mexico State University and former professor at Auburn University, still offers occasional classes on the history of elections and other topics in Las Cruces. While at Auburn, she and her colleagues developed the first-ever certification for local and state elections and voter registration officials through the nonprofit Election Center, and trained officials across the U.S. That certification includes more than 30 courses on election planning and history for beginners to expert-level courses.
She praised New Mexico’s expansion of early voting and automatic voter registration when renewing driver’s licenses and noted that many states across the Western U.S. are “more likely to innovate and quickly adapt to election changes compared to the East Coast.”
But while she said the state has excelled at expanding access and promoting education on how to vote, “New Mexico has not been as successful in explaining to voters how the process works behind the scenes and reassuring voters.”
She said misinformation that grew out of Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election will require a new commitment to shared norms.
“This is having tremendously negative consequences for how Americans trust in their government. It may serve a partisan advantage in the short run, but it’s doing long-term damage to us,” Slaton said. “To reverse that, we have to ask election officials to be as transparent as possible, to do a lot of education, to filter the outrage, and engage how the voting is actually done, how the equipment performs and the redundancy in the system.”
Most independent voters have gone Democrat in first-ever semi-open primaryThe New Mexico Secretary of State’s Office on Friday released a new glimpse at how independent voters have used their first-ever opportunity to vote in a primary election without having to register with a major party.
The June 2 primary marks the state’s first-ever semi-open primary, in which “decline to state” voters who are not affiliated with a major political party can fill out either a Democratic or Republican ballot.
According to data from the Secretary of State’s Office that captures the first days of early voting, three-quarters of the independent voters who have cast ballots so far this year — 1,854 of 2,461 independent voters — have opted to vote in the Democratic primary.
