New Mexico Democrats to use ranked choice voting to pick new lieutenant governor nominee - Dan Boyd, Albuquerque Journal
A group of New Mexico Democratic Party insiders will meet this weekend to begin the process of filling a rare ballot vacancy on their gubernatorial ticket.
The run-up to the meeting to replace Maggie Toulouse Oliver, who suspended her campaign for lieutenant governor shortly after winning a contested primary race last month, has been rife with political intrigue and scrutiny.
With Democrats facing a late August deadline to fill the ballot vacancy, the party’s roughly 500 State Central Committee members have been subject to a full-court press of sorts by candidates for the post.
State Democratic Party spokesman Daniel Garcia said state central committee members will use a ranked choice voting system to decide among four candidates for the post — Stephanie Garcia Richard, Harold Pope Jr., Geoffrey Luehring and Toni Pinedo.
Ranked choice voting, which allows voters to list their preferred candidates in order, is not used by New Mexico in statewide elections, but has been adopted by two cities — Santa Fe and Las Cruces.
Garcia Richard, the state’s outgoing land commissioner, and Pope, a two-term state senator from Albuquerque, are considered the two front-runners to fill the vacancy.
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Deb Haaland endorsed Garcia Richard as her preferred running mate last month after an expedited vetting process.
In the run-up to this weekend’s convention, Garcia Richard has touted her support from Haaland and other Democrats, while also announcing endorsements from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and former actress Jane Fonda.
In an endorsement video, Fonda lauded Garcia Richard’s record as land commissioner and touted her potential ticket with Haaland, saying, “It’s about damn time we have two badass women leading New Mexico and protecting the state’s natural beauty for all New Mexicans.”
But the high-profile surrogates haven’t deterred Pope, who lost to Toulouse Oliver in the June primary election, from continuing to seek the nomination.
Pope has also landed the backing of some Democratic legislators and progressive groups, including the Albuquerque chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Meanwhile, Republicans have criticized the process Democrats are using to pick a new lieutenant governor candidate.
State Sen. David Gallegos, who won a three-way GOP lieutenant governor primary race, described the Democratic convention as a “backroom fight” while arguing that ordinary New Mexico voters were being cut out of the decision-making process.
“I believe leaders should answer to the people who elected them—not to 500 party insiders in a room in Santa Fe,” Gallegos said in a statement this week.
However, Democratic officials have pointed out the process complies with state law, which requires a political party’s State Central Committee to submit the name of its chosen nominee to fill a ballot vacancy, but does not require an election to do so. The Democratic Party has used a similar approach to fill ballot vacancies in past election cycles.
Under New Mexico’s election code, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run independently in the primary election. The winners of those races who share the same party affiliation are then paired on a ticket for the general election.
At a glance:
The Democratic Party of New Mexico is holding a State Central Committee meeting on Saturday to pick a new lieutenant governor candidate. Here’s how it will work:
- Voting will be conducted electronically over a four-day period after the meeting ends.
- Results will be announced by the party on July 30, a day after voting closes.
- DPNM state central committee members will use a points-based system to rank candidates. A first-place vote will get 4 points, while a second-place vote gets 3 points, and so on.
- The candidate who receives the most points will win the party’s nomination and appear on the Nov. 3 general election ballot with gubernatorial nominee Deb Haaland.
Federal suit challenges state labeling of PFAS products - Olivier Uyttebrouck, Albuquerque Journal
A roster of trade and manufacturing groups filed a federal lawsuit this month challenging a New Mexico requirement for labeling products containing toxic "forever chemicals" linked to serious health conditions.
The lawsuit comes nearly four months after a state board required manufacturers to label consumer products containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly called PFAS.
Filed in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, the suit names as defendants James Kenney, secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department, and New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez.
The suit argues that labeling requirements "conveys a sense of chemical danger" to consumers about products containing PFAS.
"This is no accident," the suit contends. "NMED views the warning label as a means for furthering its goal of 'turning off the spigot' of PFAS-containing products in New Mexico, by warning consumers not to buy such products."
The suit alleges that the requirement violates constitutional First Amendment limits on the government's ability to compel commercial speech.
NMED spokesman Jorge Estrada said Thursday the suit intentionally misinterprets the state's labeling requirement, state law and First Amendment speech rights.
“Labeling provides consumers with transparency and freedom to make informed decisions about what they bring into their homes,” Estrada said in a statement. “The Department finds it troubling that industry is willing to fight against that transparency with misguided legal action. This lawsuit makes the need for our labeling requirements even more clear.”
The labeling requirement, which takes effect Jan. 1, was crafted to protect the First Amendment rights of manufacturers and trade groups, and will survive a constitutional challenge, he said.
The suit was filed July 1 by nine manufacturing and trade groups, including the American Chemistry Council, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation and a state group, the New Mexico Retail Association.
The suit asks a federal judge for an injunction that would bar the state from implementing the labeling requirement.
PFAS chemicals make up a broad category of thousands of substances “used in countless household, commercial and industrial products,” the suit argues. Many of those chemicals are “entirely enclosed or sequestered” within the product, "and so a consumer is not exposed to PFAS.”
PFAS chemicals have become a focus of concern in New Mexico since state officials found contamination near Clovis in 2015 and traced the source to firefighting foams used at Cannon Air Force Base.
The contaminants have spread to a miles-long groundwater plume and have been found in blood samples of residents near the base. One dairy owner near Clovis was required to euthanize some 4,000 cows contaminated with PFAS.
New Mexico lawmakers in 2025 enacted the PFAS Protection Act, which phases out use of the chemicals from many consumer products and requires labeling on products that contain PFAS.
The state Environmental Improvement Board in March approved rules implementing the labeling requirement called for in the law. The warning label at issue consists of an image of a scientific flask, called an Erlenmeyer flask, stamped with the term "PFAS."
“Labeling consumer products containing PFAS is about honesty — a concept now required by regulation,” NMED’s secretary Kenney said in March. The labeling will apply to items such as cookware, toys and cosmetics.
“The rules place families on equal footing with the manufacturers," he said.
New Mexico regulatory agency starts rulemaking for low-income internet discount program - Source New Mexico staff
New Mexico’s Public Regulation Commission announced on Thursday the start of rulemaking for a statewide program to offer internet discounts to low-income residents by the end of the year.
The Legislature earlier this year passed the law creating the Low‑Income Telecommunications Assistance Program.
The proposed rules would require internet providers approved by the state to inform customers of potential discounts — up to $30 for eligible customers and up to $70 on Tribal lands — and then verify their income eligibility through federal databases. Once awarded, the providers could receive reimbursement through the State Rural Universal Service Fund.
That fund, the news release said, has $10 million for the first year of the program, and the PRC can authorize up to $45 million annually thereafter. Approximately 27,000 households could benefit in year one, with potentially more than 100,000 households ultimately receiving discounts.
The PRC is taking comments on the proposed rule through Sept. 11, after which a hearing on the comments will be held on Oct. 1.
“This program will help address affordability challenges faced by New Mexico families,” Office of Broadband Access and Expansion Director Jeff Lopez said in a statement, adding that he was “confident” that starting in December, “low-income families will have a new resource to ensure their household stays connected to all the critical services that broadband provides including education, healthcare, and workforce training.
New Mexico Supreme Court strikes down Republican lawsuit challenging universal childcare - Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
The New Mexico Supreme Court on Wednesday shot down a lawsuit from three Republicans challenging the legality of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s first-in-the-nation universal childcare initiative.
Duke Rodriguez, who unsuccessfully ran for the Republican gubernatorial nomination; Zac Anaya, who unsuccessfully ran for the state House of Representatives; and Sen. Steve Lanier (R-Aztec) in April filed a lawsuit that alleged Lujan Grisham violated the separation of powers in state government when she announced her universal childcare program last year.
Lawyers for Lujan Grisham’s administration countered that the state Legislature had long directed the Early Childhood Education and Care Department to expand eligibility for childcare assistance and argued that the Republicans’ case was “less a legal challenge than a political lament.”
A District Court judge in June ruled against Rodriguez, Anaya and Lanier, who subsequently appealed the case to the state Supreme Court.
An order filed Wednesday shows all five Supreme Court justices agreed to deny the appeal.
In a statement on social media, Lujan Grisham announced the decision and swiped at Rodriguez.
“This candidate lost in state District Court, lost in the Supreme Court and lost his bid to become the next governor of our state,” she wrote. “This means universal childcare in New Mexico is here to stay, and families have no more reason to fear that this life-changing program will be stripped away from them.”
Rodriguez told Source NM Thursday that he was disappointed with the order and said the justices should have issued a written opinion to explain their reasoning.
In public statements regarding the litigation, Rodriguez often invoked an old state Supreme Court case in which he was accused of implementing a state program in the late 1990s “without seeking legislative approval” while acting as then-Gov. Gary Johnson’s Human Services Department secretary.
On Thursday, he said he believed the court’s decision on universal childcare represented the death of “the Republican form of government in New Mexico,” adding that he believes it “completely erased the line between executive power and legislative authority.”
“The New Mexico Supreme Court handed this governor and every future governor power that properly belongs to the Legislature,” Rodriguez said. “Why have a Legislature at all? Why elect representatives? Why hold hearings? Why debate legislation? Why even require votes? Why should we pretend any further that there exists separate branches of government?”
Vasquez calls out unauthorized wells in Luna County - Algernon D’Ammassa, Albuquerque Journal
Discussions among ranchers in southern Luna County, the Office of the State Engineer and the Department of Homeland Security continue over supplying water for border wall construction from the Columbus area west into the Bootheel.
Earlier this month, ranchers expressed alarm and publicly called on New Mexico’s water enforcement agency to intervene as contractors hired by Customs and Border Protection began drilling water wells without permits or hydrological studies on lands commandeered last year by the Trump administration for building border wall segments, roads and other security features.
U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, D-N.M., raised the issue Wednesday in a floor speech at the House of Representatives in Washington.
“Water is our life and it’s our economy,” he said in a short address. “In 1902, the federal government recognized this harsh reality, passing the Reclamation Act to make arid Western lands agriculturally productive.”
The law, enacted by President Theodore Roosevelt, funded irrigation systems in Western states with funding from sales of public lands and established the agency now known as the Bureau of Reclamation.
The law and court precedent also grant states broad authority to regulate their water resources, even when it comes to federal water projects. But in this case, the wells are being drilled on a 60-foot strip of land that has been under military control since President Donald Trump’s January 2025 emergency declaration at the border.
CBP has stated that the wells are intended to supply water to support construction work at the border but has released few details about the number of wells planned, how much water it plans to produce, or why it is breaking with its past practice of purchasing water for the projects. The agency did not respond to queries for this report.
“Luna County ranchers and farmers … are seeing droves of unauthorized wells being drilled by the federal government right now, right by their pastures, stealing their water — and it has got to stop,” Vasquez said.
Russell Johnson, president of the Luna County Farm and Livestock Bureau and a local rancher, said Thursday he had personally observed four new wells along the strip. Ranchers have also documented rapidly assembled pumping facilities sufficient for drawing hundreds of gallons per minute from the Mimbres and Hachita basins.
“I have heard from multiple people that they have done more drilling and are actively pumping in the Bootheel,” Johnson said.
Ranchers have been frustrated by the Office of the State Engineer’s inability to halt the drilling and have expressed alarm over unknown effects from high-volume water pumping from aquifers that sustain their homes and desert agriculture.
For its part, the OSE has stated it cannot block the activity in the declared National Defense Area at the border and that litigation could drag on for years with uncertain outcomes. It advocated for a negotiated resolution.
Vasquez’s office said the congressman’s staff had reached out to Homeland Security and the OSE to discuss solutions. Deputy State Engineer Tanya Trujillo said, “Our efforts are continuing but we do not have any updates at this time.”
Johnson said the meetings, with the latest set for Thursday, have contemplated a combination of pumping with purchased water to ease pressure on local resources, but the discussions were ongoing.
