After suspending his reelection campaign Sunday, President Joe Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, and New Mexico Democrats quickly followed suit. However, the state Democratic Party says its next steps in the nominating process remain up in the air.
New Mexico U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich on Friday joined a small number of Senators publicly calling for Biden to step aside. Once the President did, the state’s senior senator wasted no time throwing his support behind Harris, calling her, “The ideal candidate to unite our party and lead our nation forward,” in a social media post Sunday.
All other members of the state’s congressional delegation — Senator Ben Ray Lujan and Representatives Melanie Stansburry, Teresa Leger Fernandez and Gabe Vaquez — and all executive officers of the state’s Democratic Party have also endorsed Harris’s bid for the White House.
Despite top New Mexico Democrats swiftly coalescing around the VP, spokesperson for the state party Daniel Garcia said there are still “a lot of moving parts” regarding what happens next.
A committee setting the rules for next month’s Democratic National Convention is set to meet publicly on Wednesday. DNC Chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement that, “In the coming days, the Party will undertake a transparent and orderly process to move forward.”
Garcia said the state party is working to figure out what that looks like for itself. He said officers are reaching out to delegates directly to hear their thoughts on what New Mexico’s path forward should look like.
Harris has already gotten the informal backing of more delegates than she would need to secure the nomination, according to an unofficial tally by the Associated Press as of Tuesday morning, including 30 from New Mexico.
The state party has a total of 45 delegates, 34 of which were pledged to Biden coming out of the June primary election, according to the AP.
In a statement, Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver said her office has heard misinformation about the state’s nominating process circulating since Biden dropped out. She reiterated that the state’s delegates can “choose how they wish to allocate their votes at the convention,” and that whoever is nominated will appear on New Mexicans’ ballots in November. The state’s ballot deadline is not until Aug. 27, five days after the convention is set to conclude.
