A Full-Time Salary With No Full-Time Rules

By Merilee Dannemann

​New Mexico voters have approved the legislative salary amendment. Starting with legislators elected in 2028 for the 2029 session, New Mexico will be paying its legislators one of the most generous salaries in the nation. 

​It probably won’t take long before that salary changes the makeup of the legislature. The question is how. 

​The amendment passed after remarkably little public debate.  In the months before the election, I saw almost no public comment about whether the proposed compensation amount was right or whether other changes should be passed along with it.  New Mexico voters chose to start paying legislators for a full-time job without any expectation that a full-time job is what they will do. 

​This change has forced legislators’ ethics to become front and center in the upcoming 2027 session.  

​The voters have given future legislators this comfortable salary with no new requirements. There is no requirement to avoid conflicts of interest or to represent their constituents rather than their own professions or their campaign contributors. There is no requirement, now that they will have this financial support, for them to spend more time on legislative business throughout the year. They will be free to have other jobs, businesses or professions, as they are now. There is no requirement to reduce the very generous pensions that they voted for themselves a few years ago, which were justified at that time by the argument that they don’t receive any salary.

​As I wrote in a recent column, about half the members of the state House of Representatives ran this year without opposition. Voters in those districts were freed from having to select a preferred candidate and from any pressure to contribute money to those campaigns.  Yet even unopposed candidates had large balances in their campaign accounts. I looked up a few unopposed legislators; they all had more than $100,000 in their accounts. Did they need it? Or did they have it because special interest groups with potential legislative business were eager to contribute? 

​Campaign funds for legislators with opponents were significantly higher, with totals above $200,000 common.

​The new salary will no doubt attract more candidates. Starting in 2028, I speculate we’ll have many more races with opposition, both in the primary and general elections. There will be much more demand for campaign contributions, and more opportunity for special interest groups to ingratiate themselves with candidates. I suspect the cost of legislative campaigns will not just grow but explode.

​And here’s a big thing that has not been talked about. Television.

​Television advertising makes sense for statewide races but is a bad match for legislative campaigns. Legislative districts are very small compared to television markets. It’s not possible to buy a TV ad that targets only a single legislative district.

​This year just a few highly competitive races had ads on TV. If TV advertising becomes more common, candidates will have to buy expensive ads that reach huge numbers of people who don’t vote in their districts. More of their campaign time and effort will go into fundraising. The old-fashioned method of campaigning by knocking on doors and meeting with constituents in person will be drastically reduced.

​Legislators are already more beholden to their campaign contributors than to their constituents. This is a big part of the reason for the urgency of ethics legislation. The new funding demands will increase the burden on you and me, voters, to find out not only what the candidates say about themselves but where they’re getting their money. Regardless of what your legislators say when they are campaigning, what will determine many of their votes on the floor of the House or Senate is who paid the bills to get them elected. 

Merilee Dannemann’s columns are posted at www.triplespacedagain.com. Comments are invited through the web site.