An easy year for New Mexico voters
By Merilee Dannemann
New Mexico voters in many districts will find that voting this November is a little simpler than they expected.
Legislators are making one decision easy for about half of New Mexico voters.
In our House of Representatives, there are currently 42 Democrats and 26 Republicans. Slightly more than half the seats are unopposed – 21 Democrats and 16 Republicans. (State senators are not up for election until 2028.)
This count includes Districts 4 and 23, where Democrats recently dropped out, too late to allow replacements. The Republican in District 27 has just been challenged. Further legal action on these districts is possible.
Most of the unopposed candidates are incumbents, which means the voters already know something about them. But not all.
In District 41, Rio Arriba County, unopposed Democrat Yolanda Jaramillo is running for the first time. Three unopposed Republicans are first-timers: District 4, San Juan County, Heather Ellison; District 59, Chaves County, Stephen Dodson; District 66, Lea County, Leanne Gandy.
In most districts that have a contest, one of the candidates is the incumbent.
In past years, perhaps a more innocent time, voters could decide whether they liked the incumbent and vote on that basis. Nowadays voters are more likely to base their vote on party. Voters who are independent or DTS (Decline to State), as we call it in New Mexico, have more work because they have to set their own criteria.
There are only three legislative districts in which two new candidates are running against each other:, District 37 in Dona Ana County, District 50 in Santa Fe and District 27 in Albuquerque – if the Republican is not disqualified.
Sure, some voters will automatically vote Democrat and some will vote Republican, but maybe there’s more to the decision than just party.
For Republicans, the most important question is whether both the candidate and the voter are unquestioning supporters of Trump. Nothing else comes close in importance. For Republican voters who have lost patience with Trump’s irrational policies, it might be time to vote for a Democrat to reduce that influence in our legislature.
Voters inclined to vote Republican might also want to ask whether any candidate is an election denier. Anyone who doesn’t trust the honesty of our elections has no business claiming to have won the election, and therefore should not run for office.
For Democrats, the major distinction has been between progressives and moderates. The second, less obvious, distinction is which interest groups each legislator is affiliated with. I am particularly concerned with those who either are trial lawyers or have accepted disproportionately large campaign contributions from that group.
You probably know how you will vote on the candidates at the top of the ticket – US Senate, governor, attorney general. Other statewide offices up this year include land commissioner, state treasurer, state auditor and secretary of state. There’s a partisan competition in each of those offices.
Several positions on the Public Education Commission are up – Districts 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7; three are uncontested.
Voters will also be choosing county officials – roughly half of their county commissioners, plus sheriffs, county assessors and probate judges; and judges, many of whom will be running unopposed in retention elections, in which the voters vote yes or no on whether to retain the judge.
Finally, there will be ballot measures, including four proposed amendments to the state constitution. The most significant is the one to start paying legislators a salary. My recent column on that issue is posted at www.triplespacedagain.com/wordpress/?p=1538.
If you are not pleased that half the legislature will be returning to Santa Fe with no opposition, you might look carefully at that ballot measure.
Merilee Dannemann’s columns are posted at www.triplespacedagain.com. Comments are invited through the web site.
Read her columns published by NMJJ here: Merilee Dannemann.
Read also, by Karen Wentworth, League of Women Voters of Central NM, with links to their Voters Guide:
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