New Mexico

Democrat Deb Haaland won the open governor’s race over Republican Gregg Hull, 57.4% to 42.6%, keeping the office in her party.¹ Democrat Ben Ray Luján won the Senate race by 26.5 points over Republican Larry Marker, in a state Kamala Harris carried by 6.0 points in 2024. Democrats kept all three U.S. House seats, among them the 2nd District, which Donald Trump carried by 1.8 points and Gabe Vasquez held by 17.5. They also won all five of the other statewide offices on the ballot. The attorney general, auditor and treasurer won new terms, and Democrats took the open offices of secretary of state and land commissioner, each by about 20 points or more.² No statewide office changed party. In our count Democrats hold 47 of the 70 state House seats, up from 43.

Measured against the 2024 presidential vote, the Senate race moved 20.5 points toward the Democrats, and the governor’s race, the closer contest, moved 8.7. Luján drew 96 votes for every 100 Harris won here; Marker drew 63 for every 100 of Trump’s. The vote for governor, the most-voted contest, came to 102% of the 2022 total and 79% of the 2024 presidential vote.

Every part of the state moved the same way. The Albuquerque area, which casts 47% of the vote, went from D+14.3 to D+31.2, a move of 16.9 points. The Las Cruces area moved furthest, 25.5 points, to D+35.3, and the Santa Fe area least, 15.1 points, from a start of D+48.9. The Farmington area stayed Republican, at R+9.8 where it had been R+31.7. The 26 counties outside the four metro areas, which cast 29% of the vote, changed sides, from R+14.4 to D+9.6.

Valencia County, in the Albuquerque metro area, is the largest of the five counties that voted for Trump in 2024 and for Luján this year. It went from R+16.4 to D+6.5 on 26,150 votes. The widest move among the state’s larger counties was in McKinley County, around Gallup, which went from D+24.5 to D+57.4. Bernalillo County, the largest in the state, went from D+21.0 to D+38.0. No county moved toward the Republicans.

Democrats keep the governorship and both chambers, with a bigger House majority.^{1, 2, 3} They defeated four Republican incumbents, among them Rep. Rebecca Dow, the House Republican caucus chairwoman. They lost one seat, in a district where their incumbent dropped out too late to be replaced and the Republican ran unopposed.^{2, 3} The Albuquerque Journal reports that the 47-to-23 split gives Democrats a two-thirds majority in the chamber, their largest since 1994. An override takes two-thirds of the members present and voting in each house, and with all 70 members voting, 47 is the smallest number that reaches it.^{2, 3, 4} The next governor is of the same party, and House Speaker Javier Martínez said it was “way too early” to say whether the override power would come into play, MultiState reports.² The Senate stayed at 26 Democrats and 16 Republicans. It was not on the ballot apart from one special election, in District 33, which the appointed Republican senator won.²

Haaland is the first Native American woman elected governor of a U.S. state, the Albuquerque Journal reported. She takes office January 1, and a 60-day legislative session opens January 19. She and Lt. Gov.-elect Stephanie Garcia Richard indicated they would seek stopgap money from the Legislature to blunt federal changes to Medicaid and food assistance. “We will have to work hard to make sure New Mexicans can have affordable healthcare,” Haaland said. At a news conference in Albuquerque the day after the election, Garcia Richard said she had begun talks with Democratic legislative leaders and named new rules for large data centers as one subject.¹

The constitution lets the Legislature reapportion its own membership by statute once after each census, and a statute goes to the governor for approval or veto.⁴ Both remain Democratic. The secretary of state, one of the executive officers elected statewide to four-year terms, also remains a Democrat: Amanda López Askin won the open office over Republican Ramona Goolsby.^{2, 4, 5}

A constitutional amendment passes in New Mexico with a majority of those voting on it, unless it restricts certain voting or education rights, which takes three-fourths. A state bond law needs a majority of the votes cast on it.⁴ All seven statewide measures passed.² Amendment 4, with 63.5% yes, lets legislators collect a salary beginning in 2029, limited to the state’s median household income, about $68,000 now. New Mexico had been the only state that paid its legislators none.^{2, 6} Amendment 1 drew the most support, 75.1%. It ends the governor’s pocket veto: a bill the governor does not act on becomes law, and every veto must come with a message. It passed over the opposition of the outgoing governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham.^{1, 2, 6}

Amendment 2, with 64.8% yes, removes the requirement that school elections be held separately from partisan ones. Amendment 3, with 70.0%, creates nominating committees that give the governor lists of nominees for the nonstudent seats on the boards of regents of state universities. The largest of the three bond questions, Bond Question 3, provides $352.2 million for higher education and for special and tribal schools, including $116 million toward a new University of New Mexico School of Medicine building. It drew 64.3%. The other two bond questions pay for senior centers and libraries.⁶

Retention on the state Supreme Court takes at least 57 percent of the vote on the question.⁴ Ballotpedia’s table of candidates lists two justices, David K. Thomson and Shannon Bacon, as standing for retention this year and as having won.⁷ In Sandoval County, the home of the Republican nominee for governor, Democrats won the contested county offices in unofficial results, including a county commission seat by 7,983 votes to 7,649.^{1, 5}

Republicans held none of the statewide offices or U.S. House seats on the ballot and won none. What they kept was on the map and in the Legislature. In the Senate race, 15 of the state’s 33 counties still voted Republican, and the Farmington area did by 9.8 points. Rep. Nicole Chavez kept House District 31 in Albuquerque by about 5 points in one of the state’s most expensive races, Rep. Joshua Hernandez held District 60 by about 3, and Republicans still have 16 of the 42 Senate seats.^{2, 3, 5}

Neither of New Mexico’s U.S. Senate seats is on the ballot in 2028. The governor and the other statewide executive officers serve four-year terms, so those offices come up again in 2030, and an officer who has served two terms must sit out a full term before holding the same office again.⁴ The legislators chosen in 2028 will be the first to draw a salary, since Amendment 4 takes effect with the Legislature seated in 2029.^{2, 6}