6/4 Primary Preview Part II
Iowa, Montana, and New Mexico
This is Part II of today’s primary preview. For Part I, covering New Jersey and the District of Columbia, click here.
Iowa
SD-16 (West Des Moines)
Claire Celsi (i) vs. Julie Lasche Brown
Result: Celsi 80.5%, Lasche Brown 19.5% | Celsi wins
Julie Lasche Brown, chair of the West Des Moines Democrats, is making a huge career move by challenging the incumbent state senator of West Des Moines, Claire Celsi. The result is somehow one of the lowest-stakes primaries in the state. Celsi is exactly the kind of workhorse, party-line Democrat that Lasche Brown is pitching herself as, and neither politician has said much to contrast themselves with the other, or indeed acknowledge that they're in a primary at all.
HD-34 (Northern Des Moines)
John Campbell Jr. vs. Samy El-Baroudi vs. Rob Johnson vs. Dudley Muhammad
Result: Johnson 42.7%, El-Baroudi 40.1%, Campbell 14.1%, Muhammad 3.1% | Johnson wins
One of the coolest men in Iowa politics, Ako Abdul-Samad, is finally retiring. Abdul-Samad is a former Black Panther, Bernie endorser, and proud Black Muslim in a very white Christian state. We’re sorry to see him go. Abdul-Samad is supporting pastor Rob Johnson to succeed him, which is good enough for us. Johnson is also the candidate of the Des Moines establishment broadly. AFSCME organizer John Campbell Jr. and teacher Samy El-Baroudi are strong candidates who seem supportive of Democratic values, while Dudley Muhammad barely has a campaign and seems to be a fan of Louis Farrakhan.
HD-44 (Northern Des Moines suburbs)
Larry McBurney vs. Jason Menke
Result: McBurney 64.6%, Menke 35.4% | McBurney wins
Urbandale City Councilmember Larry McBurney is the establishment choice in this district, backed by both labor and multiple state house members, though Jason Menke, an Urbandale school board member, is also running a strong campaign focused on education funding. Like many Democrats in red states, both McBurney and Menke are focused on opposing Republican bills and don't really get into the policy differences between them.
HD-89 (Iowa City)
Elinor Levin (i) vs. Ty Bopp
Result: Levin 91.0%, Bopp 9.0% | Levin wins
Ty Bopp is a hardware store manager who ran for a neighboring state house district in 2022, but dropped out right before the primary. This time around, he hasn't officially dropped out, but his “campaign”, if it can be called that, is so nonexistent, a local newspaper had to ask the Secretary of State whether he actually had dropped out.
Montana
SD-36 (Butte)
Sara Novak vs. Jessica Wicks
Result: Novak 63.5%, Wicks 36.5% | Novak wins
State Rep. Sara Novak is attempting to get a promotion, and we just don’t think she’s earned it. Novak earns a passing grade from the NRA, which means she’s taken some awful votes, including against red flag laws. Novak, as a current politician, may have secured labor endorsements, but her opponent, Teamsters political coordinator Jessica Wicks, is clearly just as involved in the labor struggle, and we’d prefer to see her win.
SD-46 (East Missoula, Flathead Indian Reservation)
Jacinda Morigeau vs. C. B. Pearson
Result: Morigeau 54.0%, Pearson 46.0% | Morigeau wins
SD-46 is lucky to have two very cool candidates running to represent them in the senate. C.B. Pearson is a retired teacher and good government advocate who used to work for Ralph Nader during his days as a crusading consumer attorney (decades before his presidential runs) and has a decades-long track record of conservationist activism. Jacinda Morigeau, roughly 40 years younger than Pearson, works for the United Way of Missoula County, and is an involved member of the Confederated Salish And Kootenai Tribes. We actually have no confirmation that she’s related to current state Sen. Morigeau, also of Missoula, but you’d have to think so, right? Regardless, either choice would be good.
HD-31 (Rural eastern Montana)
Frank Smith (i) vs. Lance Fourstar
Result: Smith 61.0%, Fourstar 39.0% | Smith wins
Frank Smith has been in and out of the state house and senate since the 90s, and his style of politics is getting pretty outdated. Montana house districts are small, and Native American turnout is low, so making personal connections with voters is very important—Smith won his last primary 360 votes to 273. Still, we hope it’s not too much to ask representatives be pro-choice and not keep siding with Republicans on random bills. We hope for better things from Lance Fourstar, the chair of Montana’s American Indian Caucus, who put out a statement calling for a ceasefire in Gaza as a candidate.
HD-62 (Western Bozeman)
Rio Roland vs. Josh Seckinger
Result: Seckinger 52.9%, Roland 47.1% | Seckinger wins
Fishing guide Josh Seckinger ran for US Senate briefly in 2020 before dropping out and running for a predecessor to this district. He lost the primary by a respectable 58%-42%, and, when he lost, donated the money he had left over to the Montana Racial Equity Project. While that’s promising, the number of times he promises to be a “pragmatic” house member worries us. It worries us a bit less, frankly, than the praise for Minneapolis For Everyone leader Lisa McDonald that his opponent, green energy consultant (?) Rio Roland, included in his bizarrely long-winded biography that takes up most of his website.
HD-65 (Northern Bozeman)
Brian Close vs. Anja Wookey-Huffman
Result: Close 61.6%, Wookey-Huffman 38.4% | Close wins
Anja Wookey-Huffman would be, at only 25, one of the youngest members of the legislature. She’s a renter, involved in Democratic politics (during the last cycle she was the organizing director for the Gallatin County party while working as the manager of a restaurant), and is supported by both Sunrise and Montana’s own progressive superstar state Rep. Zooey Zephyr. Tax attorney Brian Close is fine, and has a welcome focus on urban issues, but HD-65 would be silly to pass up a candidate like Wookey-Huffman.
HD-79 (Helena)
Emily Harris vs. Luke Muszkiewicz vs. Anne Woodland
Result: Muszkiewicz 56.9%, Harris 36.8%, Woodland 6.2% | Muszkiewicz wins
You could argue that Helena School Board member Luke Muszkiewicz is the favorite for this district thanks to a confluence of labor and the outgoing incumbent, Laura Smith, who are both pulling for him, or you could say that it’s political staffer Emily Harris, who has the support of many statewide officials she’s worked with, as well as outgoing incumbent Laura Smith. No, we don’t know why Smith endorsed two candidates to succeed her. We’ll be happy to see either of them place ahead of environmental consultant Anne Woodland, who pledges to “find a way back to decorum and respect.”
HD-97 (Western Missoula)
Melody Cunningham vs. Lisa Verlanic Fowler
Result: Cunningham 83.1%, Verlanic Fowler 16.9% | Cunningham wins
Pediatrician Melody Cunningham is clearly the favorite based on her fundraising advantage and the support she’s received from the Missoula political establishment, but Montana House districts are so small we can’t actually write off Lisa Verlanic Fowler, who has no website and has funded the majority of her campaign with a single $1,000 self-loan.
HD-100 (Central Missoula)
SJ Howell (i) vs. Tim Garrison
Result: Howell 72.3%, Garrison 27.7% | Howell wins
An actual quote from Tim Garrison, during his failed Missoula Council run in 2023: ““I know a lot of people use urban sprawl in a negative fashion. But urban sprawl is how you add more land to the city.” Yeah, we’ll stick with incumbent SJ Howell, a trailblazing nonbinary member of the Montana legislature.
New Mexico
SD-03 (Navajo Nation, Gallup)
Shannon Pinto (i) vs. Sherylene Yazzie
Result: Pinto 62.9%, Yazzie 37.1% | Pinto wins
State Sen. Shannon Pinto is a generally normal Democrat who drew a primary challenge from Sherylene Yazzie, a staffer within the Navajo Nation’s elected government.
SD-04 (Navajo Nation, Grants)
George Muñoz (i) vs. Keith Hillock
Result: Muñoz 78.3%, Hillock 21.7% | Muñoz wins
George Muñoz is one of the stubborn conservatives who survived 2020, and he hasn’t changed his ways. He was the lone Democratic Senate holdout against a bill which would have implemented a paid family medical leave program in the state. The bill, a priority of Democratic leaders, passed the Senate and died in the state House because of conservative Democratic opposition. Union member Keith Hillock is under-resourced and self-funding his shoestring campaign, and Muñoz is still spending quite a bit on his primary campaign.
SD-08 (Las Vegas, rural northeast New Mexico)
Pete Campos (i) vs. G. Michael Lopez
Result: Campos 54.6%, Lopez 45.4% | Campos wins
G. Michael Lopez is running against state Sen. Pete Campos because of an odd issue: medical malpractice insurance. Lopez is a medical doctor, and he takes issue with a recent bill that increased the damages available to plaintiffs in medical malpractice cases, claiming it has caused an exodus of doctors from the state. Other than that, Lopez is a pretty standard Democrat who supports abortion rights and wants to bring an inpatient addiction treatment center to northern New Mexico.
SD-09 (Albuquerque and suburbs)
Heather Balas vs. Cindy Nava
Result: Nava 54.6%, Balas 45.4% | Nava wins
Heather Balas has worked for a variety of good-government nonprofits, including over a decade leading New Mexico First, a bipartisan good-government organization. She also loves to tell you that she’s a fifth-generation New Mexican and that she’s lived in Senate District 9 for decades—which is all well and good in isolation, but in this race it comes across as a nativist dog whistle about Balas’s opponent, formerly undocumented immigrant Cindy Nava. (Maybe we’d give the benefit of the doubt if Balas hadn’t taken the extra step of bolding the following words on her About page: “The family has lived in Senate District 9 for 20 years.” But she did bold those words, and that makes us very suspicious.) Nava, for her part, may not have lived in the district as long, but she has a long track record as a staffer in the New Mexico legislature and later in the White House; if she wins, she’ll be one of the first DACA recipients elected to public office anywhere in the United States. Balas and Nava are evenly matched financially, but Nava is the clear leader in endorsements; additionally, Balas is leaning hard into local support in her hometown of Corrales, while Nava is backed by outgoing state Sen. Brenda McKenna and party leadership in both chambers of the legislature, as well as the Working Families Party, a wide array of unions, and Planned Parenthood Votes. To Balas’s credit, while Nava is frustratingly vague on policy, Balas is considerably more detailed, and nothing in Balas’s policy platform gives us pause. For example, Balas vocally supports paid family medical leave.
SD-11 (Southwest Albuquerque)
Linda López (i) vs. Richard Carrion
Result: López 81.5%, Carrion 18.5% | López wins
Progressive state Sen. Linda López faces an under-resourced challenge from retired Albuquerque city employee Richard Carrion. López should coast.
SD-13 (Downtown Albuquerque)
Bill O’Neill (i) vs. Debbie O’Malley
Result: O’Malley 52.0%, O’Neill 48.0% | O’Malley wins
State Sen. Bill O’Neill is an unremarkable Democratic senator. Most of the Democratic caucus’s problem children got washed out in 2020, and O’Neill was never one of them anyway. Many Albuquerque progressives are nevertheless supporting Debbie O’Malley, a former Albuquerque City Councilor and Bernalillo County Commissioner; teachers’ unions, Organizers in the Land of Enchantment (OLÉ), and a collection of progressive-leaning Albuquerque electeds are in O’Malley’s corner. Policy disagreements between O’Malley and O’Neill are hard to find; the two have worked together before on shared priorities, and this primary seems like it’s more a product of redistricting giving O’Neill a radically different district than it is a product of any dissatisfaction with O’Neill. O’Malley seems like a bit of a firecracker, though; see our SD-26 item for why.
SD-15 (Northeast Albuquerque)
Daniel Ivey-Soto (i) vs. Heather Berghmans
Result: Berghmans 79.9%, Ivey-Soto 20.1% | Berghmans wins
State Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto should be toast. Ivey-Soto was accused of sexual harassment by lobbyist Marianna Anaya (now a leading candidate for HD-18) in 2022, and that accusation inspired many other women to come forward with their own allegations of harassment and assault at Ivey-Soto’s hands. An investigation found probable cause to support a full investigation into two of the allegations against Ivey-Soto, but the investigation was closed by Ivey-Soto’s colleagues; the Democrats on the committee that killed the investigation into Ivey-Soto have donated to Ivey-Soto’s reelection campaign. The allegations were serious enough to cost Ivey-Soto his chairmanship of the Senate Rules Committee—the gavel is now held by Katy Duhigg, a Democrat from Albuquerque who accused Ivey-Soto of sexually assaulting her in 2019, before she became a lawmaker—as well as his relationship with the state Democratic Party, which censured him and banned him from events. Heather Berghmans, who most recently served as the finance director of New Mexico House Democrats’ campaign arm, has the support of progressive groups and many high-profile Democrats, including Duhigg, U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, and U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury—but given the problems with the incumbent, the fact that Berghmans is backed by progressives and explicitly supports a paid family medical leave program is more of a sweetener than anything.
SD-24 (Santa Fe)
Anna Hansen vs. Veronica Krupnick vs. Linda Trujillo
Result: Trujillo 62.0%, Hansen 22.6%, Krupnick 15.4% | Trujillo wins
Former state Rep. Linda Trujillo is a clear favorite for this Santa Fe seat, leading the field in money and in noteworthy endorsements. Santa Fe County Commissioner Anna Hansen is also in the running and has some endorsements of note, including from the Adelante Progressive Caucus of the state Democratic Party. However, the candidate progressives are most excited about is Veronica Krupnick, a policy analyst for state House Majority Leader Gail Chasey who has the support of her boss, the New Mexico Working Families Party, Santa Fe DSA, and OLÉ. Krupnick, an advocate for Native children in the foster care system, would make an exciting addition to the New Mexico Senate if she is able to pull off the upset against the better-funded and better-known Trujillo and Hansen.
SD-26 (Southwest Albuquerque)
Antonio “Moe” Maestas (i) vs. Julie Radoslovich
Result: Maestas 59.2%, Radoslovich 40.8% | Maestas wins
Antonio “Moe” Maestas is an appointed incumbent who jumped at the chance to succeed Jacob Candelaria, an iconoclastic senator who resigned after becoming an independent over his clashes with Democratic leaders. Schoolteacher Julie Radaslovich, who lost the appointment to Maestas, is outgunned financially. However, she has the support of local progressives like state Sens. Jerry Ortiz y Pino and Bill Tallman and a sizable number of Albuquerque local politicians, as well as CWA Local 7076, which represents state employees. Albuquerque progressives were never thrilled with Maestas’s appointment, which Candelaria supported; SD-13 candidate Debbie O’Malley, then a county commissioner, blew up at a colleague for what she perceived as a rushed effort to install Maestas, whose wife is a prominent Albuquerque lobbyist. O’Malley later apologized for her use of language (she called a colleague a bitch) but claimed Maestas and Candelaria had worked together to install Maestas as the district’s senator and shore him up via redistricting.
SD-30 (Los Lunas, Pueblo tribal lands, Navajo Nation)
Angel Charley vs. Clemente Sanchez
Result: Charley 63.3%, Sanchez 36.7% | Charley wins
State Sen. Clemente Sanchez was one of several conservative Democratic legislators who got primaried out of office in 2020; among his unacceptable votes was one against a bill decriminalizing abortion in New Mexico, which earned him the eternal ire of Planned Parenthood. Unfortunately, Sanchez’s district promptly flipped to Republicans with him gone. New Mexico Democrats sought to rectify that in redistricting, redrawing SD-30 to bring it from Biden+2 to Biden+17, and their plan worked: Republicans aren’t even contesting this district in 2024. The forces that helped oust Sanchez four years ago are hardly enthused at the prospect of his return, and they’re united behind his opponent, Angel Charley. Charley, who is Laguna, Zuni, and Diné (Navajo), is an advocate against the epidemic of violence against Native women and an activist for Native civic engagement; she wants to bring broadband to rural New Mexico, fully fund rural public schools, and expand social services. Sanchez’s return to the state Senate would be bad news for progressive priorities and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s legislative agenda—which is probably why Big Oil and Big Tobacco have chipped in with generous donations to help Sanchez.
HD-04 (Navajo Nation and Farmington)
Christina Aspaas vs. Cheryl George vs. Joseph Franklin Hernandez
Result: Hernandez 50.8%, Aspaas 33.1%, George 16.1% | Hernandez wins
Joseph Franklin Hernandez is the only candidate in the running for this Shiprock-area district who’s new to electoral politics. Hernandez, a Navajo community organizer and clean energy advocate, is backed by retiring state Rep. Anthony Allison, various progressive groups (WFP included), and a PAC affiliated with House Speaker Javier Martínez, and he’s the only candidate who’s raised more than ten thousand dollars—or one thousand dollars, for that matter. Christina Aspaas, the vice president of a local school board, and Cheryl George, a former member of that same school board, are both running to succeed Allison as well, but neither has the money they’d probably need to overcome all Hernandez’s aforementioned advantages.
HD-06 (Navajo Nation, Pueblo tribal lands)
Eliseo Alcon (i) vs. Priscilla Benally vs. Daniel Torrez
Result: Alcon 46.0%, Benally 33.4%, Torrez 20.7% | Alcon wins
Eliseo Alcon is a generally reliable member of the Democratic majority (though he did vote against a bill capping interest rates on payday loans, which is not an insignificant error.) Gallup-McKinley County School Board member Priscilla Benally is delinquent on her campaign finance filings, but that hasn’t stopped her from putting such a scare into Alcon that he’s apparently paying for mailers attacking Benally. A geographic divide could show in the results: Benally is from McKinley County, which is overwhelmingly Native (Benally is Diné/Navajo) and accounts for the majority of the district’s population, while Alcon is from the district’s Cibola County portion, which is demographically mixed and less populous.
HD-09 (Navajo Nation, Gallup)
Patty Lundstrom (i) vs. Arval Todd McCabe vs. Christopher Brian Hudson
Result: Lundstrom 61.9%, Hudson 29.4%, McCabe 8.7% | Lundstrom wins
Patty Lundstrom is one of the most powerful members of the New Mexico House’s bloc of conservative Democrats—or, at least, she was until 2023. That was when newly-minted Speaker Javier Martínez abruptly replaced the conservative Lundstrom with Las Cruces Democrat Nathan Small as chair of the powerful Appropriations and Finance Committee. Maybe it was over Lundstrom’s long record of breaking with the party on key votes (she voted against the decriminalization of abortion, for example), or maybe it was her proposal to eliminate the state’s income tax. Regardless, the change was long overdue. Lundstrom was not deterred from further bad votes by the loss of her committee gavel; she voted against the paid family medical leave bill, as well as a bill increasing the royalties due to the state for new oil and gas wells on state land. (Not coincidentally, the oil and gas industry loves her, showering her with tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions just this year and accounting for the bulk of her fundraising.) Lundstrom is absolutely running scared in the face of a scrappy shoestring challenge from Navajo activist Christopher Brian Hudson, who was able to round up endorsements from the American Federation of Teachers’ New Mexico arm, Planned Parenthood Votes, the New Mexico WFP, OLÉ, and the Sierra Club despite having little in the way of money. Lundstrom has spent more just on radio ads than Hudson has raised for his entire campaign, and, given her record, we really hope she’s not panicking for nothing.
HD-12 (Southwest Albuquerque)
Art De La Cruz (i) vs. Steve Tafoya
Result: De La Cruz 100% | De La Cruz wins
Art De La Cruz isn’t the most progressive member of the New Mexico House, but he's not really a problem either. He should be fine either way, because Steve Tafoya is a phantom candidate. (Update/correction: it appears Steve Tafoya did not make the ballot and De La Cruz won unopposed.)
HD-13 (Southwest Albuquerque)
Patricia Roybal Caballero (i) vs. Teresa Garcia
Result: Roybal Caballero 57.8%, Garcia 42.2% | Roybal Caballero wins
State Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero is a loyal progressive vote facing a challenge from the right. Unlike some of her colleagues’ challengers, Roybal Caballero’s opponent Teresa Garcia is a bit short on cash; however, as the chair of the city of Albuquerque’s Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Commission, Garcia is not a nobody. Moe Maestas helped Garcia out with a late in-kind contribution of over $1,000; that probably means a joint event or some other use of Maestas campaign resources to aid Garcia without simply cutting her a check. (Maestas is probably angry with Roybal Caballero for backing his primary challenger Julie Radoslovich.)
HD-16 (West Albuquerque)
Yanira Gurrola Valenzuela (i) vs. Marsella Duarte
Result: Gurrola 63.8%, Duarte 36.2% | Gurrola wins
Yanira Gurrola Valenzuela and Marsella Duarte have both been appointed to this seat, previously held by Moe Maestas. The same Bernalillo County Commission that appointed Maestas to the Senate appointed Duarte to replace him for the last month of his 2021-2023 term; after a new commission was sworn in, Gurrola was appointed to serve out the two-year term Maestas had been elected to in November 2022, before his December elevation to the state senate. Gurrola has been a reliable progressive vote in the state house, while Duarte wasn’t around long enough to amass a voting record capable of being evaluated. However, Duarte’s donors include a lot of trade associations and Marathon Oil Company, which has a large presence in New Mexico; Gurrola’s campaign is funded by unions, progressive PACs, and her legislative colleagues. Though Duarte is not without progressive support—state Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino is in her corner—we have a much easier time trusting the second appointee than the first one, especially when Duarte has also benefited from ads run by the New Mexico Project, a bipartisan super PAC headed by wealthy businessman Jeff Apodaca that has also been spending to defend Democrats facing progressive challengers—and supporting Republicans, even in swing districts. Click through and you’ll notice that candidates’ parties are not listed next to their names; this is presumably because all the Democrats on the New Mexico Project’s list would be damaged by associating with Republicans Jared Hembree, John D’Antonio, and Nicole Tobiassen.
HD-18 (Nob Hill, Albuquerque)
Marianna Anaya vs. Gloria Sue Doherty vs. Juan Larrañaga vs. Anjali Taneja
Result: Anaya 48.9%, Taneja 41.2%, Doherty 7.4%, Larrañaga 2.4% | Anaya wins
Nurse Gloria Sue Doherty is running on a slate of baseline Democratic policies, and has some money to work with thanks to donations from other healthcare workers as well as PACs run by medical industry trade associations. University of New Mexico IT worker Juan Larrañaga is also on the ballot, but badly lags Doherty financially—and Doherty herself is far behind the two leading contenders for this seat, physician Anjali Taneja and lobbyist Marianna Anaya. Anaya is a progressive backed by New Mexico WFP, many Albuquerque politicians including outgoing state Rep. Gail Chasey, and a number of labor unions, which probably makes you worry about Taneja—but don’t worry, Taneja is also a progressive with significant labor backing and the endorsement of Albuquerque DSA. Despite both leading candidates seeming pretty great, this race has gotten nasty: Equality New Mexico, which is backing Anaya, went on the attack against Taneja, sending out texts saying she’s tied to “corporate medicine,” which prompted protests from Taneja’s supporters, who angrily noted that Taneja works at a nonprofit clinic serving low-income patients and even provides gender-affirming care. (EQNM more or less admitted their attack on Taneja had been a lie after they were called on it, and promised to refrain from negative attacks in the future.) While tensions are high, the stakes are ultimately pretty low: Anaya and Taneja would both be reliable additions to the progressive bloc in the state house.
HD-27 (Northeast Albuquerque)
Marian Matthews (i) vs. Greg Seeley
Result: Matthews 55.8%, Seeley 44.2% | Matthews wins
State Rep. Marian Matthews was one of the Democrats who defected on paid family medical leave, and she’s already regretting it. Greg Seeley, an Air Force veteran who has served as a staffer for then-Rep. Deb Haaland and the city of Albuquerque, is attacking her mercilessly for her vote against the bill, and Matthews is nervous enough about the attacks that she’s devoted an entire page on her website to rebutting it, claiming that the PFML bill she sank would have endangered care for disabled New Mexicans. (Exactly how a payroll tax to fund family medical leave would endanger care for disabled New Mexicans, Matthews’s website does not say.) Her website’s endorsements page is also pretty underhanded—listing groups that have endorsed her in 2024 as well as ones that endorsed her in 2022, neglecting to mention that many of the listed 2022 endorsers (such as Conservation Voters New Mexico and the American Federation of Teachers) are backing Seeley this time. So is senate president pro tempore Mimi Stewart, an Albuquerque Democrat who sponsored the PFML bill that Matthews helped kill.
HD-35 (Las Cruces)
Angelica Rubio (i) vs. Gabriel Duran
Result: Rubio 61.4%, Duran 38.6% | Rubio wins
State Rep. Angelica Rubio faces a very well-funded challenge from veteran Gabriel Duran Jr. Who wants Duran? Corporations, mostly—business entities account for the majority of his campaign contributions. Also on Duran’s donor list is former state senate president pro tempore Mary Kay Papen, a conservative Democrat from Las Cruces who led the state senate in a coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats until she was primaried out in 2020 by progressive now-Sen. Carrie Hamblen. Rubio is a community organizer and a reliable vote for progressive priorities, which is why it’s so concerning that Duran has managed to outspend her more than 2 to 1.
HD-41 (Española and rural northern New Mexico)
Susan Herrera (i) vs. Margaret Cecilia Campos
Result: Herrera 63.5%, Campos 36.5% | Herrera wins
Susan Herrera is a loyal Democratic vote representing the town of Española and its more rural surroundings. Her biggest legislative achievement as of late is a 2022 bill that cracked down on predatory lending by capping annual interest rates on storefront loans at 36%. No good deed goes unpunished, apparently, because Margaret Cecilia Campos is running against her with the financial backing of Joseph Sanchez, who represents a neighboring district and is something of a ringleader among the state’s conservative Democrats. Campos also received a large donation from the Independent Community Bankers Association of NM, whose members may want to return to New Mexico’s previous 175% interest rate cap.
HD-53 (Las Cruces, Chaparral)
Willie Madrid (i) vs. Jon Hill
Result: Hill 58.1%, Madrid 41.9% | Hill wins
State Rep. Willie Madrid was on the wrong side of the paid family medical leave bill, but that may not be the biggest dividing line in this primary. Retired teacher and school board member Jon Hill supports a paid family medical leave program, to be sure; Hill also supports New Mexico’s proposed Environmental Rights Amendment, also termed the Green Amendment, a proposal by Albuquerque state Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez that would make it easier for citizens to sue polluters and give the state greater power to regulate emissions. Madrid, meanwhile, is one of oil’s best Democratic friends in the legislature; his campaign account is stuffed to the brim with contributions from oil and gas companies and other corporate interests, and he was one of only five Democrats to defect and vote with Republicans against a law that raised the royalties paid by oil companies to the state on new oil and gas wells located on state land. (Also donating to Madrid: Mary Kay Papen.) New Mexico WFP, the Sierra Club, the Climate Cabinet, and, interestingly, CWA Local 7076 (the state employees’ union) are among the groups backing Hill’s challenge to Madrid. Replacing Madrid with Hill wouldn’t only change the legislative math on family medical leave, but on climate and environmental issues writ large—especially important in a hub of the oil and gas industries like New Mexico. Geography may play a role in this primary; this district awkwardly joins the eastern edge of Las Cruces, where Hill resides, to the Texas border town of Chaparral on the outskirts of Fort Bliss, where Madrid is from.
HD-69 (Pueblo tribal lands, Navajo Nation)
Harry Garcia (i) vs. Michelle Paulene Abeyta vs. Stanley Michael
Result: Abeyta 56.8%, Garcia 34.9%, Michael 8.3% | Abeyta wins
State Rep. Harry Garcia is another of the chamber’s stubborn conservatives. He opposed the decriminalization of abortion and voted to kill paid family medical leave, earning him a primary from Navajo attorney Michelle “Paulene” Abeyta. Abeyta, also a member of the To’hajiilee school board, is backed by the Working Families Party, New Mexico’s teachers’ union, and Planned Parenthood Votes New Mexico, among others. She cites a lack of help from Garcia’s office in her role on the school board as she tried to secure funding for a preschool program as a motivator for running against him. Also on the ballot is miner Stanley Michael, but he has lagged far behind Garcia and Abeyta financially.
HD-70 (Las Vegas)
Ambrose Castellano (i) vs. Anita Gonzales
Result: Gonzales 55.2%, Castellano 44.8% | Gonzales wins
Anita Gonzales has tried to save New Mexico from state Rep. Ambrose Castellano before—twice, in fact, both times losing the Democratic nomination to Castellano by less than 100 votes. Castellano, a consistent conservative, opposed the repeal of the state’s abortion ban and the passage of the state’s version of the Voting Rights Act. After Castellano became one of the Democrats to cross the party on paid family medical leave, high-ranking Democrats finally realized what a problem Castellano was for their legislative priorities—Democrats as high-ranking as Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham herself. Lujan Grisham and Melanie Stansbury are backing Gonzales; meanwhile, Castellano is in hot water for using his campaign funds for travel to Hawaii.
District Attorney, First District (Santa Fe, Los Alamos, Española)
Mary Carmack-Altwies (i) vs. Marco Serna
Result: Carmack-Altwies 61.7%, Serna 38.3% | Carmack-Altwies wins
Marco Serna passed on reelection in 2020 to mount a failed bid for Congress, which was dogged all along by bad headlines relating to his tenure as DA. He was succeeded by Mary Carmack-Altwies, who ran as a reformer like many candidates elected in 2020, and now he’s attacking her for not being tough enough on crime in a case where activists toppled an obelisk attached to a monument memorializing Civil War soldiers and soldiers killed in skirmishes with Native Americans during the federal government’s brutal conquest of the West in the late 19th century. She sent the case into a pretrial diversion program instead of seeking jail time like Serna says he would have. He’s also attacking her for spending a lot of money on special prosecutors in the case against Alec Baldwin for the death of a cinematographer on the set of his movie Rust. Someone who demands jail time for what is ultimately a vandalism case in which nobody was hurt is not the kind of top prosecutor we like to see, so hopefully Carmack-Altwies’s financial advantage and stronger network of endorsers will carry her to a second term.
District Attorney, Second District (Albuquerque)
Sam Bregman (i) vs. Damon Martinez
Result: Bregman 56.3%, Martinez 43.7% | Bregman wins
Like Marco Serna above, Damon Martinez is another former prosecutor turned failed congressional candidate running for DA. Martinez was a federal prosecutor appointed by Barack Obama to serve as the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico, the top federal prosecutor in the state. After Trump took office and Martinez lost his job, Martinez ran for Congress in 2018, seeking the Albuquerque seat left open by Michelle Lujan Grisham’s gubernatorial run. Lujan Grisham succeeded, but Martinez didn’t. Now, Martinez is running to “end sweetheart deals for fentanyl dealers,” because he disagrees with incumbent Sam Bregman’s focus on violent crime and particularly gun crimes. He’s also self-funding his campaign. We’re not sure we’ve ever seen a prosecutorial candidate argue that the incumbent is too focused on violent crime before, but there’s a first time for everything. Doubt it works, though.
District Attorney, Third District (Las Cruces)
Gerald Byers (i) vs. Shaharazad Booth vs. Fernando Macias vs. Ramona Martinez
Result: Macias 34.3%, Booth 33.4%, Martinez 23.6%, Byers 8.7% | Macias wins
Incumbent DA Gerald Byers faces criticism on all sides for his management of the Doña Ana County DA’s office, especially in light of the revelation that the office bungled some unspecified number of cases (and Byers’ office’s refusal to say how many cases were affected, unlike other New Mexico DAs in the same situation.) He has also been outraised and outspent by each of his three opponents.
Former state Sen. Fernando Macias was just fired from his job as county manager by the Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners, and he sounds less skeptical of overcriminalization than either Shaharazad Booth or Ramona Martinez, both defense attorneys. The tiebreaker for us is the fact that Booth is endorsed by the New Mexico WFP.