In the race to increase minimal qualifications for the Public Regulation Commission, a bill that critics say is a watered-down version passed through the Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday (Jan. 30).
Senate Bill 8 is one of three bills before the Legislature in this 60-day session to implement the will of New Mexico voters who, in [...]

For all the talk of political polarization, I think a couple recent stories show that New Mexico Republicans aren’t nearly as extreme as liberals fear and Democrats aren’t as left-wing as conservatives suspect.
We’ll start with the decision by Gov. Susana Martinez to accept the federal government’s offer for states to expand Medicaid.
At least 10 other [...]

The battle between Democrats and Republicans will surely get heated between now and Election Day on Nov. 6. It’s already gotten expensive in a handful of races as Democrats try to hang on to their majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Here’s a look at some of the races that feature [...]

In a race that seemed to combine a lot of the off-beat characteristics of New Mexico politics, Clemente Sanchez held off Maxine Velasquez on Friday (July 6) to take the state Senate Democratic Party primary in a recount in the Grants area.
“It’s a big sense of relief,” Sanchez told Capitol Report New Mexico from his [...]

Capitol Report New Mexico has learned that Cliff Pirtle has defeated Chad Hamill in the razor-close state Republican Senate primary in southeastern New Mexico after a recount conducted Thursday (July 5) of the three counties involved showed that Pirtle picked up one additional vote.
The county clerks in Otero, Chaves and Eddy counties are putting together [...]

Cliff Pirtle and Clemente Sanchez come from two different parts of the state and are members of two different political parties but they both think their respective 9-vote leads will stand up after the state conducts recounts next week.
“I’m feeling pretty good,” Pirtle said of his 1,018-1,009 lead on Chad Hamill in the Republican primary [...]

The see-saw battle between Democratic Party state Senate candidates and relatives Clemente Sanchez and Maxine Velasquez took another turn Thursday (June 14) as Sanchez took the overall lead in votes.
On Thursday morning, the county clerk’s office in Cibola County finally tabulated its provisional ballots and saw Sanchez pick up 15 more votes while Velasquez picked [...]

The ultra-close and ultra-competitive Democratic Party primary race for state Senate between Maxine Velasquez and Clemente Sanchez shifted by one vote Monday (June 11) as election officials in McKinley and Socorro counties counted provisional ballots.
Velasquez and Sanchez have run a contentious race in Senate District 30 and as we learned late last week, the two [...]

The primary election may have been held on Tuesday (June 5) but days later, there’s no clear-cut winner for the Democratic Party nomination for state Senate District 30 — and it looks like there won’t be an official decision for a while in a race that, even by New Mexico political standards, is wild and [...]