Staff Reports
SANTA FE — Nearly 500 Democratic Party members will vote to replace Maggie Toulouse Oliver as the party’s nominee for lieutenant governor.
Voting opened July 25 for the State Central Committee after Toulouse Oliver withdrew from the race due to health concerns, and the party must fill the spot ahead of the general election.
The committee is made up of delegates from all 33 counties.
The roughly 500 SCC members will now cast votes, using a ranked-choice voting system, until 5 pm July 29. The Democratic Party of New Mexico expects to announce a winner July 30.
The committee heard from four candidates during a virtual meeting July 25 before voting.
The candidates — Public Lands Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard, state Sen. Harold Pope Jr., D-Albuquerque, Geoffrey Luehring and Toni Pinedo — each spoke for roughly four minutes in their final appeals to the SCC before voting began.
Garcia Richard entered the race with Democrat gubernatorial candidate Deb Haaland’s endorsement.
“I am the only candidate in this race who has actually stood up to Trump,” she said. “When our immigrant communities were under attack, I explicitly said no to ICE on state land and no to border walls.”
Pope, who joined the race after falling short against Toulouse Oliver in the primary, is asking committee members to reconsider his candidacy.
“New Mexico needs leaders who won’t back down when our rights are threatened,” he said. “We need leaders who are willing to stand up to the attacks on democracy, our voting rights, public education, and on working people and on the freedoms who define who we are.”
Local Native activist Pinedo said her campaign centers on helping homeless youth across New Mexico.
“My platform is black and white,” she said. “As I’d drive across New Mexico, I saw a lot of homeless youth. This is a bipartisan issue, this is not a democratic issue. It’s for every county of New Mexico.”
Albuquerque resident Luehring said he wants to focus on neighborhood-level work and statewide-policy ideas.
“I want to use the lieutenant governor shift to be on the ground, in your neighborhoods and building upon [Haaland’s] platform by bringing in those real world progressive solutions, like expanding the Rail Runner to connect our state,” he said. “Delievering state built, rent cap housing, providing permanent housing for the homeless, and using my frontline insights to sort access to quality health care across New Mexico.”
