KRWG Public Media is covering the New Mexico State Representative race for district 37. Democratic candidate Lori Martinez spoke to Noah Raess.
Noah Raess:
Just to start off, can you tell us about how your background has prepared you to serve in office?
Lori Martinez:
Well, professionally, I'm a social worker with 23 years of experience working here in southern New Mexico. And I've done everything from working with people with developmental disabilities, working in mental health, doing therapy with people, case management, I've done work on hunger and food insecurity, inpatient psychiatric services, suicide prevention intervention and I've worked a lot in education, from early childhood, all the way up through higher ed. So, in that regard, I have done legislative advocacy and policy work for years. Fighting for fair wages for early childhood educators and also have been part of the Paid Family Medical Leave Coalition. You know, advocating for internship opportunities and funding for high school students for more hands-on and work based learning opportunities and have done a lot of that work in coalitions, with other organizations both here in southern New Mexico and across the state. Personally, you know, I have just life experience that I think prepared me well for the role. I was raised in northern New Mexico, but I was adopted from within my family. Here in New Mexico, we call that kinship care. But I have a sister who was adopted the same way on the other side of the family and then three siblings that my parents adopted, from CYFD when I was seven and so I have six siblings all together, both adopted, biological, but that complexity piece and growing up, just understanding some of those issues around blended families and, you know, understanding, from both a personal and professional perspective about CYFD and why things in that particular arena are so difficult and can be so problematic. So, yeah, I would say that between, you know, personal lived experience and professional experience down here, I've been doing the work for a long time already.
Noah Raess:
Why are you running for office?
Lori Martinez:
Well, I think a lot of reasons, you know, one is that we have a federal government that is really essentially throwing our country into chaos. And so there's a lot of uncertainty and heaviness hanging over a lot of people's heads. I think a lot of dangerous things, too. You know, we have things we have our due process rights being violated. You know, when you have ICE literally taking people off the streets, wearing masks, you know, and that's, you know, that's a massive public safety issue and also a huge civil rights issue. And that's just, you know, that's just one thing. We have our economy that's been thrown into chaos. And so, you know, the big picture and of things I'm running because I think our state legislature is one of the ways that we can protect our people here in New Mexico. You know, it's a big thing. And the other, you know, other reasons are because, like I said, I've been doing a lot of legislative and advocacy work for years. I spent years and years building trust and building relationships, which is also part of what I think will make me effective. You know, there are no shortcuts to that. There's no shortcuts to building relationships and building trust and often that's part of how you get things done is, just through that, steady work over time. So there are some things that I would also like to see us, you know, get across the finish line. We came so close to passing paid family medical leave, what was it, two years ago. I really want to see that get across the finish line. We've got a lot of work to do in the next around the energy transition and, reducing our dependence on oil and gas. Obviously, that's a huge piece of our state budget that we're dependent on and also we can't afford to pretend like it's going to be around forever in the quantity that it has been so we have to have a realistic viewpoint of how to move forward. We have huge issues with access to health care. You know, not just affordability, but access to the doctors and the quality of care that people need. And so, you know, we have our Speaker of the House talking about universal health care, which is something that just a few years ago, people would have thought was ludicrous. But then this year, they also just passed universal child care, which is also something that would have been thought, you know, impossible at one point. And when I think about health care, you know, that's one of those areas that like talk about one thing that would improve the quality of life for almost every person in New Mexico, health care is definitely one of those things. And so we really need to have a comprehensive strategy on a statewide level for how we address access to health care. I could go on for a while. I mean, I have a lot of reasons why I want to run. I'm also a mom, you know, and we think, like any parent, we want to leave something better behind for our kids but, you know, those are just some of the reasons that I'm running.
Noah Raess:
You touched on this a little bit, but what are the top issues in your district?
Lori Martinez:
Health care has definitely risen to the top, when I'm, you know, it comes up certainly in forums, but what I'm paying attention to is when I'm out, you know, talking to the constituents of this district and out knocking on doors. And so health care is definitely top of mind for a lot of people. And like I said, it's not just it's not any one thing. It's people want to know that they're going to be able to have access to care when they need it, that it's going to be high quality and of course, you know that they're going to be able to afford it. So there's a number of issues around health care that come up. Some other things that come up, district 37 is completely contained within the city limits of Las Cruces. So it's not like a rural district. It's, you know, it's all, urban in Las Cruces and so infrastructure has come up a lot. Particularly there's, sections of this district are being developed, you know, as we speak, residentially and commercially. And so, of course, you know, just the traffic concerns and just really just infrastructure all the way around. Everything from roads and potholes to the need for more streetlights to people wanting more, parks and just recreational options for young people. There's a lot of things wrapped up in that. And then of course, you know, something else that seems to be top of mind for I think a lot of us is just affordability in general. You know, inflation has really gotten wildly out of control in the last year. It was already problematic before then, but just even more so, seems to have just kind of skyrocketed with all this global unpredictability and unpredictability in the US. So, you know, I think a lot of people are worried about just being stuck in survival mode.
Noah Raess:
How would you address those issues?
Lori Martinez:
Well, health care, like I mentioned before, I think on the state level, we do need to look at what are the options that we can do. You know, our state has a lot of money in reserves, which is great. And of course we have to be mindful about how we spend them, but I think, you know, really looking at can New Mexico support a universal health care option is a conversation not just worth having, but one that we need to have, sooner than later. I think the other thing with health care, obviously, is just access to doctors, both primary care doctors and specialists, and especially here in the borderland, you know, are in the southern part of New Mexico, the borderland is really kind of its own thing and so that looks different down here than it does, you know, say, in the rest of the state Very often people here, if they need a specialist, you know, we're going to El Paso or if El Paso's, doctors don't take our, you know, don't take Medicaid or don't take our particular coverage we've got a, you know, I can go up to Albuquerque. I think just how do we ensure New Mexico has the doctors and the specialists that we need is a huge issue. And so, you know, there's certainly things we can do to incentivize bringing doctors in from outside New Mexico, but also a huge piece of that is how do we grow our own here in New Mexico. You know, just like we've worked on growing our own for teachers, for early childhood educators. We have a lot of the pieces of the puzzle, down here within our systems, but we don't always put them together. You know, we have two med schools in New Mexico between UNM and Burrell and we, you know, need to be talking to our kids earlier. We can't be a for we can't afford to wait until they're in high school to be talking to them about just different career pathways and options that are open to them. So, you know, our kids and families need to know in our, you know, region and in our state what's available education wise. You know, what are the different kinds of education they'll need for these different types of medical field, along with the hands-on experience and internships and things like that that are needed to be able to, you know, make progress in that field and knowing what kind of jobs they lead to. So there's a huge element within just our pipeline of growing your own and making sure that information and outreach is going out to the students and families sooner. So that's, you know, that's health care. Other things with regards to infrastructure. Again, this district is completely contained in the city. So we know legislators need to be having those conversations with our, you know, the city of Las Cruces. And so, you know the city of Las Cruces has a strategic plan and so I think, you know, within that we need to be making sure the needs of this district are getting recognized. You know, certainly as I've been walking, I've been seeing areas where the roads are in much, much worse shape comparatively to other places in the district. And also, you know, I live in Las Colinas, and so I'm seeing in real time where the traffic is, is problematic and where we need, you know, streetlights and traffic control measures and the city is actively working on those, so I think it's a matter of keeping those, top of mind and communicating and coordinating with the city around things like that. And then as far as affordability, that's a massive one. And I think just like health care, there's not any just one silver bullet that's going to fix everything. We have to be looking, you know, it's a complex issue. And I think the strategies we need to be looking at, should address that complexity as well. So it's everything from like, how do we use our tax system to help New Mexico families? Also, how do we take measures to control how inflation hits families' pocketbooks? We've got things that are changing every day. Everything from that, you know, gas prices to how AI is impacting pricing on things. You know, these things are so largely unregulated in a lot of ways, I think New Mexico really needs like a lot of other states, you know, we really need to be grappling with and looking at how these everyday things are affecting affordability. And then I think also just, you know, protecting the wins that we've made. Universal child care is a huge, huge win and also a huge stress off of working families backs. You know, for the average family with young kids, it's cost previously about $12,000 a year. So to not have to worry about that cost anymore is a huge, you know, give some breathing room. But I know from having, you know, worked in early childhood for so long that we have to make sure that New Mexico keeps universal childcare sustainable. And one of the big pieces there is that we have to have enough child care educators, enough workers, and historically, childcare educators in New Mexico, like many places, make poverty level wages. And so for those of us at the local level doing the work in the field, it's really hard for us to recruit people into a field where they're not going to be making a living wage. And so, for a few years and again, doing work within coalitions with statewide organizations, we've been working on a wage and career ladder for early childhood educators. So just like if you're a just like if you're a teacher in the schools, you know roughly what you're going to be making based on your years of experience and your education and credentials. And so we need that for early childhood educators and it's urgent. We have to be able to recruit at the local level. And, you know, this is a hugely female dominated field and our state in a lot of ways has kind of subsidized the cost of childcare on the backs of these women for generations. And we have to stop that. We have to make sure people make a living wage, not only because it's the right thing to do and to make sure that our kids are taken care of, but also because it's to our own economic benefit to do so.
Noah Raess:
What else do you think is important for voters to know about you and your campaign?
Lori Martinez:
I think it's important for people to know I've got over two decades of lived experience navigating systems, because as a social worker, you know, I did a lot of direct service work working directly with families and individuals, families with young children, college students, kind of you name it. And so I had to spend a lot of time learning how a lot of our service systems work, because I was helping my clients to navigate them, to get what they needed for support and services. And for the last nine years, you know, I've been at Ngage New Mexico, and I've been the director there for the last eight years and so Ngage is a nonprofit and in our work there, we're serving the county and we're doing a lot of education systems work there. So Ngage the workforce a lot about community engagement. But much of the work that we focus on is prenatal, to career, the transformation of our education system. And so in order to change systems so that they work better for everyone, you have to understand them and you have to know how to navigate them and you also have to understand what are the root causes, you know, when systems are only working for some people and not all of them. And so that is, you know, it's you really have to play the long game. These are not issues that get fixed overnight. There's some solutions that you can implement quickly. And they make, meaningful difference quickly. But also, you know, some of the reasons some of these systems are dysfunctional is because of generations of dysfunction. And so they're not going to get fixed overnight. But you have to do that long committed, you know, sometimes tedious work of getting to the root causes of why the systems don't work and looking at what are the possible solutions, bringing in all the different people, you know, who can help, identifying the barriers and then working on knocking them down and creating better solutions. And so, so many of our systems are kind of siloed from one another. You know, and in this day and age, it's not necessarily any one person's fault that these systems aren't working the way that they should be to the benefit of all New Mexicans. So the point is not to cast blame. The point is to look at what's happening in these systems. Why aren't they working for people? And to really get in there and do the tough work of breaking down what we need to do to change that. And so it's not, you know, that's not headline grabbing work, but it's so important that we do it, because these are some of the things that create these, like generational barriers that are holding our people back.
