KRWG Public Media is covering the New Mexico State Representative race for district 37. Early voting opens October 6th. Democratic candidate Lori Martinez spoke to Noah Raess.
Noah Raess:
Can you tell us about yourself and why you are running for this office?
Lori Martinez:
So I am a social worker. I have been working in southern New Mexico for about 23 years. I grew up in northern New Mexico, mostly in the rural areas until I got closer to high school. But, my family has roots in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. After high school, I moved to Las Cruces in 98 to go to NMSU and that really became home. I really loved it down here. So I got my bachelor's and my master's in social work from NMSU and stayed and built my life here and raising my daughter here. And as far as what motivates me to run? I have a lot of reasons, but I think one of the biggest ones is just that we look at what's going on around us on the federal level and what's going on around us in the world and I feel a duty to protect my community. And I think our New Mexico State legislature is one of the tools we have to protect our people. And that feels really important right now. I think the other things are as a social worker, I've done a lot of direct service and also, done a lot of work in nonprofits. And I've been doing legislative work for, you know, as I've worked with Engage New Mexico, I've been doing legislative work and so I know the process and I have spent a lot of years developing relationships with people to be able to work with them and get things done. So, that's kind of the overall big picture answer. I can go more in depth on other areas if you have questions, but that's the reason.
Noah Raess:
What do you think the top issues in your district are, and how would you successfully address those?
Lori Martinez:
Well, I think it's not just my district, but certainly the things that I hear about in my district are things around affordability, things like groceries have gotten some estimates say up to 30% more expensive since 2020. And so just the affordability of things all the way around and people's ability to just, not just to live but to survive has gotten a lot more difficult. So certainly affordability is one of them. Another is access to health care and paying for health care. And then I think another big one, there's a lot of things I hear about talking to people, but another big one that comes up a lot is education. And also public safety. That's probably four things. But, in terms of things that I would like to see us do to deal with those things, I think one thing we can do that helps with not only affordability, but also a way that we support working families is to pass paid family medical leave. And so that's been something that has been put to the legislature a number of times in the last few years. But there is a statewide paid family medical leave coalition, which we've been active in at least the nonprofit that I work with. And it's one of those things that if it passes New Mexico would be, I think, the 14th state to pass it. But, I think it's important because there are so many of life's inevitabilities when people get if someone gets sick or a family member gets sick or when families decide to have kids, it's not just a matter of having the time off, it's to be home with a new child, or to be home to take care of a sick family member. It's also how do we do that while making sure that people aren't getting their lives completely financially turned upside down and so paid family medical leave, at least in the in the form that I've been working to support, it has involved a fund the state and employers and employees pay into with some carve outs for small businesses and allows for creating a sustainable fund so that, workers don't, you know, they can they can keep their jobs, but they can also take care of the things that they need to, and then have a job to return to and still have a source of income. So that's one area I think that we can really support, not only workers, but our economy from getting turned upside down when difficulties happen because employers, it doesn't do them any good when they have to when someone has to leave a job because of a medical issue and then they have to spend the time hiring and training someone new. So that's one area. I think other areas we should be looking at in terms of affordability, costs have increased so much. And for inflation has gone up so much in recent years and wages are not keeping up at all. So I think there's a number of things we should be looking at. One I think is looking at what we can be doing as far as things like tax credits. We could be looking at something like doubling our child tax credits to help families. I also think because groceries have gone so far up, our costs have increased so much. And it's not just the cost of groceries have increased because of inflation, but we're now actively seeing, really we're seeing greed factor into the price of our groceries when you see, corporations using tactics like AI based pricing where they use digital price tags and charge based on what they think someone can afford to pay or will pay. And I think that kind of thing should absolutely be illegal. But also on a practical level, I think we should be looking at in New Mexico, what can we do to address that? And I would love to see our state supporting municipalities. To create, like city or county owned, publicly owned grocery stores where the food is sold especially in areas that have food or grocery store deserts. And in those kinds of settings, the food it's sold a little bit of both cost to cover, cost of operations. But that would mean the our groceries, you know, would the, the groceries in the stores would be like 20 to 30% less than what we're seeing at typical chain stores when we go grocery shopping. And so, I think we need some alternatives to the purely corporate options that we have right now, because we're seeing how those are really hurting people. Other areas, I've talked about in my platform how, with healthcare, we need to not only increase access to providers by things like certainly recruiting from other states, but there are things we can be doing within our own education system here to like grow your own efforts, like we've done with teachers. So, that involves making sure that students, especially in high school, they're getting hands-on learning opportunities, like work based learning and internships to get experience in fields like health care. And then, you know, helping students get on a career pathway that leads them into good paying jobs and health care. But also, New Mexico is finally in a position to be looking at, what would it look like for us to implement a universal health care model? And so I absolutely want to be part of those conversations .
Noah Raess:
And data centers have been a major topic of debate in the state, but also around the country. How do you think the state should handle new data centers and existing ones?
Lori Martinez:
Well, that is certainly a big question, especially here in Doña Ana County where we've seen what's happened with Project Jupiter. I think a number of things. One, right off the bat, I think the country, but certainly New Mexico has we're behind the curve at this point in terms of how we deal with data centers. And so I think at minimum, we need to put in place as quickly as possible a moratorium. Probably at least 1 to 2 years so that we can figure out what the regulatory environment needs to be because what we're seeing is all these data centers wanting to come in and any number of kind of tactics to get into our communities. And so there's some things that we really need to be clear on, I think before these kinds of projects are allowed to move forward because they come in on the basis of economic impact, but very often there's no clarity around it. There's very little transparency around it, and there's not enough accountability and follow up attached to it. So I think when we're looking at projects like this, there's some things we need to be really clear on. One is what is the specific projected economic impact and what is that based on. So like for projected job growth, how many short term and long term jobs, how many of those jobs will go to New Mexicans? So we also need to be clear, especially with data centers on things like environmental impact on our land, on our air, on our water, anything related to emissions should absolutely be held to the greenhouse gas reduction targets. We already have set forth, state law and the goals that we have set. There should be community engagement. These projects should not be sprung on our communities the way Project Jupiter was sprung on our community. It was practically a done deal before it ever came to the public. And that was almost exactly a year ago in September. And so there needs to be community engagement that captures the concerns and what the communities that are most going to be affected by it. What are their concerns and what are their, you know, what do they want to see done about that to ameliorate those concerns? And then also if there should be some really meaningful benefits to the community, including things like community benefit agreements that have specific benchmarks that these projects are held to, along with, like specific enforceable clawback provisions if these project developers don't keep their promises to the community. And there should be specificity around like what it is they need to be reporting on a regular basis. And then I think we need really clear transparency standards. What information did communities and lawmakers need to have access to before decisions are made? Because I think in the case of Project Jupiter, for example our governor opened the door and then there were some things that happened in the 2025 legislative session that helped pave the way. And lobbyists I think largely got access to people they needed to get access to to open the doors. And the public didn't know what was going on. And that, I think, is really wrong. So if we're going to look at what we need to do to keep these kinds of things from happening in the future, then I think the things that I just laid out are like the start of what we need to do to really protect our communities and make sure that we're all moving forward with our eyes open.
Noah Raess:
CYFD has been in hot water this year between the attorney general investigation and reporting showing that CYFD had dropped a child off of the US-Mexico border. What do you see as the best path forward for this department?
Lori Martinez:
Well, for one, CYFD that's not been an issue just this year that's been an issue for a long time. The department, there's a lot of things I think that need to happen within the department, especially when we're talking about child safety and child protective services. One is, I think we need to obviously make sure that they're adequately funded, but that funding needs to be going to the right places. So we need to make sure that we have good support in place and a strategy in place for not only how we recruit and retain well trained and supported and safe foster families. But make sure that they have the support in place to really provide the best possible care to these kids and make sure that the families have support. Do they have access to things like not only financial support but respite care? And so I think there's some strategies that need to be in place around supporting the family of origin. Because oftentimes if a child gets removed the department has to look at a couple scenarios, like one, how do we reunite the child with their family can we support them to the point that the home is safe and the child can go home? And at the same time, there has to be an alternative strategy of like, what if we can't reunite the child with that family? Then what? You know, do they end up in the foster care system or in a long term home? Or if they're old enough, you know how we help them work towards independent living? So we need to put sufficient resources into those systems. Two is for a long time, the department did have a lot of social workers, and they were licensed and they were trained, and they have moved more to a caseworker model and still ridiculous caseloads. And so as social workers, we have a code of ethics that we're held to. There's a minimum standard of training where you have to be licensed, to work in a setting like that. And so when we move away from those kinds of requirements for workers that are working in these kinds of settings, it leads to not only to burnout, but also it's dangerous for kids and families, you know, of course, kids under those circumstances, when there's caseworkers with too many families on their caseload and not enough resources to do the job well, that puts kids in danger. I think that's another thing, is that the department, for a long time, there is a huge culture of defensiveness and distrust there. And so I think many of us are torn between how do we reform the department, or do we just burn it all to the ground and start over? And I've heard from even a number of people within the department that have wondered the same thing. And because we're talking about some of these really entrenched issues that need to be addressed. So I know right now, we're looking at potentially a bill to create a commission like an independent commission that can really hold the department accountable. And that is super important that independent oversight is necessary. But also there are things from the top down within the department that need to be addressed, including looking at whether or not it's a good idea for the head of the department to be the secretary, to be appointed by a governor or whether it should be a position that is put in place by a nominating committee. So I have a lot of thoughts about safety and could probably talk about this for a while because I am a social worker. But, those are some of the big things I think we need to really be looking at.
Noah Raess:
And New Mexico has ranked near the bottom in terms of education for many years. What do you think needs to be done to turn this around?
Lori Martinez:
Well, there's a number of things. For one thing there was the Martinez Yazzie lawsuit that was ruled on in 2018. So our state was sued for not abiding by our own state constitution to provide a sufficient and equitable education for every student, particularly when it comes to English language learners, students with low income students with disabilities and native students, which is, you know, those four categories encompass at least more than half of our students. And so, when that ruling came down, Judge Singleton issued a 600 plus page ruling that outlined all the ways we were failing our students. And so the year after that, this was the first year the governor took office. We restored, the legislature restored, half of $1 billion of funding to our education system, which was phenomenal. However, what a lot of people don't know is what that did aas it all that did was good as back to 2008 levels of funding, when we were already underfunding our education system by hundreds of millions of dollars. So one of the obvious answers is funding, but it also has to do with what do you do with that funding? In the last couple of years, the legislature updated our graduation requirements for the first time in, I believe, 12 years. And one of the cool things about that is that things like career and technical education and work based learning were finally integrated into our high school graduation requirements. And the reason why that's important is because up until 2018, only something like 2 to 4% of our high school students had access to these, like, really critical, hands-on learning opportunities. So we're talking about paid internships, career and technical education, the place where you're not just sitting in a classroom getting lectured, but where you're actually in community and getting to do hands-on work. And when you talk to high school students around the state about what matters to them in education, there's really three things that keep coming up again and again. And one of them is they want meaningful learning opportunities. You know, they want these hands-on learning opportunities and opportunities to be out in the community. And the second thing is they want adults who care about them, and opportunities for and the third is opportunities for mentorship. And so there's other things that come up, but those three themes keep coming up to the top again and again and again. And so the state in recent years has finally started putting more money into career and technical education and work based learning, with funding for things like innovation zones that individual schools can apply for and the outcomes from that have been just outstanding. So when you give high school students these opportunities to be in community, to get mentorship, to get hands-on learning, their engagement shoots through the roof and their graduation rates increase. And there's, you know, it just makes sense. They're plugged in. But New Mexico has really just dipped our toes in the water. And this is one of those areas where, like we need to make the commitment. We know these strategies work. We know it's what our youth are asking for. We know it's good for the community. And New Mexico needs to put the funding in place and help build the infrastructure within communities so that all high school students have access to these kinds of things, not just the lucky few. So that's something that we know works, that if we made the commitment, would make, I think, a big difference in outcomes. Something else is that we are, even though New Mexico is close to the bottom in terms of education, they're usually talking about K-12. And so New Mexico is leading the nation in early childhood education. And so the thing that's been on everyone's radar in the last year, of course, has been universal child care. But New Mexico is one of the only states in the country still that has a designated cabinet level early childhood department. And we're one of the only states that has really where the voters have said their access to early childhood education is a right. And so some of these services, things like early intervention and pre-K and home visiting, the more families have access to these high quality early childhood experiences early on, the better their kids do in school later and so one thing is that we are doing great in early childhood education, and we cannot let off the gas on that. We have to protect the ones that we've had, and we've also need to continue supporting those early childhood workers because there's still a lot of early childhood workers, particularly in the childcare arena, are still paid poverty level wages. And so that's been getting better. But, when the law passed that created the Early Childhood Education and Care Department, part of that law, that law also said that New Mexico needs to create a wage and career ladder for early childhood educators, just like we have something similar for K-12 teachers. If they go to work for school, they know what they're going to make based on their education and years of experience. And we need that same thing for early childhood educators. So that was part of the law that passed. And we still don't have that in place. So that's something else that we need to really, make sure we follow up on as a state and get done.
Noah Raess:
Finally, what else do you think is important for voters to know about you and your campaign?
Lori Martinez:
My campaign, I talk about being a candidate for working families and just that that's that's real. I'm a mom. I'm a social worker. I grew up in a middle class family that after my parents divorce was lived in poverty. And so I've, you know, I've experienced the reality of living paycheck to paycheck and struggling. You know, my family was on food stamps growing up. We had Medicaid. Had to work really hard. You know, I worked all through college and got my bachelor's and my masters, and I only finished paying. I graduated in 2005 with my master's, and I only in the last, like year and a half, finally finished paying off my student loans. But just that I think it's important that we have everyday New Mexicans in our state legislature, and we do now more than ever and the last ten years, the face of our legislature really has changed. And the more we get everyday New Mexicans in the legislature, you see it in the types of laws that are passed, because you have people who understand what it's like to live in survival mode or not wondering how they're going to take care of their families. And so my campaign has reflected that were my volunteerism and staff will remain very much all working people. And so I think, you know, people should know that about their candidates, what their experiences and kind of what their motivations are for running for office. And just to know that there are a lot of special interests when it comes to our legislature. There's lobbyists left and right. There's people that have agendas, and we need people whose integrity we can trust and people who are going to really take the time to learn about the issues and people whose integrity isn't for sale. And I believe that's what I bring to this race and what I would bring as a legislator.
