State Rep. Stephanie Garcia Richard will become the first woman to lead the State Land Office that oversees energy and mineral development on state trust land to fund public education. She defeated two-time former land commissioner Patrick Lyons and brings a background as an education administrator to the job.<\/p>\n
Democrat Maggie Toulouse Oliver was re-elected as secretary of state, one of the few statewide elected offices routinely held by women. Attorney Xochitl Torres Small, the wife of a state legislator, won election to New Mexico\u2019s southern congressional seat, currently held by Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce. Pearce lost a bid for governor.<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s changes in New Mexico\u2019s Legislature echo a national outpouring of women seeking public office, in a movement driven by a backlash to President Donald Trump. A record number of women were elected to the U.S. House, including its first two female Muslim members.<\/p>\n
Christine Sierra, a research scholar on politics at the University of New Mexico, referred to elections results in New Mexico as \u201ca special bump in numbers\u201d for female candidates amid gradual increases over the decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Trump presidency has been a factor, but it is not the only factor,\u201d Sierra said. \u201cThere have been more deliberate systematic attempts to help women run for public office.\u201d<\/p>\n
In New Mexico and nationally, she said, increases in the number of female politicians have been driven disproportionately by Democrats, whether recruited or self-motivated.<\/p>\n
Democrat Melanie Stansbury of Albuquerque waged a campaign about \u201ccommunity well-being and crime\u201d that touched on solutions to homelessness to defeat seven-term Republican state Rep. Jimmy Hall, in a district where registered Republicans slightly outnumber Democrats.<\/p>\n
Stansbury said she tapped into instruction on the nuts and bolts of political campaigning from the Democrat-allied groups Emily\u2019s List and Emerge that both train female candidates \u2013 but didn\u2019t run on gender-based issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knocked thousands of doors, we knocked on political registrations of every stripe,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat people are hungry for is a new form of government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stansbury said she drew inspiration to run for public office from U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Maria Cantwell of Washington, whom she worked with during a stint in Washington, D.C., as staff member of a Senate committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Overall, 31 women won election to the 70-seat New Mexico House, an increase from 23 female lawmakers a decade ago. In 1973, there were none. \u201cI hope it changes the culture of politics for the better,\u201d said Democratic legislator-elect Micaela Lara Cadena, a research director for a progressive advocacy group and former state Corrections Department […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[1722],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-97185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-regional-elections"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97185"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=97185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}