New Mexico’s increasingly partisan Legislature

The Rio Grande Foundation tracks and rates legislation in New Mexico and has done so since 2014 (find our Freedom Index archive here). Bills are given scores as bad as -8 and as good as +8 and when those bills move to the floor for votes, the points with a “yes” or “no” vote are attributed to all of the legislators in both parties.

Currently just a few floor votes have been tallied, but that number is starting to grow along with the numbers associated with each legislator. We strongly encourage citizens and anyone interested in what is happening in New Mexico to check out our Freedom Index and use it.

A side benefit of our software provider BillTrack50 is some interesting “data nuggets.” For example, the chart below shows whether bills enacted by the Legislature and Gov. were sponsored by Democrats, Republicans, or both parties. Understanding that a Republican, Susana Martinez was Gov. from 2010 through 2018, Democrats remained quite influential in passing bills throughout that time.

Since Lujan-Grisham and the Democrats took over all three branches of New Mexico government in 2019, the number of GOP-sponsored bills passing began to shrink dramatically. Just one GOP-sponsored bill passed in 2022.

You can find out more interesting nuggets for yourself here.