Recent Columns

© 2026 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES  5/18/26

It’s the economy, stupid

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     Our races for governor have entered stupid territory. 

     We’ve heard about one candidate’s ride on Epstein’s plane, another candidate’s four homes and a third candidate’s lawsuit challenging universal childcare.

     Look away from the mudslinging and focus on issues, and you might notice that Deb Haaland, the Democratic frontrunner with the biggest war chest, has nothing to say about the economy or economic development. Two Republican candidates, Doug Turner and Duke Rodriguez, aren’t much better. Both seem to be saying, “I’m a businessman. Trust me,” instead of articulating a plan.

     Democrat Sam Bregman and Republican Gregg Hull, by comparison, have a lot to say.

     I’ve been reviewing candidates’ websites and public comments. The big issues are affordability, healthcare, public safety and education. To pay for the candidates’ grand plans, we might want to think about job creation.

     Rio Rancho’s longest serving mayor, Gregg Hull, has the most thorough economic development plan, probably because he’s the only candidate with hands-on experience. Rio Rancho, the state’s third largest city, has a long reputation for hustling permits through its well-oiled bureaucracy. Hull doesn’t get total credit for that, but he was part of the culture.

     Says his website: “As the ‘Pro-Business Mayor,’ Gregg Hull has secured more than $6 billion in investments in Rio Rancho.” 

     Under his Putting New Mexico to Work Plan Hull would use targeted incentives to attract high-paying jobs, expand the state’s energy portfolio to include all sources, improve transportation routes along major population corridors, and reform medical malpractice laws “to keep and protect the health professionals our economy depends on.”

     Oil and gas can be regulated responsibly without killing the golden goose, he says. “We need to approach energy policy with care and balance. Sudden or impractical rules that reduce production don’t just affect energy companies.      They create budget gaps that ripple across the entire state.”

     For more, see his website, but you get the idea. What I’m looking for is some specifics, as well as a clue that he knows what he’s talking about because some candidates really don’t.

     On Bregman’s website, besides the candidate riding his horse, you will find his 198-page Blueprint for New Mexico. The Bernalillo County prosecutor has the most to say about crime, but he promises that economic development will be his top priority: “I will make New Mexico the best place in the country to start a business, raise a family, and build a future.”

     Bregman calls for New Mexico jobs in clean energy, quantum and national security tech, advanced manufacturing, agriculture, and trade. He would expand access to capital, simplify rules and slash red tape. He would “expand apprenticeships, guarantee training-to-hiring pipelines, and ensure that every student graduates with a next step.” And he would leave no community behind. 

     Bregman isn’t hostile to oil and gas and allows that “many companies do act responsibly,” but he supports clean energy. “While oil and gas still provide jobs and revenue today, I will hold the industry to modern standards,” he says.

     Doug Turner and Duke Rodriguez say little about the economy on their campaign websites, but in public comments they’ve offered a few ideas.

     Turner’s website offers the usual platitudes about “common-sense, pro-growth policies,” cutting red tape, and not picking winners and losers. He’s long on the state’s faults but short on plans. In an Albuquerque Journal interview, he said, “The contribution that oil and gas makes to this state needs to be recognized, and I don’t think we should have an environment that makes it onerous for people to operate in that space.”

     Rodriguez’s website refers to workforce housing, investment in statewide infrastructure, and protecting energy jobs while expanding next-gen energy. He wants to develop oil refineries in New Mexico. I’ve written about two refinery closings in the past, so I think the industry has already spoken. One of his better ideas, articulated in a New Mexico In Depth interview, is to recreate and modernize the Braceros Program, which supplied legal Mexican labor from 1942 to 1964. It’s not an original idea, but it would relieve worker shortages in agriculture and other sectors.

      On Deb Haaland’s website is every cause dear to progressives but not a word about the economy. In an interview, New Mexico In Depth asked point blank how she would pay for all her plans to make New Mexico more affordable. Haaland’s response: “When I was in the Secretary of Interior’s office, I managed an $18 billion budget, and every year we place our priorities right?” 

     Anybody satisfied with that answer?

     Beyond that, she’s no friend of oil and gas but has spoken with industry leaders who want to reduce their environmental footprint. And like everybody else, she wants small businesses to thrive.

    Candidates, outline your vision for New Mexico. Then tell us how you’re going to pay for it.

© 2026 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES  5/11/26

Election changes favor the Sensible Center

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     Eight years ago, I complained in a column that the primaries “blessed progressives and conservatives and left moderates in the dust.” 

     Another frustrated moderate wrote in a letter to the editor: “When the majority of the country is in the middle, and elections are supposed to be about giving people a choice, those of us in the middle have fewer and fewer choices. Our America has been hijacked and stolen by the extremes of the party elites dictating what candidates we can vote for.”

     Partisan posturing has been a turnoff to voters. Seeing no reasonable choices on the ballot, they’ve stayed away from the polls. In the 2022 primary only one in four New Mexico voters cast a ballot. Two years later the turnout was worse.

     In 2018 former state Rep. Bob Perls, then pushing open primaries to address the frustrations, saw independents multiplying because they no longer believed the two major parties could govern effectively. 

     “Closed primaries are at the heart of our polarized dysfunctional political system,” he said. The solution was an open primary that allowed everyone to vote regardless of party. Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver got on the bandwagon, saying an open primary would force candidates to listen to all voters, not just party diehards. 

     Perls is still at work. This year he organized the New Mexico branch of the Forward Party, another alternative to the two major parties.

     And we now have the state’s first semi-open primary election, thanks to two bills passed in recent years. Under a 2023 law, the state began in July to automatically register eligible residents to vote at Motor Vehicle Division field offices. And a 2025 law allows independent, or “decline to state,” voters to cast ballots in primary elections.

     Most Republicans had opposed the bills, no doubt suspecting that it would pump up Dem numbers. Instead, trends and reality steered a different course. In this election cycle the new system could help both Republicans and what I call the Sensible Center.

     Data from the Secretary of State confirm what Bob Perls was seeing years ago – a steady increase in the number of independents. 

     For the last three decades, according to the Albuquerque Journal, the number of independents has grown faster than the numbers for either major party. The pace quickened since last summer. Between July and March 31, independents increased by 6,400 new voters per month. This compares with 371 voters a month for Democrats and 913 voters a month for Republicans.

Independents now make up 26% of voters in the state and will probably keep growing.

     Democrats should pay attention. They can no longer expect easy majorities or allegiance to the progressive wing. But these new voters are also saying that they’re not enamored of either party.

     And no wonder. 

     The Democrats stumbled badly on the medical malpractice law, written in 2021 by trial lawyers for trial lawyers, and on the healthcare compacts. We have tentative reforms, but neither Deb Haaland nor Sam Bregman, the two Democratic candidates for governor, is willing to take on the trial lawyers.

Democrats have handed the opposition a good issue. And they assume that their own excesses are hidden behind the curtain of alarming news out of Washington.

     Republicans now see possibilities in this growing segment of independents. In the past it took the defection of Democrats to get a Republican governor. This year they have a whole new population of uncommitted voters, not to mention Democrats freed by the more moderate Bregman should he lose; he’s said he won’t endorse Haaland. 

     However, the three Republican candidates are also saddled with an increasingly unpopular president. Two of the three, Gregg Hull and Duke Rodriguez, have so far steered clear of the MAGA label while Doug Turner declared himself a Trump supporter.

     Waiting in the wings for the general election is newly minted independent and former Democrat Ken Miyagishima, who staked out medical malpractice reform as his issue early in the game. He’s also said that as an independent he’s free to choose the best policies and practices from both sides.

     Here’s a cautious prediction: Haaland may not be swept in by a progressive tide. I think this election belongs to the Sensible Center.  

© 2026 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES 5/4/26

To survive, news outlets learn new ways of reaching readers

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     This week, after a conference of New Mexico Press Women, I’d like to turn the high beams on my own world – newspapers, reporting and journalism. Despite bad news and worrisome trends, I came away hopeful because the public still wants local news. That’s a reliable constant we newshounds can hold to our hearts.

     But we’re in troubled waters. 

     The nation’s founding fathers considered basic freedoms of the press so important to the new democracy that they cemented them in place with the First Amendment. 

     “It was about accountability in a democracy,” said state Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, a retired law professor. 

The First Amendment is under attack as never before by the Trump administration, including lawsuits by the president, rules on access at the Pentagon, and threats from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr.

     “The FCC has become the tool of political censorship, and not for the first time,” said Eric Griego Montoya, a UNM professor in public administration, but      “Carr has set a new low.” He adds that the United States is 57th in the world in press freedom, down from 17th in 2002.

     Several speakers raised the question of who, exactly, is the press. I was once annoyed at a blogger’s insistence on sitting in an already crowded press gallery at the state capitol. He was invading “our” space. Now we have bloggers, podcasters, influencers and anybody with an opinion posting on social media. It’s easy to understand how the news-consuming public might be confused.

     A journalist is trained in news gathering, interviewing and reporting with a large measure of objectivity baked in. It’s careful and deliberate. Nobody just sits down and pounds out a story without a lot of footwork, meetings, net searches and phone time. Nothing is published without review by an editor. 

     The so-called influencer didn’t sit in Tony Hillerman’s journalism ethics class. (The famous mystery writer was first a reporter and journalism professor.) Hillerman taught us that with the power of the press comes responsibility and an obligation to be fair.

     Does your average doom scroller understand the difference between a trained journalist and a posted rant? It seems they do. Several speakers cited studies showing that journalists were more trusted than social media and local reporters top the credibility list. 

     To survive, traditional media outlets are learning new tricks. 

     “Newspapers can no longer just provide the news,” said Autumn Gray, a journalist turned marketer at the Albuquerque Journal. “We’ve had to reach out to readers in different ways,” including podcasts and social media. “It’s a challenge to reach different age groups. Older people don’t want to use their phones. Younger people only want news on their phones.”

     Rural news organizations face bigger challenges.

     Former Lt. Gov. Diane Denish, who writes an opinion column, said: “In rural New Mexico the threat is much quieter – the slow disappearance of local news,” she said. “The First Amendment doesn’t mean much if there’s nobody left to exercise it.”

     But she’s optimistic. “There’s a lot of innovation. Papers are succeeding by staying rooted in their own communities” and finding local investors who support that mission. “The New Mexico Local News Fund and a new tax credit from the Legislature support newspapers to hire and train. 

     The alternative is the news desert, a place without news media. Lacking news, people disengage, voter turnout drops, corruption goes unnoticed and civic engagement wanes. “Rural journalism in a state like New Mexico, we’ve got to fight for it,” Denish said.

     Hovering over the meeting was the ghost of the Gallup Independent, which closed its doors in January. This was a gut punch for me. The Independent gave me my first full-time reporting job in 1975, and I ended my reporting career with them. It was a good, feisty paper that shined a light on its community and didn’t shrink from controversy.

     In my last iteration with them I did investigative work. Publisher Bob Zollinger always told me, “Do what you do.” In other words, don’t hold back.

     Days before the Independent shuttered we had a long conversation. Bob is a numbers guy who understood his business very well. The pandemic inflicted lasting damage. The Navajo casino drained dollars from a poor community and cut into retail sales (and advertising). Silver prices spiked – critical to a town full of silversmiths. Finally, tariffs on newsprint hit hard. 

     While we lamented this loss to the state, the meeting ended with Press Women honoring Carol Clark, founder and publisher of the Los Alamos Daily Post, as Communicator of Achievement. In 2014 Carol started her online newspaper and succeeded because she’s focused on local news. In the dark night of journalism, Carol is lighting the way forward.

© 2026 NEW MEXICO NEWS 4/27/26

How do we reform CYFD and care for unwanted children?

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     What bothers Melissa Beery is that in all of the investigations, lawsuits and reporting on CYFD, nobody captures the day-to-day experience of children in state custody. Too many of these kids are shuffled from place to place – CYFD offices, shelters, the streets – without food, medicine or school. Or the notice of a single caring adult.

     Beery is a peer support worker – someone who raised a child with mental or behavioral health issues or development delays and is trained and certified by the state to work with families in the case load of the state Children Youth and Families Department.

     “We’ve walked the path,” Beery says.

      She’s employed by a CYFD contractor.

     A recent report from the state Department of Justice may not describe day-to-day life, but the interviews with kids paint a tragic picture. 

     Jacob, age 12, had eight placements in his first two months in custody and more than 30 in less than six years. In congregate care and group homes, the sporadic meals were unhealthy, he received no therapy for his health issues, and nobody was taking him to school. 

     In one facility he was placed with teenagers who jumped him five times on his first day, sustaining a concussion; the program director didn’t intervene.      Another facility was filthy and the staff abusive. He rotated through shelters in Taos, Roswell and Hobbs. At Albuquerque’s CYFD’s office, he slept in a storage closet; “meals” were goldfish crackers and bottled water, and the case worker sometimes told Jacob to find his own place to sleep and come back in the morning. The boy’s case worker at CYFD failed to check on him even monthly, the required minimum.

     There are lots of Jacobs. 

     Beery has her own horror stories of kids with too many placements, bounced from CYFD offices around the state to shelters, where they’re not only unsafe but can just walk out. 

     “We play whack-a-mole with kids,” she says. 

     Nobody wants to talk about the kids who are older and harder to place.      “Foster parents want kids 0 to 5,” she says. “Kids with behavioral health issues, nobody wants to take them. Residential treatment is almost impossible to find.” 

     AMIkids is a reputable national program, but New Mexico has just two facilities, in Farmington and Albuquerque, and they only take boys. “It’s hard to find therapy, hard to get an evaluation, hard to get medications.”

To Beery, one solution is helping families and keeping the kid at home. “My perspective is to keep families together. It also lines up with what the feds want to spend money on.” 

     “Too many times kids are taken for small things, like the house is too dirty and bug infested,” she says. Instead, the state should ask, what can we do for you? Solutions can be relatively simple. “One family had an autistic kid who wanders. Why not get a GPS tracker in his shoe? It’s better than taking him into state custody.”

     An emphasis on removing kids doesn’t consider “the long-term consequences of losing the only family they’re connected to. Being untethered is a hard way to go through life.”

     CYFD has a Family Services division that’s supposed to do everything Beery mentions. It’s as dysfunctional as the rest of the agency.

     “It’s disheartening how bad it is,” she says.

     I should mention here that Beery differs somewhat from reformers like Maralyn Beck, founder of the watchdog New Mexico Child First Network, who believes in foster care and whose organization provides support to foster parents. The two do agree on how poorly CYFD is living up to its responsibilities. Considering the time needed for drug and alcohol treatment (that may not succeed), I’d say we need an all-of-the-above approach.

     When Beery first wrote to me three years ago, she wanted to see CYFD dismantled and replaced by new and responsive entities. Today she proposes a cultural transformation.

     “A culture shift at a massive, entrenched agency like CYFD isn't just about hiring a new cabinet secretary, it’s about a fundamental rewiring of how the department views its mission, its staff, and the families it serves,” she writes.

She proposes “three major shocks” to the system: 

     · Shifting from a culture of fear and blame to a “just culture” with a focus on fixing the process and supporting families.

     · Embracing transparency and oversight, including an independent Office of the Child Advocate.

     · Making the job “doable for a normal human being” by capping caseloads and using modern tools to reduce paperwork.

     The elephant in the room is political will, she says. The CYFD secretary, a political appointee, changes with each administration. A true culture shift would mean appointing a leader with a multi-year contract, like a Federal Reserve governor.

     Whether we dismantle or transform CYFD, whatever happens is not just on the governor, it’s on all of us.