Women win majority of seats in New Mexico Legislature in showcase of determination and joy
Originally published by Morgan Lee for AP News
Women have won 60 seats in the New Mexico Legislature to secure the largest female legislative majority in U.S. history, stirring expressions of vindication and joy among candidates who knocked on doors and found voters were ready.
New Mexico voters are sending 11 additional women — Democrats and Republicans — to bump up female representation in the 112-member Legislature. Female state senators will still hold a minority of seats — 16 out of 42.
Women have made slow, steady advances in statehouse representation across the country, with one notable surge in the 2018 election cycle almost entirely among Democrats in a trend associated with the #MeToo movement and political engagement linked to the election of Donald Trump as president.
In 2018, Nevada became the first state to elect a female legislative majority, later expanding it to more than 60% of seats with majorities in the state Assembly and Senate. Female legislators in New Mexico will hold a 54% majority — though with many more seats.
The share of women in all state legislatures combined roughly tripled from about 11% in 1980 to 33% going into the November election, when women held 2,424 seats nationwide, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
Incoming female legislators in New Mexico include a crusading Republican advocate for crime victims, Republican Nicole Chavez, and Democrat Heather Berghmans, who defeated men in the general election and the primary against an incumbent senator accused of sexual harassment.
Berghmans, 36, of Albuquerque said people in her district appeared eager to hear from a new generation of female candidates. She will join the Senate as its youngest member after winning 60% of the general election vote.
“I did hear a lot of people at the doors who told me to my face that they were willing to vote for me just because I was a young woman,” said Berghmans, who campaigned on solutions to surging homelessness and the housing affordability crisis. “I think that people are excited to see new ideas and new faces and that women have been the ones to step up to run.”
Chavez won her state House seat in a relatively affluent Albuquerque neighborhood. She expressed pride in contributing to the new female legislative majority — and as her district’s first Latina legislator-elect.
But Chavez also said she campaigned to ensure a diversity of political values in preserving her party’s control of the only Republican-held House district in Albuquerque, amid a growing urban-rural partisan divide.
“I don’t believe in just recruiting women,” she said. “I think we should have diversity of all values.”
She has been a prominent advocate for crime victims at the Legislature since the 2015 shooting death of her eldest son Jaydon, then a high school senior and football team captain who had been accepted to the Air Force Academy. Chavez said she yearned to do that legislative work directly, campaigning this year for enhanced criminal penalties and financial incentives for businesses that train and hire people as they leave incarceration to address recidivism.