Los Alamos Daily Post Publisher Carol A. Clark, center, welcomes New Mexico House Speaker Javier Martinez and Rep. Christine Chandler for a visit to the newsroom Tuesday afternoon in downtown Los Alamos. Photo by Kirsten Laskey/ladailypost.com
Sitting down for an interview Tuesday in the newsroom at the Los Alamos Daily Post, from left, Post Managing Editor Kirsten Laskey, Rep. Christine Chandler, New Mexico House Speaker Javier Martinez and Post Graphic Designer Páya Pavlíková. Photo by Kirsten Laskey/ladailypost.com
By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com
Dist. 43 Rep. Christine Chandler introduced House Speaker Javier Martinez to Los Alamos Tuesday as part of his tour of New Mexico communities. During a meeting with members of the Los Alamos Daily Post news team, Martinez praised what he saw and learned about the local County government and community.
“You guys have a great model here and there’s a lot that we can learn from what you’re doing,” Speaker Martinez said.
Take the County’s housing initiatives, for example. Chandler said they toured several of the local projects.
“I think it’s exciting,” Speaker Martinez said. “I think you guys have a really good grasp of what it means to be efficient, to be impactful. The team over at the (County), I think, has a really good both short and mid-term plan to not only build more housing but provide more opportunities for families to stay here…”
Besides meeting with County officials, Chandler said they received briefings from Los Alamos Public Schools Superintendent Jennifer Guy and University of New Mexico-Los Alamos Chancellor Mike Holtzclaw. She also brought him over to meet Los Alamos Historical Society Executive Director Todd Nickols and tour the historic district in downtown Los Alamos. Rep. Chandler and Speaker Martinez concluded their day-long visit with Democratic Party of Los Alamos leaders and members, before the speaker headed down the hill and back to his home in Albuquerque.
Los Alamos is the third stop on the Speaker’s statewide tour, which began with Hobbs and Farmington. He has served in the state legislature for 10 years and said that since becoming House Speaker in 2023, he has wanted to make sure he got out of Santa Fe and Albuquerque to learn about other communities. The goal is to hear from local experts and people on the ground, doing the work, he added.
A big issue hanging over many people’s and municipalities’ heads is the recently approved federal budget. He assured that the state legislature will not back down in providing services that received massive cuts in the budget.
“Our legislature is not going to let a kid go hungry or a family go homeless because of Trump’s cruelty and stupidity,” he said. “We’re just not; we are going to figure it out.”
Speaker Martinez explained, “A lot of the bigger cuts that were approved by Congress, Medicaid for example, food benefits, those were phased in … that does buy us a little bit of time, so the idea that we’ve got to go into a special session immediately to backfill Medicaid or food stamps – we don’t have to do that. Having said that, we know Congress voted to rescind funding from public media; for example, they have frozen public education monies. I think Los Alamos lost about $250,000 (in education grants). So, there’s a possibility if some of that money isn’t unfrozen, we might have come back into a special session to do some limited backfilling. But I think with regards to the bigger concern with that federal budget, we got some time to ratchet up whatever the response is going to be.”
It helps that the state legislature has been smart about its budgets, he said, “Over the last several years we have been careful with how we budgeted.”
The government has grown along with the priorities that the New Mexico government has invested in, such as early childhood development and healthcare, but Speaker Martinez noted that it set aside money into reserves and trust funds like the Medicaid Trust Fund established this year that could potentially yield money.
“I’m not giving up on the federal government fixing this,” he added. “I do think if the American people, which I expect they will, vote with their values and their self-interests in mind, we will change the Congress in 2026, and I fully expect that Congress repeals some of the more draconian cuts. The reality is no state, including us, is set up to absorb the immensity of these cuts in perpetuity.
“If you look at food benefits alone, the $300 billion plus that was cut is the equivalent of every single food bank in the country shutting down. The scale is just unimaginable.”
It also helps that the caucus is united and fearless, he said, adding, “We have really stepped it up over the years.”
Notably, Speaker Martinez praised Rep. Chandler for “going above and beyond” for New Mexicans’ values as well as going toe-to-toe with the status quo.
Martinez has served as the Dist. 11 Rep. since 2015. He is a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the House Taxation and Revenue Committee, and the Public-School Capital Outlay Oversight Task Force, among other committees.