By SHERRY ROBINSON
All She Wrote
© 2026 New Mexico News Services
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.