New Mexico Forward Party candidates lose Election Day races, promise more campaigns in 2028

Three New Mexico candidates running for office with the state’s newest minor political party lost their races Tuesday evening, but New Mexico Forward Party officials say they’ll continue to field candidates in the next election.

The centrist New Mexico Forward Party ran candidates for the Public Education Commission and for magistrate judgeships in Santa Fe and Luna counties. Other candidates seeking to run for U.S. Senate and Office of the State Auditor did not gather enough signatures to qualify for Tuesday’s general election ballot and lost subsequent legal challenges to gain ballot access.

Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang co-founded the national Forward Party in 2022 with former Republican New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman. The Forward Party’s tenets include treating “everyone with dignity and respect.”

Despite the party’s losses Tuesday, Chair Bob Perls in a statement said the candidates’ presence on the ballot signaled a growing appetite among voters to move away from the two-party political system.

“The two major parties are satisfying their donors and pandering to their voting base rather than building broad-based governing coalitions to solve our wicked-complex problems,” he said.

Prior to Election Day, the New Mexico Forward Party endorsed four candidates seeking public office: Republican James “Jim” Ellison for state treasurer; incumbent Democrats Kathleen Cates and Meredith Dixon for the state House of Representatives; and independent Zachary Withers for the state House of Representatives.

Cates and Dixon won their reelection bids, according to results from the New Mexico Secretary of State’s Office.

Perls said that Forward Party officials will focus on fielding candidates for the state Legislature in the 2028 election cycle.

“Half of all state representatives had no competition this election cycle. This is no way to run a democracy,” he said. “Voters need choices and desperately want something and someone thinking beyond the vise grip that the two legacy parties have on political thought and political candidates today.”