How to Win New Mexico in ’28, with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham

Peter Hamby (0:05)

Welcome, everybody, to The Making of a President. I'm Peter Hamby. The DNC decided on something new for the 2028 presidential campaign. They picked a new nominating calendar, five key states that will get to vote early and help determine who the Democratic nominee will be. Most are familiar to political operatives and reporters, South Carolina, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire. But one of them is a total wild card, New Mexico. New Mexico's issues look a lot different from the other states. Crime, border security, drug trafficking, and the Latino and Native American vote will be decisive.

Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, JB Pritzker, they've all visited New Mexico in recent months, and more White House hopefuls are on their way. Their campaigns in New Mexico kicking off soon will force them to confront issues and voters that Democrats aren't used to. This is why I wanted to talk today to New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, a two-term Democratic governor who knows what it takes to win in New Mexico for a blueprint on how Democratic candidates can win campaigns on New Turf. Let's get into it.

Today's very special guest, the governor of the great state of New Mexico, the land of enchantment, Michelle Lujan Grisham. Governor, great to see you, thanks for joining me.

Michelle Lujan Grisham (1:25)

Thank you for having me, Peter. I'm delighted to be on the show and I'm excited about our conversation.

Peter Hamby (1:31)

The national press, the national political class is about to learn a lot about your state. It is a new state on the Democratic nominating calendar sandwich right there between New Hampshire and Nevada. All the other states, we kind of know where to go eat, who to talk to, who the sources are. You're going to be our political tour guide for a state that used to be a battleground state. It's still competitive in state elections, but a lot of people are going to be coming out to visit. I want to get into the issues there that matter, how to reach voters, what kinds of voters there are. We had a recent conversation that I wrote about, where you actually taught me a lot about New Mexico and how it's different from, say, Nevada, which kind of gets characterized as the quote unquote other Latino state on the new calendar. But the two states are very different. But before getting into that, I have to ask, how are your chickens?

Michelle Lujan Grisham (2:20)

My chickens are great. I have to find them all new homes, and that makes me sad a bit, because I've got 30 chickens and we've hatched many of them ourselves. I'm a huge Bantam fan, and I like silkies and frizzles, and they're friendly and darling, and I will find them all really good homes. They're pets who give me a little egg surprise every day. I have four goats, and I have a pheasant, and I have two lion head rabbits, four dogs, and a cat. So as I'm transitioning out, I have a farm that I'm dealing with. And how lucky am I that I got to show those animals off to the world? And I did. In fact, I know I'm digressing. I also keep bees, and we just harvested honey, and we have fantastic lavender honey that we give to restaurants, and the neighbors, and to people, to school kids, and anywhere that it can be useful to a family or a business.

Peter Hamby (3:22)

I have a feeling all of the Democrats wanting for president will want to come by and sample your honey, just to taste the honey, for no other reason at all, of course. JB Pritzker, Pete Buttigieg, who else? Cory Booker has visited your state. I'm sure more are going to come. But I want to get back to the Latino question, actually, and we talked about this recently.

Again, even David Plouffe sort of wrote in New York Times op-ed and typecast New Mexico is another Latino state. It's not the same as New Mexico. A big difference, of course, is that I think New Mexico might have the highest population of Latinos in the country, or close to about half the population there is Latino. But here's a question I had because I've been trying to do some reading about New Mexico. Can you explain what a Hispano is, and how that might be different from what a national reporter might refer to as a Latino or a Hispanic?

Michelle Lujan Grisham (4:17)

Yes, because it is very different, and this is actually a Hispanic majority state, 48% of the population. We are direct descendants from Spaniards.

They came over and colonized New Mexico a full 250 years before we were even thinking about being the United States of America, any colonies. And so this is a much older state, a state that's been governed for hundreds more years, a state that had Native American populations. For thousands more than that, they were also governed, and we've got pueblos where people weren't moved around. So we don't think of ourselves as Latinos, we're European. It's a very different identity than it is for people who are newer Americans, and it isn't, and you do this really well, Peter. It's not a competition about what label, what ethnicity translates to your family identity, traditions, cultural values. But you better understand those differences in a state that used to say that we were a tri-cultural state. We are a multi-dimensional, multi-diversity state. Including with folks who would identify as Latinos. They are from Mexico or South Central America, and they have immigrated here or are here with their families. And then you have families like mine who have settled here for literally hundreds of years that came here in the early 1600s. And so it is a very different cultural identity. New Mexico is the only state that has Spanish as its official language in the Constitution. We refer to our Spanish heritage over and over again in the Constitution.