EMILYs List Endorses Two Women For Reelection in New Mexico

For Immediate Release
December 17, 2021

EMILYs List Endorses Two Women For Reelection in New Mexico

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, endorsed two women for reelection in New Mexico: Maggie Toulouse Oliver for secretary of state and Stephanie Garcia Richard for public lands commissioner. Laphonza Butler, president of EMILYs List, released the following statement:

“New Mexico, like many other states across the country, is facing unprecedented threats, including efforts to suppress voting rights and an urgent climate emergency. To effectively manage these challenges, it is imperative that we reelect Maggie Toulouse Oliver as secretary of state and Stephanie Garcia Richard as public lands commissioner. Secretary Toulouse Oliver has worked tirelessly to protect voting rights, including by increasing transparency for campaign finance, passing same-day voter registration, and forming the state’s new Ethics Commission. Commissioner Garcia Richard is hard at work to preserve New Mexico’s lands for generations to come, including by tripling renewable energy projects, priming the state for solar and wind energy, and promoting outdoor recreation projects. With these two women hard at work, New Mexico will continue to find creative solutions to complex problems, and EMILYs List is thrilled to stand with them.”

Maggie Toulouse Oliver has called New Mexico home since age three and is currently serving as the state’s 26th secretary of state. She was first elected in 2016. In 2007, she was appointed as a County Clerk in Bernalillo County, N.M. where she served until her election as secretary of state. Before entering public service, Toulouse Oliver worked her way through college and graduate school and gained activism and organizing experience. 

Stephanie Garcia Richard is the first woman, Latina, and educator to serve as New Mexico’s Commissioner of Public Lands. Born in Tucumcari, N.M. and raised in Silver City, N.M., she graduated from Silver High School before attending Barnard College. In 2012, she was elected to the New Mexico House of Representatives where she championed education, renewable energy, job training, and economic development. She was first elected as land commissioner in 2018.

EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, has raised over $700 million to elect Democratic pro-choice women candidates. With a grassroots community of over five million members, EMILY's List helps Democratic women win competitive campaigns – across the country and up and down the ballot – by recruiting and training candidates, supporting and helping build strong campaigns, researching the issues that impact women and families, running nearly $50 million in independent expenditures in the last cycle alone, and turning out women voters and voters of color to the polls. Since our founding in 1985, we have helped elect the country's first woman as vice president, 159 women to the House, 26 to the Senate, 16 governors, and more than 1,300 women to state and local office. More than 40% of the candidates EMILYs List has helped elect to Congress have been women of color. After the 2016 election, more than 60,000 women reached out to EMILY's List about running for office laying the groundwork for the next decade of candidates for local, state, and national offices. In our effort to elect more women in offices across the country, we have created our Run to Win program, expanded our training program, including a Training Center online, and trained thousands of women.