Educators, consultants, and lawyers have outsized representation in New Mexico’s legislature

SANTA FE, N.M. (KRQE) – New Mexico’s laws are created by a group of 112 legislators that are supposed to represent more than two million New Mexicans. But a close look at lawmakers’ financial disclosures shows that a few industries play an outsized role in lining lawmakers’ pockets.

Candidates and incumbents for the New Mexico legislature are required by law to file financial disclosures. The goal is to prevent conflicts of interest.

“Government ethics – disclosure – is really at the very core of public trust in government,” Jeremy Farris, the executive director of the New Mexico Ethics Commission, said. “It’s kind of foundational to why we elect our officials. We elect our officials so that they act in the public’s interest and not in their own private interests.”

The latest filings from over 200 individuals, who are either current legislators or who are running for a seat in the legislature, show that lawmakers and would-be lawmakers have strong financial ties to the consulting, educational, and healthcare industries.

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Data from 2024 financial disclosure filings show that several industries have outsized representation among lawmakers and candidates for the legislature. Note: Some individuals may have ties to more than one industry.

A quarter of those who filed financial disclosures report that their household receives income from one of those three industries or is employed by one of those three industries.

“The legislature is not a truly reflective sample, obviously, of the broader population of our state,” former State Senator Jacob Candelaria said. “Whether that problem is any worse here than in any other state, I don’t know.”

“If I had to register a critique of our current legislature, it’s that it’s really dominated by persons who either come from significant backgrounds of wealth and privilege or are retired from working in government or the nonprofit sector,” Candelaria said.

Lawyers and government employees (such as those with ties to a municipal government) also make up a large share of lawmakers and legislative candidates. About a dozen say they have ties to the legal field or work as a lawyer.

Candelaria said that the makeup of the legislature, with a limited range of represented interests, “provides a distorted policymaking view.”

Is it inevitable?

New Mexico’s legislature is unique compared to other states’ lawmaking bodies. While many states treat their lawmakers as full-time employees, New Mexico does not. Lawmakers get per diem pay (pay for their work each day) as well as a retirement account, but New Mexico’s senators and representatives are not paid a full-time salary, and Candelaria said that can limit who can serve as a lawmaker.

“What sort of is underlying the issue . . . is there is certainly a great degree of flexibility that one needs to have in their personal life to serve in a part-time legislature,” Candelaria explains. “There’s really a natural selection that goes on, where you see folks whose professional lives can provide that kind of flexibility.”

Over the years, the idea of moving the state to a full-time, paid legislature has been proposed by various groups. But Candelaria said that might not automatically fix the issue.

“The major argument for moving to a paid legislature is that you would see a broader diversity of professions, a broader diversity of experiences, and I’m not entirely sure that’s true,” Candelaria said. “If you look at the U.S. Congress, for example, I think that you would find that there are still a disproportionate number of lawyers.”

In fact, the number of U.S. Congress members with a law degree has ranged over the years – for example, there were 315 lawyers (59% of Congress) in 1964 and 175 lawyers in Congress in 2021 .

In New Mexico, 15 out of 238 (about 7%) of lawmakers and candidates for the legislature in 2024 listed some personal connection to the legal field, according to KRQE’s review of financial disclosures. Yet data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau shows that less than 1% of the state’s population is employed in the legal services industry.

So, why are there so many lawyers (and consultants, educators, and other concentrated groups) in the legislature? In addition to barriers to entry, Candelaria said the legislature simply attracts a certain kind of personality.

“There’s this like natural predilection among folks who follow some career paths to want to go into government service,” Candelaria said. There’s something akin to narcissism that Candelaria said many politicians have; recalling his own motivations for becoming a lawmaker, he adds that he was partially motivated by a deep-seated desire for approval. So, at the end of the day, Candelaria said it’s impossible to engineer a legislature that is truly representative of the entirety of the New Mexico public. Still, he said there are ways to improve the system to ensure voters know who they are electing.

Is increased disclosure the answer?

While it’s one thing to know that a lawmaker has ties to a certain industry, the state’s disclosure laws don’t require extensive detail about most income sources and industry ties.

When it comes to the consulting industry, for example, lawmakers who offer consulting services are generally not required to disclose their clients, unless the lawmaker is registered as a lobbyist. Candelaria said that can hide potential conflicts of interest.

“I think the legislature would be well served that if a member is going to say they are a consultant, at the very least they need to do what lawyers do, which is we have to describe our areas of practice,” Candelaria said. “At a bare minimum, consultants in the legislature should be required to disclose what areas, what interest areas, they are consulting in.”

“Ultimately, we as the public need to know, ‘Who are you contracting with, and are the people that are paying you substantial amounts of contract money also bringing you public business in your capacity as a legislator?'”

Candelaria said those sorts of arrangements might not necessarily be illegal, but they are the types of things voters should know about. And with limited disclosures, the public just doesn’t have a good way to know.

“I think you need as much disclosure as possible, and then you let the voters figure it out,” Candelaria said. “Opaque disclosure rules really distort the political process, because you’re denying the public the information they need to ultimately be that kind of moral and ethical check. That’s where the buck stops, ultimately.”

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