by Joshua Bowling for Source New Mexico
Former Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Andrew Yang took to the Roundhouse steps in Santa Fe on Friday afternoon to announce that the political party he co-founded, the Forward Party, will officially organize as a minor party in New Mexico.
Yang co-founded the party with former Republican New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, who served as Environmental Protection Agency secretary during George W. Bush’s presidency. Party organizers have said they hope to appeal to voters disenchanted with the country’s two current major political parties. The Forward Party’s tenets include treating “everyone with dignity and respect” and acting “with ethics, integrity and compassion.”
Yang and New Mexico Forward Party Chair Bob Perls at a news conference announced that they are searching for a handful of candidates to run for office in New Mexico, particularly against state lawmakers who voted against opening the state’s primary elections to independent voters. The June 2 primary election marks the first time independent voters can cast a ballot in a New Mexico primary.
“How could you vote against open primaries?” Yang said at the news conference. “They’re running unopposed. You see how that works?”
In Utah, Yang said the Forward Party is currently fielding more than two dozen candidates, including one incumbent.
After the event, Yang told Source NM that he saw strong demand in New Mexico for a political party that spoke to Republicans who don’t fit the MAGA mold and Democrats who don’t conform to the national party’s norms.
New Mexico has seen a significant increase in independent voters, also known as “decline to state” voters because they decline to register with either of the major political parties. Nevertheless, the governor’s office and both chambers of the state Legislature are controlled by Democrats. Republicans, meanwhile, weren’t able to get a candidate on the ballot for New Mexico’s junior U.S. Senate seat this election cycle.
Yang, though, said he isn’t concerned about the state Forward Party’s viability.
“There’s a misconception about the Forward Party…that we’re the third party. In a lot of places, we’re the second party,” he said. That would be the case in New Mexico, where many Democrats run unopposed, he added.
While the deadline has passed to field candidates for the June 2 primary, New Mexico Forward Party officials are focusing their efforts on fielding candidates for the Nov. 3 general election. Since the party is so small, though, its candidates will likely be subject to the same signature-gathering requirements as independent candidates, who have to collect more than 14,000 signatures to run.
State Chair Bob Perls called that “discrimination,” and said he hopes to field two to five candidates in races across the state by November. Yang, for his part, said he believes the U.S. is the only democracy in the world where election officials like secretaries of state are party-affiliated.
“If you’re a sports fan, imagine if the referees had one of the team’s jerseys on,” he said. “Imagine if you only had two teams that played against each other. How would you start feeling about the other team’s fanbase over time?”