The Issues

Crime in Albuquerque remains a complex, enduring challenge that warrants a bold and persistent response. We must adopt a data-driven, comprehensive approach to building safer communities that is proactive and creative rather than merely reactive. All our neighbors, housed and unhoused alike, have the right to feel safe in the city they call home. Right now, many don’t, and that uncomfortable reality demands change.

Julie will work to harness justice-oriented solutions and address root causes of the homicide and crime trends in New Mexico by:

• Partnering with first responders to scale up recruitment and implement retention strategies.

• Delivering funding of a full scope of mental health resources and support programs to law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians.

• Promoting accountability for all offenders while mitigating the failures of one-size-fits-all policies that feed into systemic revolving-door inefficiencies.

• Optimizing the accessibility of behavioral health services including anti-violence and addiction treatment programs.

• Enacting Constitutional and common-sense gun safety reform.

• Codifying a MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) task force into state law.

Now more than ever, working New Mexico families face daunting obstacles to gaining a foothold in financial security. Well over half of in-state residents live paycheck to paycheck and even more lack the necessary savings to cover the expenses of unanticipated emergencies. Leaders beholden to the interests of corporate backers threaten the prospects of prosperity for the middle class and the most at-risk among our communities alike.

Julie will amplify the voices of the stakeholders most affected by policy and ensure that equity, rather than political gamesmanship or pursuit of personal enrichment and power, is at the forefront of legislative deliberations. She promises to:

• Center priorities that will help women and families progress toward home ownership and cultivate first-generational wealth.

• Push for investment in state asset-building initiatives including individual development accounts and child savings accounts.

• Pursue funding to help local municipalities preserve and expand affordable housing.

• Spearhead the charge for paid family and medical leave as well as for adequate funding to ensure robust enforcement of minimum wage.

• Innovate modernizations of the state tax code and drive in-state manufacturing growth, both of which will help small and local businesses compete.

New Mexico youth and families deserve school systems that position them for success.

With expertise gained from a career in teaching and academic leadership that has spanned over twenty years, Julie has developed an expansive record of advancing student achievement. She will bring that dedication and experience to the Senate while fighting for educational opportunity for all through measures that will:

• Enhance training and improve faculty pay.

• Reduce school and class sizes in order to grow teacher-to-pupil ratios most conducive to learning.

• Create a paid social work residency program to ensure that schools have a mental health workforce ready to support students confronting adverse childhood experiences.

• Nurture job readiness through investments in meaningful, paid internships for the 20% of 16-to-24-year-olds in state who are neither working nor in school.

• Sustain Career Technical Education through “above-the-line” funding as part of the State Equalization Guarantee.

• Empower community schools to continue their model of holistic service to New Mexico communities by bolstering resources for institutions exiting pilot phase funding.

Access to clean air, potable water, rich soil, greenway spaces, and food security is the cornerstone of healthy communities. With a deep reservoir of solar, wind, and geothermal resources, New Mexico can be a national leader in embracing renewable energy and a future in which even our most vulnerable residents can thrive free from pollution and the fallout of fossil fuels is possible – but we must enact that vision with tangible plans, not wishful thinking. All too often, low-income New Mexicans and communities of color bear the brunt of the devastating ramifications of climate change.

Julie will center environmental justice at the Roundhouse by:

• Collaborating with forestry and natural resources experts to continue stewardship of our wilderness and public lands.

• Spurring transition to carbon-negative jobs and regenerative agriculture.

• Increasing accountability for corporate polluters.

• Equipping populations located in food deserts with the tools to bolster acquisition of secure, nutritious food options.

• Investing in robust electric public transit.