Incumbent Maggie Toulouse Oliver (D) defeated Audrey Mendonca-Trujillo (R) and Mayna Myers (L) in the general election for New Mexico Secretary of State on November 8, 2022.
Toulouse Oliver was first elected to this position in 2016. According to The Albequerque Journal, her campaign focused on “voter accessibility, campaign finance transparency, and fighting election disinformation.”
Mendonca-Trujillo, whose campaign was endorsed by former President Donald Trump (R), focused on what she called election integrity and said, “The core of a strong nation is free and fair elections, which we don’t have anymore — Republican or Democrat.”
This was one of 27 elections for secretary of state taking place in 2022. Click here for an overview of these races. All but three states have a secretary of state. Although the specific duties and powers of the office vary from state to state, secretaries of state are often responsible for the maintenance of voter rolls and for administering elections. Other common responsibilities include registering businesses, maintaining state records, and certifying official documents. At the time of the 2022 elections, there were 27 Republican secretaries of state and 20 Democratic secretaries of state.
A state government triplex refers to a situation where the governor, attorney general, and secretary of state are all members of the same political party. Heading into the 2022 elections, there were 23 Republican triplexes, 18 Democratic triplexes, and nine divided governments where neither party held triplex control.
New Mexico is a Democratic triplex.
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