MAY DAY DISPATCH: Duke Rodriguez's War on New Mexico Children

On International Workers Day, New Mexico's GOP gubernatorial frontrunner is in court trying to take childcare away from 120,000 families.

I offer all posts freely, but your support is necessary and appreciated. Please subscribe, paid if you’re able, and share my work if it moves you. You may also leave a one-time or recurring tip in any amount. Just four $25 tips per day keep me writing full time. Thanks! A.

---

Duke Rodriguez only looks sincere when he is making this face.

Today is May 1 — International Workers Day. It’s the one day a year the world pauses to honor the labor of ordinary people. So it bears asking: what has Duke Rodriguez — the frontrunner among three Republican candidates for New Mexico governor (and not actually the cokedup porn star his name might have you believe) — done for workers lately?

The answer, filed in Second Judicial District Court, is not pretty.

Rodriguez is suing Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, a democrat, over her executive order implementing universal free childcare in our state — a program that, by any honest accounting, is one of the most consequential anti-poverty achievements in New Mexico history. Between 2021 and 2024, broader access to affordable childcare lifted an estimated 120,000 New Mexico residents above the poverty line, particularly single mothers and low-income families. The governor announced the universal initiative in September and said it would save families about $12,000 per child annually.

Rodriguez, who has never produced a sincere smile captured by any camera known to humanity, got a partial win this week. On April 28, 2026, the Second Judicial District Court granted Rodriguez’s application for a writ of mandamus and ordered the Early Childhood Education and Care Department to cease enforcement of several childcare regulations. Rodriguez called the ruling a victory for the people of New Mexico.

What Rodriguez won't tell you is how the universal childcare program is paid for. New Mexico's universal childcare is NOT funded through a tax increase — not a penny. It draws from the Land Grant Permanent Fund, a $33 billion endowment built on revenues from oil, gas, and mineral extraction on publicly held lands. The fund pays out a percentage of its total value annually to early childhood programs — and because the principal is large enough, it continuously replenishes itself through investment returns. In other words, New Mexico is funding childcare the way old-money families fund their children's futures: through a permanent trust. The difference is that this trust belongs to every New Mexican. When Republicans claim the program is fiscally reckless, they are describing a fund that is larger than the state's entire annual budget. So I guess the GOP motto is “trust funds for kids of me, but not for kids of thee.”

Rodriguez is currently the dead-eyed CEO of Ultra Health, one of the largest marijuana companies in New Mexico. He previously served as New Mexico Human Services Department Secretary under former New Mexico Republican Gov. Gary Johnson, but resigned after allegations that a company he owned received money from a business under contract to the Human Services Department. Even under that cloud of corruption, he was able to move on to become COO of Lovelace Health System.

A restaurant server in New Mexico who previously worked part-time because she couldn’t afford childcare was able to scale up to 35 to 40 hours per week once free care became available for her children. Multiply that story by tens of thousands and you have the actual stakes of Rodriguez’s lawsuit. It’s direct assault on working families’ ability to hold jobs, finish degrees, and keep the lights on.

Rodriguez’s legal argument is procedural: he claims executive branch officials “put the cart before the horse” by creating regulations in November, several months before the Legislature voted to approve funding for the program. It’s a tidy theory. It ignores the messier reality that the Legislature then did exactly that — voted to fund and codify the program. Senate Bill 241 passed this session, and the governor’s office argues it settled the legal question entirely.

The Lujan Grisham administration has been blunt. Communications Director Michael Coleman called the lawsuit “frivolous” and characterized it as “a despicable attempt to mislead New Mexico families and generate headlines for a campaign that is going nowhere.”

This is not Rodriguez’s first legal joust against Lujan Grisham’s administration. His earlier lawsuit sought to invalidate the governor’s line-item vetoes on a spending bill passed during a special session. The New Mexico Supreme Court tossed it.

The universal childcare program in New Mexico has also improved conditions for childcare workers themselves — the poverty rate among childcare providers dropped from 27.4 percent in 2020 to 16 percent in 2024. New Mexico’s childcare workforce, historically among the lowest-paid in the state, is finally seeing wages rise. Rodriguez’s lawsuit, if successful, would unwind the regulatory framework that makes those wage gains possible.

On May Day, when we talk about whose side New Mexico’s politicians are on, the answer is usually obscured by talking points and donor lists. In this case, Rodriguez has removed all ambiguity. He went to court to prove just what a monumental piece of shit he is. The filing is 137 pages long. The target is a program to help children and families, that has lifted already 120,000 New Mexicans out of poverty.

Given that New Mexico has been in the headlines all over the world lately for failing to protect children from Jeffrey Epstein and his pedophile cabal, Rodriguez’s campaign, whose eyes are as dead as his own, has chosen a very strange, very mean-spirited hill to die on.

---

I offer all posts freely, but your support is necessary and appreciated. Please subscribe, paid if you’re able, and share my work if it moves you. You may also leave a one-time or recurring tip in any amount. Just four $25 tips per day keep me writing full time. Thanks! A.