Former Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima filed about 10,000 signatures Thursday, short of the roughly 14,000 needed to qualify for New Mexico’s general election ballot.

Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico

This article was originally published by Source New Mexico.

A judge this week tossed a lawsuit from former Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima, who is running as an independent for New Mexico governor and alleges state election officials have created unfair barriers for independents seeking office.

Miyagishima was previously running for governor as a Democrat, but switched to an independent gubernatorial campaign in February as he struggled to collect the roughly 2,500 signatures needed to have his name appear on the June primary election ballot. As an independent, he needed to collect about 14,000 signatures and file them on Thursday.

In court, he previously alleged that the disparate signature requirements for independent versus major party candidates violate the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and favor major-party candidates. First Judicial District Court Judge Matthew Wilson disagreed and dismissed the lawsuit in an order filed Wednesday.

Carrying a box that he said contained about 10,000 signatures through the Secretary of State’s office in Santa Fe on Thursday, Miyagishima told Source NM he planned to appeal the judge’s decision to the state Supreme Court.

“I knew it was going to be an uphill battle,” he said. “As much as I didn’t want to believe it, I thought that they might side with the government.” 

As of Thursday afternoon, court records did not show that Miyagishima or his attorney — former state lawmaker Jacob Candelaria, who also left the Democratic Party to be an independent — had filed an appeal.

Miyagishima was the longest-serving Las Cruces mayor. He previously said he wanted to use “policies from all parties” if elected governor, and often took stances on both sides of the aisle regarding hot-button issues like immigration, environmental regulations and abortion.

Previously, he said he considered running with the newly formed New Mexico Forward Party — a state branch of former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s political party that recently became an official minor party in the state — but decided against it because he worried it might not have name recognition with New Mexico voters.

Joshua Bowling is a senior reporter for Source New Mexico. He's reported in New Mexico, where he broke stories of lavish spending at Western New Mexico University and more, since 2022.