Gubernatorial candidate Sam Bregman proposes term limits for lawmakers, longer annual sessions, salaries for legislators and a public overhaul of capital-outlay funding.

Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico

This article was originally published by Source New Mexico.

Sam Bregman, the Bernalillo County district attorney seeking the Democratic nomination for New Mexico governor, on Friday announced proposals to “fix” the state Legislature by seeking term limits for lawmakers, extending the length of legislative sessions, paying lawmakers and changing the system by which the state doles out funding for big-budget infrastructure projects.

In a statement, Bregman said the changes will ensure the state government “works for the people, not the politicians.”

His campaign’s plan calls for working with state lawmakers to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would create term limits for state representatives and senators; making legislative sessions an annual 90-day affair; creating salaries for state legislators in line with New Mexico’s median salary; and requiring all new capital outlay projects to be included in the state budget and subject to public debate.

Bregman in a statement said the Legislature is “dominated by long-serving incumbents” and hopes that term limits will attract new candidates for office.

Extending the length of legislative sessions, which currently alternate between 30 and 60 days, would give policymakers adequate time to effectively govern, he said. In the 2025 regular legislative session, leaders from the nonprofit Common Cause New Mexico pushed to “modernize” the Legislature, noting that its sessions are among the shortest in the U.S. The short sessions routinely lead to debates that are “curtailed and cut short,” the group said at the time.

Bregman’s campaign said that providing salaries for New Mexico’s lawmakers, who are the only ones in the nation not to earn compensation for that work, would lower barriers to holding elected office.

And introducing more public debate to the capital outlay request process would cut down on the potential for “political favors” to be the deciding factor in which costly public infrastructure projects advance.

“For far too long, New Mexico has been last in all the good things and first in all the bad things,” Bregman said in a statement. “With the right leadership, New Mexico can finally move from the bottom of the rankings to the top, where we belong.”

If elected, any road toward implementing Bregman’s envisioned changes would have to go through the state’s 100-plus lawmakers. It’s unclear whether there’s much appetite among those office-holders for provisions such as term limits.

“If you expect me to be a full-time legislator and you’re going to pay me enough to do that … that’s a lot of money,” Senate Minority Floor Leader William Sharer (R-Farmington) told Source NM. Any salary from the state would likely be less than he earns as a business owner and traveling to Santa Fe for three months each year could make it impractical to continue running his business, he said.

Sharer, who first won election in 2000, said he was in favor of term limits early in his tenure. In the subsequent decades, though, he said he’s learned that legislative staffers “know everything” and is concerned that term limits would “in essence, turn the staff into the real governing body.”

State House Speaker Javier Martínez (D-Albuquerque) and Senate President Pro Tempore Mimi Stewart (D-Albuquerque) did not respond to requests for comment.

Bregman will face former U.S. Interior Secretary and Congresswoman Deb Haaland and former Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima in the June primary election. Republican candidates Rio Rancho Mayor Gregg Hull and freshman state Sen. Steve Lanier (R-Aztec) will face off in the Republican primary — Duke Rodriguez, the CEO of Ultra Health Cannabis and a former cabinet secretary for former Gov. Gary Johnson, also registered a Republican gubernatorial campaign with the New Mexico Office of the Secretary of State in June.

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.