did not gather enough signatures to qualify

New Mexico’s new minor political party on Thursday announced five candidates for the upcoming Nov. 3 general election, though it remains to be seen how many of them will actually make the ballot.

The New Mexico Forward Party announced two statewide and three local candidates to run in the November election. Former state lawmaker and current party Chair Bob Perls intended to challenge incumbent U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) for his seat and former Albuquerque Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Michael Vigil intended to run against incumbent State Auditor Joseph Maestas — however, the pair failed to collect enough signatures to make the ballot.

Perls said he wanted to prioritize challenging candidates in uncontested races. While both Luján and Maestas are set to face Republicans in November, those Republicans are running as write-ins, who historically struggle to unseat incumbents.

Three of the party’s local candidates — running in otherwise uncontested races for the Public Education Commission and county magistrate judgeships — turned in enough signatures, but Perls said he suspects two of them will be disqualified. That decision will be made on Tuesday, according to the Secretary of State’s candidate guide.

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Perls said officials in the Secretary of State’s office have flagged two of those local candidates for not properly registering as Forward Party members by the May 8 deadline. However, Perls contested that it would have been impossible to do so because the state granted it minor party status more than a week after that.

The Secretary of State’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment over its position on the party registration deadline.

“We had so many New Mexicans who were excited about an alternative to the two-party system. Unfortunately, the system is very much rigged against my party and independent candidates,” Perls told reporters gathered in the Secretary of State’s office Thursday. “It’s hard to translate that enthusiasm.”

Perls said that his party operated with a $60,000 budget to get candidates on the ballot in otherwise uncontested races. Party officials sent out more than one million text messages to gather signatures, he said, but fewer than 60,000 recipients opened the text message and clicked on links to support the party’s effort.

While his party stands to put, at most, a handful of candidates on ballots for local races, Perls said the events of recent months have been instructional for party leaders. Starting in a week, he intends to begin a “postmortem.”

“I think anybody would say we’ve already been successful…we’re only the 10th state to gain ballot access for the Forward Party in the country,” he said.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang visited Santa Fe in April to announce the New Mexico Forward Party would seek minor party status. The centrist party’s platform includes a commitment to treat everyone with dignity and respect” and to act “with ethics, integrity and compassion.”