Former Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined New Mexico Democratic gubernatorial nominee Deb Haaland on an Oct. 19, 2026, tour of an Albuquerque childcare facility to promote the state’s first-in-the-nation universal childcare program. During the visit, Warren recalled 2019, when she and Haaland, then a member of Congress, introduced a bill to establish universal childcare for millions of American families.
Seven years later, Haaland, now the Democratic nominee to be New Mexico’s next governor, is running on a platform to expand the state’s universal childcare program, which went into effect late last year. Warren emphasized that childcare is infrastructure for working parents and businesses that want to hire them. The program, announced by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in 2025, makes every New Mexico family eligible for tuition-free childcare. A bill passed in this year’s legislative session requires the state to implement co-pays for high-earning families amid economic downturns.
Warren said she wants the federal government to be a strong partner to New Mexico and hopes to see the program replicated across the nation, particularly as inflation and affordability have become key issues ahead of next month’s midterm elections. She noted that the world has changed since the 2019 proposal, which faced skepticism, and that the issue has become more urgent and visible.
Some providers and parents across the state have advocated for the state to boost capacity, citing lengthy waitlists for children to gain admittance to childcare facilities. During the tour, toddlers and children at Corazoncitos Felices Academy showed off their bilingual education. One teacher, holding up a flash card depicting zoo animals, quizzed her class: “¿Qué es esto?” The children responded: “¡El mono!”
Haaland, who served as a national co-chair on Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign, previously told Source NM that she will work to increase capacity statewide if elected, with a particular focus on making sure rural areas have the same childcare access as New Mexico’s major cities. Gregg Hull, the Republican nominee facing Haaland in the Nov. 3 general election, has criticized the program for serving New Mexico’s highest-earning families and has said that if elected, he’d like to re-examine the failed proposals to mandate co-pays for families with high household incomes.
Haaland, who on the campaign trail has often cited her experience as a working single mother, said she will work to strengthen and expand the program if elected. “I know what it’s like to not afford childcare and to have to clean up my child’s preschool so that I could actually afford the tuition bill,” she said Monday. “I want to see whatever we can do to make sure that we can keep it available. In my opinion, early childhood education should be public school. It’s that important.”
