Deb Haaland Opens transition hiring after historic election win

“We didn’t know we would win until last night when the results came in, and I am not the type of person to put the cart before the horse,” Deb Haaland told reporters, and the morning after her historic Election Day victory, SourceNM reported, she was already inviting applications from “anyone who loves New Mexico and has what it takes to serve.”

Haaland, a former member of Congress and U.S. Secretary of the Interior, defeated Republican challenger Gregg Hull, a former longtime mayor of Rio Rancho, in Tuesday’s general election to become the first Native American woman elected to lead a state in American history. The scale of the moment was not lost on her. Standing with her running mate, Lt. Gov.-elect Stephanie Garcia Richard, at Albuquerque’s Barelas Coffee House — a frequent stop for politicians — Haaland shook hands with voters and spoke to reporters Wednesday morning about what comes next.

A Transition Website Opens Before the Cabinet Is Chosen

Haaland’s campaign debuted haalandtransition.com, where prospective employees can upload resumes and express interest in roles at every level of the incoming administration. She has spoken with Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who called Tuesday night to congratulate her, about the transition, but she emphasized that no final cabinet decisions have been made. “We will absolutely start thinking about and looking at potential folks to fill those positions,” she said. “I feel confident that we can find the right people to fill the right positions to help us move New Mexico forward.”

Garcia Richard pointed to both women’s track records in building teams, citing her own experience as New Mexico commissioner of public lands and Haaland’s tenure running the Department of the Interior. “We’re going to rely on that experience,” she said.

Data Centers, Child Welfare, and Medicaid on Day One

Haaland laid out a familiar agenda from the campaign trail, but with the weight of an incoming governor behind it. Her stated top priorities include signing an executive order imposing a moratorium on data centers, finding a new leader for the state’s troubled child welfare agency, and attacking affordability head-on. She also pledged to invest in education and public safety and to bolster New Mexico’s first-in-the-nation universal childcare program.

“I feel ready to move our priorities forward for the people of New Mexico,” she said, adding that she is focused on “making sure that folks can pay their rent or mortgage and buy groceries in the same month.” One of the most concrete stakes she named involves Medicaid: changing eligibility requirements set to take effect in January could strip coverage from nearly 90,000 New Mexicans, and Haaland said using the 2027 legislative session to address that fallout is “top of mind.”

Fighting the Trump Administration From the Governor’s Office

On the campaign trail, Haaland repeatedly promised to combat the Trump administration’s cuts to social services and to work toward a statewide public option for healthcare. In her Tuesday evening victory speech, she said her time in Congress fighting the first Trump administration prepared her to “do it again,” and she repeated that promise at Barelas Coffee House on Wednesday. “I’m willing to work with the administration to make sure they live up to their obligations to New Mexico,” she said. “And I absolutely will speak to the attorney general if, in fact, those conversations aren’t successful. New Mexico deserves and requires funding from the U.S. government.”

The contrast between Haaland’s approach and her opponent’s defined the race: Hull, the former Rio Rancho mayor, ran as the Republican alternative in a state where Democrats have held the governor’s office for years, and Haaland’s victory extends that streak while breaking new historical ground. What happens next is already on the calendar — the Medicaid eligibility changes take effect in January, well before the 2027 legislative session Haaland hopes to use to soften the blow, and the transition team she is assembling through haalandtransition.com will determine who executes her agenda in the governor’s office.

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