By Fred Nathan Jr., Executive Director, Think New Mexico

Recently the New Mexico Ethics Commission sued a secretive, dark money group calling itself New Mexico Safety Over Profits (NMSOP) for violating state laws that require the disclosure of the source of funds used to influence legislation.

The lawsuit alleges that NMSOP spent tens of thousands of dollars on advertisements opposing medical malpractice reforms designed to center the needs of patients and bring down malpractice premiums for doctors, which are about twice as high in New Mexico as in our surrounding states.

Earlier this year, an investigative journalist at Searchlight New Mexico unearthed unethical and misleading behavior by NMSOP and revealed deep ties between NMSOP and the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association, whose members feel threatened by the proposed reforms.

As the Ethics Commission put it: "New Mexicans have a right to know who is funding lobbying campaigns." NMSOP is adamant about keeping its funding sources secret, telling Searchlight: "We certainly will not be disclosing our donors."

To try to distract from their legal troubles, this dark money group is now attacking Think New Mexico because of our work to reform the state's medical malpractice law.

This all began last fall, when Think New Mexico published a policy report on how to address the healthcare worker shortage. Our research found that the state's malpractice environment is one of the major reasons why New Mexico was the only state to lose practicing physicians between 2019 and 2024, when the number of doctors rose nationwide.

New Mexico's malpractice law has no cap on attorney's fees, no limit on punitive damages, and the lowest legal standard for proving punitive damages in the country. This lopsided statute is great for trial lawyers, but not so great for folks trying to find a doctor.

During the last legislative session, we drafted and introduced a bill to enact several of our proposed reforms to the state's medical malpractice law (Senate Bill 176). While the bill failed to pass on a close committee vote of 5-4, it picked up 24 bipartisan cosponsors – and the governor called for medical malpractice reform in her State of the State address and her post-session news conference.

NMSOP and the trial lawyers who make their money from malpractice litigation are desperate to stop this momentum, so they are lashing out at Think New Mexico. In an opinion piece and advertisements on social media, NMSOP inaccurately claims that Think New Mexico is furthering the interest of health care corporations because we received grants from two local independent foundations that received their initial seed money from the sale of health care companies.

Unlike NMSOP, Think New Mexico has always been completely transparent about the sources of our financial support. We list all of our supporters in our annual reports, which you can find on our website. (In 2024, 60% of our funding came from more than 1,200 individual supporters; another 39% came from foundation grants and our endowments.)

Over the past 26 years, Think New Mexico has successfully championed the enactment of policy reforms that benefit everyday New Mexicans, like repealing the food tax and ending predatory lending.

Now we are working to address the health care worker shortage that is making it so hard for New Mexicans to find a doctor – and the tide is turning in favor of reform.

You can join this growing movement by visiting www.thinknewmexico.org , where you can download our full report, read about our proposed reforms, and contact your elected officials about them. (While you're there, you can also read the Ethics Commission lawsuit and the Searchlight articles about NMSOP.)