New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is eyeing a bid for the Democratic nomination in 2028, declaring, “I want to be useful.”
Addressing her future plans, the two-term governor said, “I’m worried about my country, and I’m worried about my planet. If you really are in that position on any of those things, then that’s a call to action in whatever way any of us can be useful.”
Speaking at Harvard University’s Kennedy School on Wednesday, the governor also said that she wants to see many more women in politics and said that their percentage of representation should be similar to their percentage of the population.
“I’d like to see more women elected. There are eight Democratic governors and four Republican governors, and I’d like to see 54% to 60% of all elected offices filled by women. Not that I want to create yet a new and more heinous gender bias anywhere. But if we’re going to really uphold a fragile democracy, and God knows it’s fragile, then you have to represent the people in the right ways, which means 54%-plus are women,” she said.
Lujan Grisham suggested that women have been slow to jump in because they are held to a higher standard than men and because some are unsure if they are ready to run.
“What’s hard is we’ve learned that we haven’t been ready. Otherwise, there would have been a woman. The most qualified candidates have been women,” she said in answering a biased question about whether a woman will ever be elected president as the country shifts “to the right.”
Several conservative seats in Congress are filled by conservative women.
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Lujan Grisham also took a dig at less qualified men winning office. “It doesn’t matter as much the qualifications and experience, the way the country works, for male candidates,” she said.
Polls continue to show that former Vice President Kamala Harris leads in the 2028 popularity contest, though largely because she ran and lost in 2024 and is the most well-known of the candidates considering a bid.