Focus on: Martin Hickey

Focus on: Martin Hickey for SD 20 – Bring a Healthy Families Advocate and Physician to the NM Senate

By Betsey Swan

Meet Democratic candidate for NM Senate District 20, Dr. Martin Hickey: public health expert, community leader, and businessman. Dr. Hickey has worked on and succeeded in many healthcare challenges. He practiced medicine in the Navajo Nation, at the VA, was a faculty leader at UNM and CEO at Lovelace Health Systems. In the last eight years, he founded two Affordable Healthcare Act Programs for New Mexicans – New Mexico Health Connections and True Health – which delivered affordable nonprofit healthcare and kept marketplace healthcare rates fair.

Experienced in healthcare at the federal, state, and local levels, Hickey is passionate about safe and healthy families for all New Mexico. He believes in:

• Fully funding Early Childhood Education and conception-to-graduation wrap-around services – some of the strongest predictors of lifetime health and economic prosperity
• Ensuring justice in healthcare by protecting the full range of reproductive healthcare freedoms and creating access to affordable primary care and behavioral health services, independent of zip code or income
• Significant investment in our Post-COVID moonshot by investing strategically with portions of the Permanent Fund, training for emerging technical jobs, demanding statewide broadband for every household, making New Mexico a clean energy leader, and supporting small businesses with targeted investment and economic development funding
• Safeguarding future generations’ health by protecting our land and water
• Closing loopholes on Gun Safety, as gun deaths are a significant public health crisis
• Preparing for the next crisis by diversifying our economy, retooling our higher education and vocational training systems, and growing small businesses

In contrast, Dr. Hickey’s opponent John Morton is straight out of the Republican/Trump playbook. He promotes:

• Repeating destructive Martinez austerity measures like no corporate taxes or blocking permanent fund investments, leaving New Mexicans even further behind
• Advocating only “accountability” in education, which is code for destructive high-stakes testing
• Limiting or denying reproductive healthcare for women
• Ramping up Oil and Gas, the destructive force in our environment and our devastating boom-and-bust economy
• Minimizing COVID deaths as a nuisance – advocating for 100% school, retail, and restaurant opening, despite contrary scientific evidence

In a state that suffered through the Martinez administration’s devastation and needs an economic and educational boost, particularly in the face of COVID, New Mexico is fortunate Dr. Hickey is running and stands ready to turn his district Blue.