SANTA FE, N.M. — Tens of millions of voters have already cast ballots in the election, with living costs top of mind. For many families, child care is often the biggest.
Maggie Wright-Oviedo and her husband, JJ Oviedo, live in Santa Fe with their two young kids, baby Patricio and Uriel, a toddler. Thanks to a state program launched during the recovery from the pandemic, they pay nothing for child care.
“Without this, we would be struggling a lot, and with this, we are making it,” said Wright-Oviedo, 41, who’s both a home-care nurse and a prison outreach worker, while JJ, 42, works on a family ranch, cleans rugs for a local company and is a musician. “That’s the difference,” she said. “This is the key.”
It’s a signature policy victory for Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who campaigned on the issue in 2018 and was re-elected in 2022 — as well as an outcome both presidential campaigns say they want to pursue, in some form or another, for households nationwide.
Vice President Kamala Harris proposes capping child care costs at 7% of working families’ incomes, along with an up-to-$6,000 expanded child tax credit for those with newborns. Former President Donald Trump hasn’t outlined specific legislation, but he has said revenue from much steeper tariffs would “take care” of child care costs — a prospect many economists doubt; his running mate, who backs a $5,000 child tax credit, has suggested relatives could help out more.
New Mexico’s program is still new, and it would be hard to replicate nationally or in other states without a sustainable funding source, experts say. But its early successes — and bipartisan popularity — show how transformative a widespread government subsidy can be for young families.
Under a constitutional amendment approved two years ago by 70% of voters, 1.25% of the year-end market value of the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund is now allocated toward early childhood and public school education. The endowment, which was established when New Mexico became a state in 1912, is funded by taxes on revenue from nonrenewable resources, mainly oil and gas reserves.
Without this, we would be struggling a lot, and with this, we are making it.
Maggie Wright-Oviedo, 41, Santa Fe
The permanent fund now funnels more than $150 million from fossil fuel producers into child care subsidies, state officials estimate. Residents earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level, or annual household incomes of about $124,000, now qualify for free child care, and any existing copays are waived. With the state’s median household income of $62,000 at about half that cutoff, more than 30,000 families now benefit.
The program is already paying dividends for New Mexico’s economy, said Elizabeth Groginsky, whom Lujan Grisham appointed as the inaugural secretary of the state’s Early Childhood Education and Care Department.
The aid “helps parents and caregivers join or stay in the workforce, further their education, advance professionally, save for a down payment on a home, and create financial stability,” she said in a statement, adding that workforce participation among mothers of young children “has also jumped far ahead of the national average” since the funding rolled out.
For middle-class U.S. households, child care costs typically range from 8% to 19% of household earnings per child, according to Labor Department estimates, above the federally recommended 7% maximum. While prices stabilized last year, the average family paid around $11,600 for child care in 2023 — 10% of a median-income married family’s pay and 32% of a median-income single parent’s, the advocacy group Child Care Aware of America estimates.
Without the support, Wright-Oviedo said, her family would be spending $2,600 a month on child care, consuming at least half their take-home pay. When she learned the ballot measure had passed, she recalled, “I cried. It was that much of a relief, because we didn’t know how we were going to do it.”
Her family still lives paycheck to paycheck, she said, but they’ve begun to pay down their debt from student loans and maternity leave for the first time, and they recently bought a reliable car. They’ve been renting from a relative but hope to begin building their own home soon.
While Wright-Oviedo no longer has to worry about child care costs, she’s still backing Harris, citing her health care proposals, which include forgiving medical debt for millions of people, expanding coverage for at-home care and broadening efforts to lower drug prices.
Wright-Oviedo said her older relatives are still independent, but she acknowledged she’s on the cusp of the “sandwich generation” Harris has discussed — those caring for children and aging parents simultaneously. As elder care costs continue to outpace inflation, the Democratic ticket sees that constituency as key to victory.
“Our loving moms are in their late 70s,” Wright-Oviedo noted, and many of her relatives are “hustling” for their own financial needs already. “Anybody who’s taken care of a toddler and a baby knows that you can’t just hand a baby and a toddler off to your aging parent and say, ‘OK, see you in eight hours,’” she said.
New Mexico’s model may not be easy to scale up, said Taryn Morrissey, a professor of public policy at American University’s School of Public Affairs. The state’s endowment is unique, and “other places just don’t have the funds for it,” she said.
“There are other states that are contributing their own state and local funds to child care subsidies, to either expand eligibility or to increase reimbursement rates to pay for high-quality care,” Morrissey said, “but it’s expensive.”
Teachers had to have a second job in a fast-food restaurant, and that was not OK.
Deyanira Contreras, director of Kids Campus Santa Fe
New Mexico’s program also made permanent a pay raise for day care workers that initially had been funded with temporary federal pandemic aid. Entry-level employees now make at least $15 an hour and lead teachers $20 — a roughly 30% increase, the governor’s office says.
Before the change, many “teachers had to have a second job in a fast-food restaurant, and that was not OK,” said Deyanira Contreras, the director of Kids Campus Santa Fe, an early childhood education provider where more than 90% of families qualify for free child care.
Randy Orona-Torres, the lead pre-K teacher at Kids Campus, had been picking up shifts at McDonald’s. Now he makes an additional $7 an hour, and the state is paying for his bachelor’s degree in early childhood education, thanks to scholarship money from the early childhood department. “I don’t see [teaching] as a struggle anymore,” he said.
Contreras said teachers at Kids Campus now earn more than New Mexico’s public school teachers. Those with bachelor’s degrees can make $59,000 annually, and those with master’s degrees can make $65,000.
“People used to think that early childhood educators were like babysitters, but now they’re giving us the right treatment,” Orona-Torres said. “We’re educators, as well.”
