House Bill 9 did not move through Santa Fe on moral language alone.
It moved through a political network that was already organized, already funded, and already active in the careers of several lawmakers who carried it.
This story is about that overlap.
The same ecosystem that sold HB 9 to the public also shows up in campaign endorsements, independent expenditures, donor pass-throughs, and political committees surrounding the bill’s sponsors.
Who carried the bill
Before getting lost in the acronyms, start with the cast.
Eleanor Chávez, a Bernalillo County Democrat, was the lead House sponsor. Angelica Rubio of Doña Ana County, Andrea Romero of Santa Fe, and Marianna Anaya of Albuquerque were House co-sponsors. Senator Joseph Cervantes of Doña Ana and Otero counties carried the bill in the Senate.
Around those lawmakers sat two overlapping circles.
One circle handled advocacy: groups such as the ACLU of New Mexico, Innovation Law Lab, Somos Un Pueblo Unido, the New Mexico Dream Team, and the Semilla Project.
The other handled electoral muscle: Equality New Mexico, Planned Parenthood Votes New Mexico, Organizers in the Land of Enchantment, Conservation Voters New Mexico, and the political infrastructure around the Center for Civic Policy and the New Mexico Civic Engagement Table.
The same organizations kept surfacing
Those circles were not neatly separate.
They touched the same lawmakers, moved in the same direction, and repeatedly surfaced around the same bill.
Take Marianna Anaya, an HB 9 House co-sponsor from Albuquerque.
Equality New Mexico spent $6,962.26 backing her in the 2024 primary through texts, phones, digital ads, and mail. Planned Parenthood Votes New Mexico also provided direct support and a public endorsement.
Angelica Rubio, the Las Cruces lawmaker who also co-sponsored HB 9, received independent-expenditure support from Equality New Mexico as well. She was also endorsed by Planned Parenthood Votes New Mexico, Conservation Voters New Mexico, and Organizers in the Land of Enchantment, placing her squarely inside the same coalition universe that later pushed HB 9.
Eleanor Chávez, the bill’s lead House sponsor, may be the clearest example of the broader pattern.
She drew endorsements from Planned Parenthood Votes New Mexico, Equality New Mexico, Organizers in the Land of Enchantment, Conservation Voters New Mexico, Emily’s List, labor groups, and other progressive organizations, while also receiving confirmed support from Planned Parenthood’s New Mexico political arm.
Andrea Romero fits the same general lane, even if the spending around her race looked different.
She was endorsed by Planned Parenthood Votes New Mexico, Equality New Mexico, Organizers in the Land of Enchantment, and Conservation Voters New Mexico, and the available finance records show coalition-aligned support around her as part of a broader progressive network.
Joseph Cervantes, the Senate sponsor, was not a perfect match for the House-side political profile.
But he still mattered enormously because he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee and controlled a key pathway for the bill, placing him inside the same legislative machine even where the campaign-finance pattern around him was more conventional and less immigration-specific.
The money trail
The point is not that every sponsor got the same money from the same group in the same amount.
The point is that the same cluster of organizations kept appearing wherever HB 9 needed power: in endorsements, in outside spending, in coordinated support, and in the political careers of the lawmakers carrying the bill.
One of the clearest financial conduits in that system was Better Future for New Mexico, an independent-expenditure PAC that described itself as a project of the New Mexico donor table.
It reported $2,344,200 in all-time contributions, and three major nonprofit funders accounted for about two-thirds of that money: Grove Action Fund at $640,000, the North Fund at $450,000, and Green Advocacy Project at $450,000.
That PAC did not sit off to the side.
Its downstream recipients included Planned Parenthood Votes New Mexico and Organizers in the Land of Enchantment, two groups that publicly backed HB 9’s House sponsors.
So the flow was not hard to follow.
National money moved into a New Mexico political vehicle, that vehicle helped support in-state groups, and those groups turned around and backed the same politicians carrying a top coalition priority.
The organizational hub
The organizational hub behind much of this was the New Mexico Civic Engagement Table, a coalition of more than 40 groups organized through the Center for Civic Policy.
Public grant records show that Ford Foundation gave the Center for Civic Policy $450,000 for core support of that table, while NEO Philanthropy sent another $425,000 in one year and $1,005,000 in another.
That helps explain why the same names keep turning up in different parts of the story.
Equality New Mexico, Planned Parenthood Votes New Mexico, Organizers in the Land of Enchantment, and other coalition-aligned players were not operating as isolated actors. They were moving inside a larger advocacy-and-electoral ecosystem with real money behind it.
The public reveal
The public signing ceremony gave the game away.
When Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed HB 9, the elected officials who carried the bill appeared alongside coalition organizations including the ACLU of New Mexico, the Semilla Project, Innovation Law Lab, the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center, the New Mexico Dream Team, and Somos Un Pueblo Unido, with those groups publicly thanking the politicians by name.
That moment did not prove a conspiracy.
It did something more useful: it showed, in public, that the political arm and the advocacy arm had been traveling together all along.
What Part 2 shows
There is nothing improper about advocacy groups supporting a bill. There is nothing automatically improper about political organizations backing candidates they agree with.
The real issue is whether New Mexicans were sold HB 9 as a simple grassroots moral crusade when the public record shows a denser reality — a coordinated ecosystem of advocacy groups, electoral organizations, donor pipelines, and coalition infrastructure all pulling the same way.
That is why Part 2 matters.
It is not just a story about a bill.
It is a story about a machine.
And Part 3 is where that machine gets personal.
Because the sharpest link in the file does not involve a PAC or a donor network at all. It involves House co-sponsor Angelica Rubio and her documented leadership role inside an organization that later advocated for the same policy agenda she helped write into law.
Endnotes
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New Mexico Legislature, House Bill 9, “Immigrant Safety Act,” listing sponsors Eleanor Chávez, Angelica Rubio, Andrea Romero, Marianna Anaya, and Joseph Cervantes. nmlegis
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New Mexico Legislature, Representative Angelica Rubio; Representative Eleanor Chávez; Representative Andrea Romero; Senator Joseph Cervantes. nmlegis
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ACLU of New Mexico, “Governor Signs Immigrant Safety Act into Law,” Feb. 18, 2026. aclu-nm
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New Mexico Campaign Finance Information System, Equality New Mexico Independent Expenditure Report, filed May 23, 2024, as summarized in the campaign-finance record reviewed for this investigation, documenting support for Angelica Rubio and Marianna Anaya.
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Money Trail NM, Marianna A. Anaya candidate page; campaign-finance records reviewed for this investigation. moneytrailnm
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Planned Parenthood Votes New Mexico, “2024 New Mexico Election Endorsements,” including Eleanor Chávez and Angelica Rubio on the 2024 primary endorsement list. plannedparenthoodaction
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Planned Parenthood Votes New Mexico, organization page describing endorsement and electoral activity. plannedparenthoodaction
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Campaign-finance records reviewed for this investigation documenting support to Eleanor Chávez and Marianna Anaya from Planned Parenthood Votes New Mexico.
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New Mexico Legislature, Representative Andrea Romero; campaign-finance and endorsement records reviewed for this investigation. nmlegis
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New Mexico Legislature, Senator Joseph Cervantes; HB 9 sponsor page; campaign-finance records reviewed for this investigation. nmlegis
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Better Future for New Mexico, an Independent Expenditure PAC, Money Trail NM committee page. moneytrailnm
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Campaign-finance records reviewed for this investigation identifying cumulative Better Future for New Mexico funding from Grove Action Fund, the North Fund, and Green Advocacy Project.
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Planned Parenthood Votes New Mexico, 2024 endorsements; campaign-finance records reviewed for this investigation identifying downstream Better Future recipients including Planned Parenthood Votes New Mexico and Organizers in the Land of Enchantment. plannedparenthoodaction
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Center for Civic Policy, New Mexico Civic Engagement Table overview, describing the Table as a project of the Center for Civic Policy with more than 40 nonprofit partners. civicpolicy
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Ford Foundation grant records and NEO Philanthropy grant records reviewed for this investigation documenting support to the Center for Civic Policy / New Mexico Civic Engagement Table infrastructure.
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ACLU of New Mexico, “Governor Signs Immigrant Safety Act into Law,” documenting coalition participation at signing. aclu-nm
