Mimi Stewart knows she’ll eventually be replaced.
It goes without saying she won’t be forgotten.
“I’m not of the mind that I am not replaceable,” said Stewart, the New Mexico Senate president pro tempore, reflecting on her three decades in the Legislature. “I know that I will be replaced, and that they’ll do what they need to do.”
Over the years, the Albuquerque Democrat, 78, has become a renowned love-her-or-hate-her figure in the Roundhouse, known for her progressivism and institutional knowledge. A Washington firm named her New Mexico’s most effective lawmaker in 2018.
She also has faced sharp criticism. Earlier this year, she was the subject of a later-dismissed ethics complaint accusing her of yelling at a staffer — which drew the ire of Republican Senate Minority Leader Bill Sharer; he described the incident as “verbal abuse.”
Now the state’s second-longest-serving legislator — and longest-serving female legislator — Stewart said she has learned not to take criticism personally.
“I’ve also realized that some of the complaints against me or the negative coverage aimed at me is in large part because I’m the pro tem, and has very little to do with me personally,” she said in an interview last week. “And that’s a hard thing to understand.”
Stewart, who began her political career in the state House of Representatives in 1995, first served as Senate president pro tempore in 2021 and has been regularly reconfirmed by the heavily Democratic body. Midway through her third term as a senator, what keeps her running for reelection is what prompted the retired teacher to run for office in the first place: an unwavering motivation to address issues impacting education and the environment.
“I haven’t yet succeeded in getting bills passed that I think are necessary,” Stewart said.
One such bill is the Clear Horizons Act, which aims to reduce New Mexico’s greenhouse gas emissions by codifying reduction goals into law. The bill — also sponsored by Rep. Kristina Ortez, D-Taos, and Rep. Andrea Romero, D-Santa Fe — made it through its first Senate committee earlier this year before it died.
Stewart is also perpetually focused on improving student reading proficiency statewide — she has been chipping away at it for 30 years and is now making headway, she said. In October, the New Mexico Public Education Department announced reading proficiency for students in grades 3-8 had climbed 10 percentage points since 2022.
“I still have work around that,” Stewart said.
Education, activism, politics
Stewart, who became a legislator when she was 48, said she learned how to treat other people — and the difference between right and wrong — as a small child, watching the way her abusive stepfather treated her mother.
“Even though I had a difficult childhood and lost both my parents early in life — my dad at 3, my mother at 17 — I feel like, as a person, that I was able to use that trauma for my own benefit,” Stewart said.
She was born in Florida and later headed to Boston to earn a bachelor’s degree in sociology and history from Boston University and a Master of Eduction from Wheelock College. Before and after graduate school, she worked in day care centers and got involved with the Boston Area Daycare Workers Union, which lobbied the Massachusetts Legislature to increase funding for early child centers.
This mid-1970s experience kick-started Stewart’s interest in both education and activism. She moved to New Mexico with her then-future husband in 1978 — called to the Land of Enchantment by mutual friends and distant cousins who lived here, she said, as well as a monstrous series of snowstorms in Cambridge, Mass., where the couple lived previously.
Stewart began working at Albuquerque Public Schools, and would raise two children of her own while serving as a special education teacher. She joined the local chapter of the American Federation of Teachers — a union that would later ask her to put her teaching career aside for a few years to help with advocacy at the state Capitol.
“It was my first experience of lobbying this Legislature, and what I found out was that most of them really couldn’t explain to me or understand what the funding formula was for the public schools,” Stewart said. “I was kind of amazed at that.”
She made her first bid for a state Senate seat in 1992, but the campaign wasn’t a success — she was fired by the teachers union for running for office and then lost the election by 68 votes. Two years later, union members approached Stewart with a change of heart: They asked her to run for a House seat.
She won her 1994 bid for House District 21 with nearly 54% of the votes in the general election. She has represented Senate District 17 since December 2014, when she was appointed to the seat to replace Tim Keller, who had been elected state auditor.
Stewart doesn’t remember the first bill she put forth in the Legislature, but one of her earlier proposals was a ban on campaign contributions to state candidates by any person involved in gambling. The bill failed in the House by a single-vote margin, The New Mexican reported at the time.
Friction with governors
What she does remember from her first few years in the Roundhouse is the contentious relationship she had with then-Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican who served from 1995 until 2003. Johnson signed an early bill of hers on domestic abuse — requiring notice to victims when their abuser is released from jail — but his willingness to green-light her ideas was not ever-present.
“He vetoed most of my capital outlay,” Stewart recalled, laughing. “So it took me a few years to get anything passed because he vetoed so much.”
Johnson only stopped regularly vetoing her bills, she said, when he saw her at a marathon and realized she was a fellow runner.
Similar friction continued briefly under Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, who refused to implement a Stewart-sponsored bill, signed by Johnson, to create a Population Control Commission for state prisons and allow the panel to move soon-to-be-released inmates’ release dates up when a facility reached full capacity. Stewart — with the local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and the New Mexico Women’s Justice Project — sued Richardson’s corrections secretary, Joe Williams, and emerged victorious.
Then Richardson started vetoing her bills.
Lauding Lujan Grisham
Stewart has served under four governors, and although every governor is different, she said, she called current Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham “the best.”
“She listened to me, finally, about reading,” Stewart said. “She asked me to help her put in place a plan to address our early literacy issues, and so I worked with her on that plan; she accepted every bit of that plan.”
The plan included training elementary school teachers how to educate kids based on the science of reading — a methodology that’s become one of Stewart’s passions.
Stewart said she is most proud of the Legislature’s work over the past seven years during Lujan Grisham’s governorship and described the time as “the most fun.”
She attributed this to new faces in the Senate from the 2020 and 2024 elections, which also led to the passage of the most progressive bills Stewart has seen in her tenure: repealing a dormant abortion ban ahead of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, protecting the privacy of medical professionals who provide reproductive and gender-affirming care, and allowing for confirmatory adoptions — often used by LGBTQ+ parents.
Troubling tongue-lashings
But it hasn’t all been fun.
In the few years before then-Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto — an Albuquerque Democrat accused of sexual harassment and assault — was defeated in the 2024 primary by current Sen. Heather Berghmans, Stewart clashed with him on multiple occasions.
During a Senate floor debate in 2021 — a year before the first allegation against Ivey-Soto was made public — he levied a series of rapid-fire questions at Stewart about her amendment to a bill on paid sick leave.
Stewart called his line of questioning “abusive.”
Sens. Liz Stefanics, D-Cerrillos, and Michael Padilla, D-Albuquerque, came to her defense, and other female lawmakers, Stewart said, left supportive notes on her desk.
She had never before experienced a moment like that late-night incident, nor has she since then. Ivey-Soto privately apologized to her — “I thought it was a little late, and I thought that it would be good for him to do it in caucus,” she said — and she later removed him from his position as chair of the New Mexico Finance Authority Oversight Committee.
More recently, Stewart was accused in July of similar inappropriate behavior: a “verbal attack” on a Legislative Council Service staffer in which she screamed at the woman and called her “stupid.”
The incident occurred during the 60-day session earlier this year over confusion about a document outlining Stewart’s capital outlay allocations. The staffer filed a complaint alleging Stewart had violated the Legislature’s anti-harassment policy.
A subcommittee of the Legislative Ethics Committee held a hearing on the matter in July. An attorney told the panel the staffer had received a “screaming email” from Stewart and then a phone call in which Stewart called her stupid for not knowing the capital outlay document had been submitted on time.
An attorney for Stewart provided a statement from the senator during the hearing, saying she had apologized to the staffer and regretted the outburst.
“I’m seeing a mental health counselor now to ensure my kindness and respect for others is on solid footing, and I’m committed to always learning from others and growing in my ability to help others,” she said in the statement.
The subcommittee later voted 4-3 to recommend no sanctions against Stewart and to dismiss the complaint, with the three Republican members voting in the minority.
While the panel found Stewart’s conduct was “an unprofessional, inappropriate, and unacceptable manner of treating legislative staff,” it said the behavior didn’t rise to the level of harassment under the policy.
Gabriela Campos/New Mexican file photo
Reflecting on the incident last week, Stewart described it as “a good reminder for all of us.”
“It’s just a reminder to be kind and treat everyone with respect, even if they’ve done something that you’re angry about,” she said.
‘She’s an institution’
The recent new crop of senators has meant more mentoring for a president pro tem whom people regularly come to with questions.
“I didn’t really have much mentoring when I started,” Stewart said. “There weren’t very many women, also. So I think it’s important that I share whatever wisdom I have with people.”
Freshman Sen. Angel Charley, D-Acoma, first met Stewart when asking for her support in her 2024 campaign. Charley was initially intimidated by Stewart’s long tenure and list of accomplishments.
“She’s an institution in and of herself. … You don’t know New Mexico politics without knowing who Mimi Stewart is,” Charley said.
After Charley was elected, she said, Stewart remained a mentor and supported several of her initiatives through her first legislative session early this year.
When Charley advanced a bill to create a Turquoise Alert — similar to an Amber Alert but for enrolled or eligible tribal members — in response to high numbers of missing Indigenous people, she said Stewart encouraged her to focus on the community impact. The retired teacher doesn’t mince words, though, Charley said.
“I can count on Mimi to be completely honest with me,” Charley said. “There’s no beating around the bush.”
Charley said she wishes others would get the chance to know Stewart — the person, not just the top Democratic legislator. Stewart is a lover of feral cats, Charley said, and often wears clothes featuring felines.
‘Make sure life is livable’
Stewart is currently taking care of seven feral kittens in her free time, when she’s not gardening or reading — she just finished a David Baldacci thriller and always has three books going at once.
Stewart the person also has a quirky sense of humor — something echoed by her chief of staff, Sanders Moore.
“We have some good laughs about different things,” said Moore, a former director of Environment New Mexico who has been in her current role since Stewart was elected president pro tem.
Moore and Stewart first met when the former fronted the local environmental protection group, and the two worked on the solar tax credit together for years. After that, they collaborated on a handful of other energy bills.
One of the things that sticks out most to Moore about Stewart — beyond her palpable care for the environment and education — is “she is always very consistently, 100%, family first,” Sanders said. Stewart encourages Moore to take care of her two small children when they’re sick, for example.
“I think she knows from firsthand experience — because she was also a working mom — just how important it is to be there for your kids and to make sure that your kids come first,” Moore said, adding, “I just really could not imagine a more supportive boss, especially on the family side of things.”
Stewart’s principles, then, make sense.
“I just think it’s important that we, as a species, try to keep our children safe, keep our environment less polluted, have a really good educational system, that we all work together on these systems,” Stewart said.
“So it’s kind of a core value for me: to help kids, help other people, make sure that life is livable on this planet.”
Staff writer Alaina Mencinger contributed to this report.