New Mexico Rep. Rebecca Dow presses Gov. Lujan Grisham on §25F, and the governor is now ‘actively considering’

In late March 2026, New Mexico state Representative Rebecca Dow (R-Elephant Butte / Truth or Consequences) sent a public letter to Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham urging the state to opt into the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit (§25F), and the appeal appears to have moved the needle. On April 2, 2026, gubernatorial spokesman Michael Coleman told the Albuquerque Journal that the governor “is actively considering whether to opt in but is awaiting more information from the Department of Treasury about the flexibility of the funding.” That is a measurable softening: in January 2026 Lujan Grisham was reported among three Democratic governors, alongside Oregon's Tina Kotek and Wisconsin's Tony Evers, who said they would not participate. The shift from a flat refusal to active consideration is the news here. Dow's letter, first reported by Source New Mexico on March 31, argued that scholarship-granting organizations serve students “regardless of what type of school they attend,” framing the program as “not about shifting students from one system to another” but “about ensuring that every child has access to the same kinds of opportunities and resources.”

It is worth being precise about what has and has not happened. This is a public letter from a legislator plus a spokesman's statement of deliberation, not an executive order, a statute, a veto, or an IRS advance election. New Mexico has not opted in, and no status-changing action has occurred. What §25F actually offers, once a state participates, is a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit of up to $1,700 per taxpayer for donations to qualified scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs). Those SGOs then award scholarships to families earning up to 300% of area median income. The credit was created in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed in July 2025, and its defining feature is that it only functions in states that affirmatively opt in. New Mexico is currently among the states that have not, which is why Dow's pressure campaign and the governor's posture both matter.

For donors and prospective SGO operators in New Mexico, the practical reality for now is that the state is non-participating, so New Mexico taxpayers cannot yet route §25F-eligible donations to in-state organizations. The governor's stated sticking point, Treasury guidance on “the flexibility of the funding,” is the kind of administrative detail that has kept several Democratic-led states in a holding pattern, a dynamic we track in our coverage of how Democratic governors are splitting on §25F. It contrasts with early movers like Virginia, where Glenn Youngkin made his state the first to opt in, and with later Democratic adopters such as New York under Gov. Kathy Hochul, which shows the partisan line is not absolute. New Mexico's current status, and every other state's, is tracked on our New Mexico state page and the national participation map.

Operators thinking about standing up one of New Mexico's first SGOs, so the infrastructure exists if and when the state elects in, can review how the organizations work in our explainers and see the current national landscape in the SGO directory. The back-office work of donor intake, eligibility verification against the area-median-income threshold, and scholarship disbursement can be run on software built specifically for §25F, which lets a small team be ready to operate the moment a state's election takes effect rather than scrambling afterward.

The forward question is whether the Treasury information Lujan Grisham is waiting on, paired with continued legislative pressure from Dow and others, converts “actively considering” into an actual opt-in before the program goes live. New Mexico also has a 2026 election cycle ahead, which means the decision could ultimately fall to the current governor or her successor. For now the signal is directional rather than decisive: a Republican lawmaker's letter has pulled a Democratic governor from refusal to deliberation, and whether that becomes a federal advance election with the IRS is the measure that will matter.