Texas is annoyed as New Mexico makes pitch to Lone Star state doctors, nurses

SANTA FE — Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is taking her health care recruiting pitch to the front steps of Texas doctors and nurses.

In the newest stanza of an ongoing marketing campaign, the Democratic governor ran full-page advertisements in five major Texas newspapers this weekend aimed at luring health care professionals to New Mexico.

The ads specifically cited Texas’ ban on abortion, with certain exemptions, with the governor claiming the Lone Star State’s law has restricted physicians’ ability to do their jobs.

“I know that legal restrictions on healthcare in Texas have created a heavy burden for medical practitioners — especially those of you now barred by law from providing the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare,” Lujan Grisham wrote in the open letter. “It must be distressing that a draconian abortion ban has restricted your right to practice and turned it into a political weapon.”

The letter ran in the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, the Austin American-Statesman, the Forth Worth Star-Telegram and the San Antonio Express-News.

The ads are part of a $400,000 campaign led by the state Department of Health that also includes online advertisements in Texas and Arizona and six billboards in the Houston area.

State Health Secretary Patrick Allen said nearly 120 hospitals, health care clinics and other employers have now partnered with the campaign, compared to about 36 employers at the start of the initiative.

He said state officials plan to evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign before deciding whether to expand it into other states, but said Lujan Grisham saw an opportunity to focus on Texas with the recent full-page advertisements.

“She decided it was a good time to turn up the volume, and it’s certainly getting some attention,” Allen said in a Monday interview.

In response to the ad blitz, a spokesman for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott fired back at Lujan Grisham’s claims by comparing the two states’ recent population growth.

“People and businesses vote with their feet, and continually they are choosing to move to Texas more than any other state in the country,” Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris told the Journal. “Governor Lujan Grisham should focus on her state’s rapidly declining population instead of political stunts.”

From 2010 to 2020, Texas’ population grew by about 16% to about 29.1 million people, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. New Mexico’s population grew by about 3% during that same time period.

Since taking office in 2019, Lujan Grisham has pushed to establish New Mexico as a safe haven for abortion.

Abortion was a key issue in her 2022 reelection campaign after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, leaving it up to states to set abortion laws.

While Texas and other neighboring states enacted abortion bans, New Mexico continues to allow abortion services without any restrictions since state lawmakers in 2021 passed legislation — signed by Lujan Grisham — repealing a long-dormant abortion ban.

With New Mexico seeing an influx of out-of-state residents traveling to within its borders to obtain abortion services, Lujan Grisham also issued an executive order aimed at protecting abortion patients and providers from lawsuits and arrest warrants issued in other states.

Those orders were enshrined in state law in 2023 by legislators, after a contentious debate. The Democrat-controlled Legislature also passed a bill barring cities and counties from enacting local ordinances restricting abortion access, which prompted a legal challenge that is still ongoing.

Meanwhile, New Mexico has faced a chronic shortage of physicians, nurses and other health care providers in recent years, especially in rural areas. The state is projected to be short of industry benchmarks by 2,118 doctors as of 2030, according to a Cicero Institute report from this year.

In addition, every New Mexico county except for Los Alamos County is designated as a health professional shortage area, according to the report.