Executive Summary 

In 2025, New Mexico became the first state in the nation to offer universal child care, culminating a more than decade-long effort led by a broad coalition of advocates, parents, educators, and community organizations. This case study examines how movement organizations in New Mexico successfully led the fight for one of the most ambitious social policy victories in the country despite significant financial, political, and structural barriers.  

Historically, the problems with New Mexico’s child care system mirrored national challenges: high costs and limited access for families, low wages for workers, and inadequate funding to deliver a high-quality public good. Movement organizations took four key steps to overcome these obstacles: 

  1. A power-building electoral strategy: Early coalition efforts focused on public education, grassroots organizing, and legislative advocacy through the Invest in Kids Now coalition. While these efforts built widespread support, a small group of powerful legislators repeatedly blocked progress. In response, advocates adopted a strategic electoral approach, successfully unseating key opponents in 2020 through coordinated Democratic primary challenges. This shift in political power unlocked legislative approval for a constitutional amendment, which voters passed overwhelmingly in 2022, leading to the use of the Permanent Fund for early childhood education.

  1. Identifying funding for universal child care: Recognizing child care as essential infrastructure and inspired by similar policy models in other states, advocates identified a viable funding source in the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund (Permanent Fund), creating a pathway to finance universal child care.

  1. Long-term coalition and grassroots organizing: Sustained investment in coalition building and grassroots organizing created a strong, multiracial base of support rooted in the experiences of working families.

  1. Framing and narrative strategies: Advocates developed clear, accessible messaging that framed child care around immediate economic needs rather than abstract policy arguments. These narratives, delivered by trusted community members, helped build broad statewide support across diverse constituencies. 

New Mexico’s experience offers key lessons for other states. Transformative change requires the alignment of policy, organizing, electoral, and narrative strategies over time. Identifying credible funding sources is essential, but it's insufficient without generating the political will to act. Most importantly, durable victories depend on long-term investment in grassroots power and leadership from impacted communities. 

While New Mexico has achieved a historic milestone, implementation challenges remain. Movement organizations continue to advocate for workforce expansion, infrastructure development, and equitable access. The state’s ongoing efforts underscore that passing legislation is not the endpoint, but part of a longer process of building and sustaining public goods. Ultimately, New Mexico demonstrates that universal child care is not only possible but achievable when movements build power, stay rooted in community needs, and pursue bold, coordinated strategies over time. 

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Introduction 

In the fall of 2025, New Mexico became the first state in the country to launch a universal child care policy. A series of policy changes in preceding years had already raised the eligibility for state-subsidized child care from families earning up to 150 percent of the federal poverty line to families earning 400 percent of that measure.

When the governor announced that beginning in November 2025 the state would guarantee no-cost universal child care to every family regardless of income, New Mexico took the final step in a journey that began nearly a decade and a half before. Under the new policy, child care in New Mexico would become widely available, accessible, and affordable, and New Mexico would become the first state in the country to commit itself to providing child care as a universal public good for its residents. In the first half of 2026, New Mexico doubled down on this commitment by budgeting more than $700 million to child care programs over the next five years and $60 million toward raising wages and establishing longer-term career pathways for child care workers.i 

A universal child care system must make high-quality child care available, accessible, and affordable to all who need it.ii Without significant public investment, the private market costs to providers and workers of delivering care and to parents of paying for care severely limit and strain the families that actually receive care. Other states and Washington, D.C., have taken action to provide child care publicly, though none of have yet implemented a universal program. Federal efforts to establish universal child care came closest more than half a century ago before being squashed by a presidential veto. The COVID-19 pandemic brought child care back to the forefront of many policy discussions more recently, but no federal policy to provide universal child care has yet come close to passing.iii 

So how did a coalition of New Mexican parents, educators, community groups, and policy advocates win one of the most ambitious policies in the country? And what can the New Mexico example show us about the viability of similar efforts in other states? 

This case study explores those questions and draws from interviews with key community leaders, organizers, and advocates at the center of the coalition that won this policy. The case study begins by providing historical context and background on the need for universal child care in New Mexico and the unique conditions that gave rise to the coalition and campaign. Next, it provides an overview of the campaign and the critical moments for building the necessary movement power and political momentum for passing the policy. Following this is a review of the key strategies and lessons from the coalition and the campaign’s success that point the way forward for the further development of New Mexico’s own policy and the potential for other states to adopt policies that establish child care as a public good. The case study concludes with a look to the future and how New Mexico offers an important example for the rest of the country in the current political moment. Ultimately, New Mexico demonstrates that universal child care is not only possible but achievable when movements build power, stay rooted in community needs, and pursue bold, coordinated strategies over time.

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