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The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to put two New Mexico Forward Party candidates on the November ballot, ending an emergency appeal and leaving the state’s signature rules for minor parties intact through this election.
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Shop NowJustice Neil Gorsuch denied the party’s application on Thursday in a filing that came, as Source New Mexico reported, with no further comment.
The order leaves in place rulings by a federal district court and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, both of which declined to order the names added.
The two candidates are Bob Perls, the party’s chair, who is running for U.S. Senate, and Michael Vigil, a candidate for state auditor.
Three other Forward Party candidates did qualify for the ballot and are unaffected.
At the center of the dispute is a disparity in what New Mexico asks of candidates depending on their party.
A Forward Party candidate needs more than 14,000 signatures to qualify. A Democrat needs roughly 2,500. A Republican needs about 2,350. The gap is the basis of the party’s broader challenge to the state’s ballot access scheme.
The New Mexico Secretary of State’s office has pointed to the party’s own timing. In a filing, the office noted: “NMFP formed a few months ago in May. It could have formed at any time — its national party affiliate has existed since 2022 — but it chose to do so halfway through an election year.”
The sequence was compressed. The party organized in New Mexico in May, filed suit on July 15, lost in district court on September 2, and was turned away by the Supreme Court on September 17 — seven weeks before the November 3 general election.
Perls framed the outcome as a return to the beginning rather than a defeat on the merits. “After months of litigation and thousands of dollars and man-hours spent, we are back to square one with a court case in U.S. District Court to be heard in the coming months,” he said.
That broader case survives. The emergency appeal concerned only whether the two names would appear this November; the underlying lawsuit challenging New Mexico’s signature thresholds returns to federal district court and is expected to be heard in the coming months, meaning the rules themselves remain open to challenge for future cycles even though they will govern this one.
