Reimagining Albuquerque

Southern New Mexico’s biggest city just delivered a major win for housing, mixed-use neighborhoods, and urban revitalization. The “Realize Las Cruces” zoning overhaul—a landmark reform legalizing apartments, small businesses in neighborhoods, and walkable, mixed-use development—will move forward after a desperate NIMBY petition drive failed to qualify for the ballot.

It’s a victory not just for Las Cruces, but for all of New Mexico. And it’s one our local leaders in Albuquerque, and legislators in Santa Fe, should learn from.

What Realize Las Cruces Actually Does

Realize Las Cruces rewrites the city’s outdated zoning code to reflect modern needs and values. Instead of privileging low-density, single-use sprawl, the reform:

• Legalizes apartments, multiplexes, and casitas across most of the city, enabling more diverse, affordable housing options.
  
• Creates a robust urban zone in Central Las Cruces, with denser, walkable development that invites economic activity and public life.
  
• Allows neighborhood-serving businesses and mixed-use development, making it easier for cafes, shops, and childcare centers to exist within walking distance of homes.
  
• Builds in thoughtful zoning near New Mexico State University, promoting housing near jobs and students while respecting the surrounding context.
  

This is a thoughtful, community-driven zoning reform. It’s what a real response to the housing crisis looks like.

The Ugly Opposition

So why did some people want to block it?

The opposition wasn’t just reactionary. It was extreme. The petition effort was led by Sarah Smith, a MAGA-aligned homeschool activist who opposes vaccines, supports raw milk, promotes book bans, and has a documented history of anti-trans rhetoric. She’s a contributor to the fringe-right New Mexico Sun and was recently dubbed “New Mexico’s Own Space Karen” by Progress Now NM.

Smith’s organizing arm, the so-called Coalition of Conservatives in Action, launched a signature campaign riddled with misinformation. Reports from local media and residents allege the group lied about what Realize Las Cruces would allow, claiming it would destroy “neighborhood character,” enable industrial businesses next to homes, and was being “rushed” by an unaccountable council. In reality, the reforms had been years in the making and were approved by the Las Cruces City Council in a supermajority vote.

Their campaign leaned heavily on tired NIMBY buzzwords like “preserving established neighborhoods” and claimed without irony that the city council was undemocratic despite being elected representatives acting on long-discussed policy.

Thankfully, the petition fell short.

Procedural Tantrums and Victim Politics

At today’s City Council meeting (May 19, 2025), Sarah Smith once again tried to bend the rules. Despite public comment typically being limited to two minutes, the mayor generously granted her three. Still unsatisfied, Smith demanded seven minutes—insisting that the city had violated her due process rights by not letting her collect signatures electronically and by misleading her during training.

It’s a familiar NIMBY playbook: when the facts don’t support you, claim procedural victimhood.

Smith’s colleagues joined in, attacking the city clerk’s methodology for validating signatures, even though the clerk simply followed longstanding practices used across the country. The same practices that keep public referenda credible and transparent. Rather than take accountability for their own disorganization, they blamed city staff, calling them “burdensome” for doing their jobs. One volunteer while commenting seemed not to realize that he had openly stated he violated the law by helping others sign the petition.

It was entitlement dressed up as grievance. And it failed.

A Generational Divide on Full Display

If the council meeting made anything clear, it’s this: Realize Las Cruces has generational momentum behind it.

Young residents—far younger than the opponents—came out in force to support the zoning overhaul. They spoke about how Realize gives them hope in a city too long defined by car-centric design, housing scarcity, and exclusionary politics. One supporter said it plainly: “The worst part about Las Cruces is its auto-centric design.” Another called on councilors to recognize that “the future needs to be a walking city.”

Proponents didn’t just speak from personal frustration—they came prepared. They explained how signature validation protocols protect democracy, how Realize had majority support citywide, and how critics were hypocritical in demanding leniency for their petition effort while endorsing strict voting rules elsewhere.

Others directly challenged the idea that “public input” should only come from those with time and money to attend council meetings. Nurses, shift workers, and young renters rarely get counted in these processes—and yet they are the ones who need zoning reform the most. Realize serves the people who don’t get catered to in the current system.

Some speakers even took the high road, pointing out that Realize Las Cruces addresses many of the concerns raised by opponents—offering a better sense of community, more walkable streets, and a stronger local economy in the face of federal funding cuts. They framed the reform as both fiscally responsible and compassionate.

And then there was the opposition: one speaker lamenting that a new building might obstruct their mountain view. Another questioning whether council was “really allowing people’s opinions to be heard”—while speaking in public, during a council meeting.

It was a generational and philosophical divide laid bare: hope versus fear. Inclusion versus entitlement. The future versus the past.

Council Fired Back—with Facts and Fire

Realize Las Cruces didn’t just squeak by. It passed overwhelmingly, with only one dissenting vote, and councilors didn’t hold back in calling out the bad-faith tactics used by the opposition.

Councilor Bencomo drew a clear line between the petition effort and national anti-democratic narratives:

“After the Big Lie of 2020, I’m not shocked by what I’m hearing here today—‘I lost, so it must have been unfair.’”

She praised city staff and the city clerk’s office for acting with professionalism and integrity and didn’t mince words about the petitioners’ misleading flyer campaign:

“You lie saying gas stations will be allowed in neighborhoods. You lie that developers won’t have to pay for parks. And then you say you’re not against affordable housing while distributing anti-apartment flyers? That’s a lie too.”

Councilor Bencomo closed with a searing truth rarely said aloud by elected officials:

“If you signed this petition because you are inherently against multifamily housing and diverse housing going up in good neighborhoods with access to parks, I would ask you to consider where your segregationist tendencies come from.”

Councilor Corran followed with an emotional account of residents feeling menaced by signature-gatherers and told a story of how one neighbor’s ADU project was delayed, costing him thousands in material increases. She also pointed out the hypocrisy of demanding a 400-page zoning reform be put to a public vote while showing no interest in budget hearings.

Councilor Graham reflected on her full-term commitment to the project:

“When I look at how big the challenges are for our community… creating more inclusive zoning is one of the few places I feel I can have a tremendous impact.”

Councilor Flores invoked her own lived experience growing up in segregation, saying she could recognize coded exclusion when she saw it:

“It’s like Chicken Little saying the sky is falling when it is not falling… and some of you, frankly, come across like fear-mongering church-attenders who just don’t want people who aren’t like you living near you. I know it because I lived it.”

She didn’t stop there. She pointed out how so much of the opposition’s coded language—about “neighborhood character,” about people who “don’t fit in”—sounded all too familiar:

“I have to say, because I am a woman and a minority and I went to a segregated school in first grade in El Paso, TX, I can call one when I see one. And I think a lot of you—there is something like ‘Ooo I don’t want to be too close to someone not like me’ or someone who isn’t going to be able to socialize with my children. You see it like the boogeyman living near you.”

“And I know many of you are fear-mongering church-attending (no seriously, you might be) but that’s how you come across. You are a bunch of Chicken Littles.”

She ended by lifting up City Clerk Christine Rivera, whose professionalism and integrity had come under baseless attack from the petitioners.

“Christine knows more than all of you put together, and she was named the number one city clerk in the country.”

Councilor Mattiace was the lone dissenting vote, arguing that the issue was “too big” and that it should’ve gone to voters. He acknowledged the work involved and thanked the petitioners for their efforts.

The facts were also unambiguous:

• The petition effort needed 3,240 signatures. It fell short, with fewer than 2,547 valid signatures.
  
• Hundreds of duplicates and improperly gathered signatures were discarded.
  
• The City Clerk gave a 15-day extension and detailed how signatures could be cured, particularly those gathered between the submission of the initial petition and the supplementary petition.
  
• The petitioners were repeatedly informed of the process, and the petitioner acknowledged that the supplementary petition(that which was granted by the 15-day extension) were separate legal instruments.
  
• Courts have consistently upheld that clerks have wide discretion in validating or invalidating signatures, and that due process was followed to the letter.
  

Realize Las Cruces wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t anti-democratic. And it wasn’t imposed by outside elites. It was a local, transparent, multi-year effort backed by public meetings, resident feedback, expert planning, and—ultimately—elected representatives doing their job.

The vote didn’t just affirm zoning reform. It affirmed democratic governance.

A Model for the Rest of Us

Las Cruces didn’t just dodge a bad-faith ballot referendum. It showed that pro-housing, pro-city governance is possible in New Mexico—even in the face of reactionary backlash.

That’s worth celebrating. But it’s also a call to action.

In Arbitrary Lines, planner and YIMBY advocate Nolan Gray argues that when voters understand zoning reform, they support it—often overwhelmingly. National polling backs that up: majorities of Americans support allowing duplexes, triplexes, and apartments in more places. They support walkable neighborhoods. They support building more homes near jobs and transit.

The problem? Local politics are often captured by a vocal minority that wants to freeze cities in amber.

We see this in Albuquerque every week—from endless appeals against needed infill to hand-wringing over the most modest zoning updates. Meanwhile, the state legislature continues to tiptoe around statewide reforms that could unlock housing across New Mexico.

What happened in Las Cruces is a proof of concept. When good policy meets courageous local leadership, we can win.

We Need More Leadership Like This

Credit is due to the Las Cruces City Council, who stood firm and voted for Realize Las Cruces despite the noise. They showed that it’s possible to govern with vision, not fear. That cities can grow—and become more inclusive, affordable, and vibrant—without being bullied into bad decisions by loud reactionaries.

But more than that, they showed us the kind of leadership we need more of across New Mexico.

We need leaders who don’t hide behind process, who don’t flinch when the opposition gets loud, and who aren’t afraid to call it when they see it. When NIMBYism dresses itself up in procedural outrage or coded language about “character” and “preserving neighborhoods,” we need elected officials who can say, clearly: this is about exclusion, and it has no place in our future.

We also need leaders who are willing to do the homework—who understand zoning, land use, and the deep connection between policy and people’s lives. Who won’t pass the buck to voters on complex 400-page reforms just to avoid tough decisions. Who know that being pro-housing is being pro-community and that being pro-housing means legalizing it, not just talking about it.

Now it’s time for other cities, especially Albuquerque, to follow suit. And if they don’t? The Roundhouse should step in. New Mexico can’t afford a patchwork of stagnation and progress. We need zoning reform, everywhere.

And here in Albuquerque, the lesson couldn’t be clearer. With a mayoral and council election around the corner, Burqueños should look to the councilors in Las Cruces as a model for the kind of candidates we need to support—leaders who aren’t afraid to tell the truth, stand their ground, and fight for the future. We can’t afford to wait.

Realize Las Cruces isn’t just a win for one city. It’s a glimpse of the better future New Mexico could choose—if we have the courage, the clarity, and the leadership to build it.