New Mexico superdelegates could become crucial at convention.

With undisputed front-runners in the Democratic presidential primary emerging after Super Tuesday, prominent New Mexico politicians could face a tough choice — under certain circumstances — at the party’s convention in Milwaukee.

If Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders aren’t able to collect enough delegates in the primaries to gain the nomination on the convention’s first ballot, the importance of superdelegates — “automatic delegates” as they’re now called in official Democratic Party lingo — will take on critical importance.

New Mexico’s Democratic Party has 11 automatic delegates. Nearly all are big names, including Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham; U.S. Reps. Ben Ray Luján, Xochitl Torres Small and Deb Haaland; and U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich.

They are among 771 national automatic delegates who could conceivably turn the tide for either Biden or Sanders.

But a longtime veteran of Democratic Party politics, former U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, said Tuesday’s results make it less likely automatic delegates will come into play on the second ballot of a convention.

“The results yesterday reduced the likelihood that we’ll have a brokered convention,” Bingaman said Wednesday. “I think if Biden can maintain his momentum, the momentum that he demonstrated yesterday, he has a real chance of being the nominee in the first ballot.”

Even if that doesn’t happen, superdelegates would likely back Biden, Bingaman said.

Other New Mexico automatic delegates include state Democratic Party Chairwoman Marg Elliston; former U.S. Sen. Fred Harris, a onetime chairman of the Democratic National Committee;

DNC committeeman and former state House Speaker Raymond Sanchez and Joni Marie Gutierrez, a national committeewoman.

Apart from Haaland, none of the automatic delegates has publicly endorsed a candidate. Haaland in July 2019 endorsed Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is now well behind Sanders and Biden in delegate support.

Luján will not be endorsing anyone in the primary, but he will support whomever becomes the party nominee, said Lauren French, deputy campaign manager for his U.S. Senate bid.

Torres Small — who faces what will likely be a fiercely competitive reelection campaign in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District — also has not endorsed anyone.

“The presidential field is changing every day, and I have not yet decided which candidate I support,” she said in a statement.

Perhaps the least known of the superdelegates, Gutierrez said she had initially considered supporting Sen. Kamala Harris or South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, but both have dropped out.

“I guess I lean more towards Biden just because I’ve met him,” she said. “I’m anxious to see if Bernie comes down here, maybe gives us some attention.”

She said she’s hopeful the Sanders-Biden battle will drag out into June, giving New Mexico’s primary added importance.

“That will be great for New Mexico because we will see the candidates and surrogates and I think we’ll get some attention … no matter how many delegates we have, they’ll want them,” she said, referring to the state’s 34 delegates.

Other state Democrats said the Sanders-Biden battle will be fascinating through the spring.

State Sen. John Arthur Smith, a conservative Democrat from Deming, said he is waiting to say which candidate he might support in the presidential election.

“I am in the middle of very, very strong Trump country, and my take down here, that I don’t mind saying: The Trump supporters would dearly like to be running against somebody other than Biden,” he said.

But other Democrats, such as state Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino of Albuquerque, still say they believe Sanders has a much better shot at beating Trump. Ortiz y Pino said he has been a longtime Sanders supporter.

“The entire Democratic establishment has ganged up on him,” he said. “He terrifies them. And it’s not that they think he might necessarily lose to Trump. … I think what terrifies them is the thought that they would have to make some real changes in the way they do their business and their work. They wouldn’t be able to rely on Wall Street and Big Pharma and the corporate donors that they rely on.”