SANTA FE (AP) – Legislation allowing same-sex and other couples to form domestic partnerships couldn’t clear a Senate committee, and some supporters said it may be doomed this year.

The bill failed in the Senate Judiciary Committee on a tie vote Feb. 2.

It technically remains alive, and a spokesman said Gov. Bill Richardson hasn’t given up on getting it passed during the 60-day session.

“We’re just going to have to keep working. ... We’d like to get it to a floor vote,” said Eric Witt, the governor’s legislative liaison.

“From the governor’s viewpoint this is an issue of fundamental human rights, and we’ll keep fighting for it,” he said.

But the Judiciary Committee would remain a roadblock.

“We need one more vote in that committee to get it out, and we don’t think we can get it,” said Linda Siegle, a lobbyist for Equality New Mexico.

The bill would give certain unmarried couples – same-sex or opposite-sex – the same legal protections and benefits as married couples.

Opponents say it would, in effect, legally recognize same-sex marriage.

“To me, it’s bait and switch,” said Kevin Haney, pastor of Word of Life Baptist Church in Rio Rancho, who lobbied against the proposal. “They’re using one name, but really meaning something else.”

A sponsor of the bill, Judiciary Chairman Cisco McSorley of Albuquerque, disputes that, saying it doesn’t provide for legal marriage.

There was no discussion before the committee voted on the measure.

One Democrat, Sen. Richard Martinez of Espanola, joined the four Republicans on the judiciary panel to block the bill on a 5-5 vote.

Yet another Democrat, Bernadette Sanchez of Albuquerque, was not in the committee room for the vote but said later she also is opposed to the legislation. She would vote against it if it were to come up again, she said.

The measure would likely fare better in the House, which has passed it twice before. But any House-passed bill would have to navigate the Senate, including the Judiciary Committee.

Siegle said even if the bill doesn’t pass this year, it’s a “temporary setback.”

“We’re in this for the long haul,” she said.

Voting for the bill were Democrats McSorley, Majority Leader Michael Sanchez of Belen, Linda Lopez and Tim Eichenberg of Albuquerque, and Peter Wirth of Santa Fe.

Voting against the bill were Martinez and Republicans Clinton Harden of Clovis and William Payne, John Ryan and Sander Rue, all of Albuquerque.