On Tuesday, the left-wing paper POLITICO posted an article attempting to throw President Donald Trump under the bus for failed ex-congressional candidate state Sen. Mark Moores’ embarrassing loss to socialist state Rep. Melanie Stansbury in the June 1, 2021, special election to fill Deb Haaland’s seat. Moores lost by 24 points, losing even his own district by 3.5%.
Moores ran a limp campaign, full of empty rhetoric without even muttering the words “America First” or “Trump.” After he got the GOP nomination through a closed-door process fewer than 200 party insiders selected him as the nominee, to the displeasure of the Republican base, Moores did everything he could to placate “moderates,” while ignoring the GOP base, which would have put him over the top to win the election—if he was not a Republican In Name Only (RINO). Moores voted with Democrats on radical proposals, including for the Green New Deal.
“The striking thing about the results is that you would expect, in a special election, for the party opposite the White House to get a little bit of a bump,” said Rod Adair, a discredited blogger and long-defeated ex-legislator. “It was actually worse,” he added. He did not, however, mention Moores’ refusal to embrace Trump to bring out the GOP base, even though Trump is extremely popular among Republicans.
“Nobody’s surprised that Melanie won. I think everybody was somewhat shocked at the margin,” said RINO Darren White, the failed ex-nominee for Congress in the First District, marijuana dealer, and big-time donor to far-left Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
“I liked Trump’s policies, but his rhetoric is toxic, and it hurt people, and I think that Mark got the backlash from that,” said Lisa Torraco, an ex-state senator who failed to keep her seat in a district next to Moores.’ “And the state party hasn’t done anything to try to heal that,” she said.
POLITICO also quoted a few others:
“Look, this is a guy who guaranteed Donald Trump was gonna win New Mexico,” said Dan Foley, a former state lawmaker and regular GOP pundit in the state.
“I think a lot of us—that aren’t saying the election was rigged and that Covid is like the flu, and all the other things that Trump stirred up—are so tired of the Trump message,” said Mark Veteto, president of Me-Tex Oil and Gas and a major state GOP donor from the state’s oil patch.
“They have gotten too close to Lauren Boebert and too far from Liz Cheney,” said Merritt Allen, a New Mexico public relations executive and 2018 GOP state House candidate, on Friday’s episode of New Mexico in Focus on NMPBS.
These RINO outsiders, including Adair, White, and Torraco, at fault for Moores’ blowout loss, continue to bash President Trump and use him as a scapegoat for Moores’ underperformance, even though these same people promoted the unelectable individual to be the nominee for CD-1.
Conservative Republican State Rep. Stefani Lord of Tijeras responded to the POLITICO hit piece, writing, “They only quoted Republican hating Republicans that are trying to belittle anyone who doesn’t think like them. These fringe ‘Republicans’ are a small group who are out of touch with the majority.”
While Republicans across the state, including Lord, are working to promote conservative candidates and causes, the same RINOs appear happy to sit on the sidelines and kick Republicans while they are down. They also don’t mind spilling their guts to left-wing Washington, D.C. newspapers. But when Republicans—and even Moores—needed Adair, Torraco, or White’s help to win elections, they were nowhere to be found.