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.
We need a full forensic audit of 2020 and this race. I would like to see on of the last governors race also but that is long gone. One citizen one vote . My polling location on Coors for the Moores election had the dominion machines connected to the internet ( this was confirmed by the manager of the polling location)
The NM GOP was guaranteed a loss when they chose a weak candidate without adequate party member input.
And to say Moores ran a limp campaign is being too kind.
Time for a serious shake up in the NM GOP leadership, IMO.
I agree! Just watching the commercials, I knew Moores didn’t have a chance.
The writing was absolutely on the wall. Who among us didn’t know Moores would lose big time. RPNM is just another corrupt machine resting on virtually no laurels. I am so done with the RINO establishment. Without a MAGA takeover, NM Repubs will be wandering in the wilderness forever begging for scraps from the Dems table.
I am very disappointed that our own Republican Party is so out of touch with New Mexican’s. It was obvious that Moore’s was not going to win. Electing him behind closed doors was wrong and disingenuous anyone among us knew he was not going to win. RPNM needs new leadership and we need it now.
Gee, you think this was rigged? What did I say? He was a puppet put in by the cartels to give everyone the illusion of “your vote counts.” Wake up!
“These RINO outsiders, including Adair, White, and Torraco, at fault for Moores’ blowout loss…promoted the unelectable individual to be the nominee for CD-1.” Consider Moores’ selection by the party machine for the CD-1 election. Moores got 49 votes, Aragon 34, and Martinez 20. The other 4 candidates accounted for 18 votes. Ignoring the simple fact that 122 people getting to decide whom 135k+ registered Republicans will vote for is ludicrous at best, that no candidate received a majority vote but is expected to win the special election anyway is sheer insanity. The GOP party rules should require that a candidate receive a majority of votes. In other words, there should have been a runoff election between Moores and Aragon as the two candidates with the most votes. Odds are most of the Martinez and other candidate votes would have gone to Aragon and the race might even have had a different outcome. As SLMalls said in the comments above, “RPNM is so out of touch with New Mexicans [and] needs new leadership and we need it now.” So long as Moores can be elected by 40% and Pearce can be elected state chair with 44% (in reality about 10% of the party machine) the establishment RINOs and sociopathic elitist power freaks will continue to run the party. Unless Pearce and the RINOs are removed and key party rules are changed, more candidates like Moores are all that can be expected in the future. Wake up New Mexico.
Some good thoughts in the above to be sure. Rule changes are coming. Take out the bitter, spite focused rhetoric, and there are serious suggestions about what to change. The fear is that Aragon would throw out the baby with the bath water. Aragon is right on the issues, but he too, has this same bitter, spite ridden rhetoric. There are tons of R’s who seek better policies. Neil knows I did not like the voting record of Moores. We need to find ways to focus on the policies.
Rule changes – made in closed sessions that exclude the people affected by those rules? It’s easy to dismiss people as having bitter, spiteful rhetoric – it replaces the need to recognize that being right about the issues is enough. Perhaps the baby (the corruption riddled, establishment favoring, power monger enabling rules and all the blinded and sociopathic RINOs) does need to be thrown out and replaced with people who are not politicians and “experts” but who simply want to preserve American individual liberties and responsibilities, ideals abandoned by far too many in the GOP party machine (though, of course, they still give them lip service). So long as people remain unable to answer “What all is wrong with NM GOP?”, so long as people remain unable to recognize what exactly a RINO is, so long as people fail to understand that America first and special interests, foreign interests and personal greed are direct opposites, the GOP will continue to be a dying dinosaurs club.
Exactly who are the people that decide who the GOP candidate is going to be? What does one have to do to become one?
The people who decide who the next GOP candidates will be are the 0.2% of NM’s registered Republicans who have been elected or approved by the previous “party machine.” To become one, you need to have been elected in Jan. 2020 or wait until Jan. 2023 to be elected unless you can get in with the approval of some local GOPite. In the latter case, there is the question of whether or not your vote will be counted if and when a state or county convention is held. In other words, in NM, “Good luck with that.”