The Tuesday Night Catastrophe.jpg)
The worst fears anyone in the GOP could have had were realized for New Mexico Republicans Tuesday night. They were wiped out. In the state House of Representatives, they lost a staggering 9 seats—with a staggering net loss of 8 seats. They started the evening at a 32-38 disadvantage and ended up in the position of a pretty much irrelevant minority holding a paltry 24 seats compared to the Democrats’ 46. It is the lowest point for Republicans since 1996.
This result seemed imminently predictable, as we suggested strongly in our November 2nd issue. There appeared to be on glaring reason—the sheer incompetence of the Republican Party of New Mexico, as it has operated since early 2016. This has been obvious to anyone who understands how state party organizations should operate—and how they should not.
Last Friday’s issue discussed the exceptional political and campaign record of Susana Martinez—the only New Mexico Governor (or US Senator) in history to use her office to help elect Republican legislators, and others..jpg)
Ironically, the catastrophic nature of this Republican defeat does more to highlight how much Martinez was worth to New Mexico Republicans than even a full listing of her successes could do. Like many things in life, you don’t appreciate what you got until it’s gone…
How We Got Here: The Blame for the Disaster? NMPJ’s Informed Opinion
This political catastrophe did not happen overnight. It was the culmination of a sustained effort—a tremendous amount of dedicated, persistent work by a .jpg)
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group of people who virulently opposed Governor Martinez. Those people included Harvey Yates, Mark Murphy, Andrea Goff, Anissa Ford, Jamie Estrada, John Billingsley, and Ryan Cangiolosi.
This group of half a dozen people worked tirelessly to divide the party and organize party members against the Governor, regardless of how hard she
was working to help Republicans—and regardless of the electoral successes she was achieving.
They relentlessly used their political chips, their time, and their titles as Republican officials and insiders supposedly “in the know” to feed and encourage the media to disparage the Governor and anyone supporting her. They all had their own reasons – some of which we will get into – and those reasons were almost always petty and personal: Anissa Ford and Jamie Estrada, for example, were not given jobs in the administration (for good reasons) and became determined to exact revenge.
These ruffled feathers are not unusual—not everyone gets everything they want in a new administration. But what was unusual is the lengths to which these individuals went to attack and undermine the Governor, and the safe harbor they were given by many so-called party leaders and elected officials.
But this group—the Martinez haters—engaged in foolish and divisive behavior—like helping lure Republicans into the trap of feeding off liberal bloggers who demonize any and all effective Republicans. Instead of pushing back against those attacks, these Republicans encouraged the attacks. They leaked their own petty grievances. They committed crimes. They undermined Republicans who would not join their jihad.
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Most of all, they carped and sniped incessantly to undermine this nation’s first Latina Governor—first Republican Latina Governor. Of course, those Republicans who unthinkingly accepted the gripes and ax-grinding of these people are also to blame. Republicans, more than other political actors, have to think critically lest they be taken in by the unscrupulous.
Some of these bloggers are regularly read by voters around the state, so these Republicans were helping liberal bloggers create false images, false spins on political issues, and stories, and worst of all helping marginalize conservative Republicans and divide a party that is already very much a minority party.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Redistricting—the Key to the Legislature
In 2011, New Mexico underwent redistricting. Then-Speaker of the House Ben Lujan had the Legislature pass an extremely gerrymandered set of maps which would have installed a permanent 47-23 Democrat House majority (and a permanent 29-13 Democrat Senate majority). Governor Susana Martinez promptly vetoed it as being grossly unfair.
Speaker Lujan promptly took the case to Court, trying to get a district court judge to adopt his overtly partisan Democrat maps. At the same time, Lujan gathered round him a platoon of Democrat law firms, demographers, expert witnesses and the like. They were leaving nothing to chance. They were determined to persuade a court to adopt a ridiculously unfair plan—the same plan they could not slip past Martinez’s veto pen.
At that point, Martinez became determined not to let a court impose Lujan’s plan without a fight. She enlisted the aid of then-GOP State Chairman Monty
Newman to devise a strategy for beating Lujan in court—trying to achieve a plan that would give New Mexico voters at least a chance of a 35-35 House (and a 21-21 Senate).
Working as a team, Martinez and Newman raised the funds needed to build a team that could match the Democrats’ team. They hired their own lawyers and experts to propose districts that would be fair to all New Mexicans.
Martinez Haters Attack the GOP Efforts
Instead of praising these efforts, the Martinez haters unexpectedly attacked the state GOP chairman for spending money on lawyers. They actually called him a “puppet” for the Governor. Imagine that. This would be like the Chairman of the Republican National Committee being attacked as a “puppet” for President Trump.
(Interestingly enough, for those who know politics, there were no Democrats complaining about what Lujan was doing—the Democrats understand redistricting and fighting in court to impose overwhelmingly Democrat districts. Many Republicans can’t seem to grasp the concept.)
Redistricting was the Biggest GOP Success EVER
Following a Herculean effort, the Republican Party of New Mexico, under Monty Newman and Governor Martinez, won a major victory in court. The district court, upheld by the Supreme Court, adopted a plan that gave both parties a chance to achieve a majority. The Republican ceiling was about 39 seats and the Democrats’ upper limit was about 44, but both parties had at least a chance for the magic number of 36. (The Senate result was less promising, with a ceiling of probably a 21-21 tie or maybe a 22-20 lead, but it still left the GOP in the best shape in history.)
Here's what the Albuquerque Journal reported:
Rep. Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe, a plaintiff in the redistricting case, contended the map “maintains an extreme partisan bias that shifts the playing field unfairly toward the Republican Party for the next decade.”
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Hall’s plan has 15 “swing” districts in which either party could conceivably win. Eight are Republican-majority districts, and seven are Democrat majority districts.
In other words, it is hard to overstate the significance of the redistricting effort led by Martinez. It was not only an unqualified success, without it it would have been impossible to ever win the House (or the Senate).
Yet, "the dirty half-dozen" did nothing but criticize Martinez and Newman, carping over legal fees—perfectly willing to see the Democrats pay lawyers to keep New Mexico a permanent Democrat stronghold, but angry—genuinely angry—that Republicans had fought and won, and that it had cost money to do it.
Billingsley, for one, preyed on county activists, telling them that "money spent on legal costs meant they would get less support." It was, of course, a false narrative. But then the haters were only interested in advancing themselves, not growing the party or the party's opportunities.
Talk about zero perspective!
But when someone's only motivation is hatred, he or she loses sight of all the good that is taking place around them. But, mind-bogglingly, the Martinez haters actually dismissed the victories, put them down, and said they were not worth pursuing.
Nonetheless, armed with maps that made a House majority very reachable (and a Senate majority potentially possible), Governor Martinez and Chairman Newman set about to prepare the Republican Party of New Mexico for the next two upcoming cycles of 2012 and 2014.
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2012
Going into 2012, Martinez and Newman braced for another Obama landslide and laid the groundwork for preventing losses in the Legislature—something they knew they had to forestall if Republicans were to be prepared to seize any opportunity the 2014 Midterm elections might offer. The first Obama landslide had seen the loss of 6 legislative seats—3 in the House and 3 in the Senate.
As we previously reported, Martinez-led efforts in 2012 were critical to setting the table for a Republican takeover in 2014. While they didn’t win the
majority, they strategically targeted and won races in those districts they had to hold moving forward.
The 2012 cooperative effort between the Governor and the RPNM led to New Mexico being one of only five Obama-won states that saw a net Republican gain in legislative seats, even as Obama was winning the state by more than 10 points and by some 80,000 votes.
After being down to 25 House seats and 15 in the Senate, even after another Obama landslide in 2012, those numbers stood at 32 and 18 respectively. New Mexico Republicans had weathered the national storms and preparing for opportunities in the midterms.
So What Happened Then?
Instead of objectively recognizing what had just happened, and the bullet New Mexico Republicans had successfully dodged, the anti-Martinez forces actually went on the attack. Keep in mind that Republicans had gained 3 net Senate seats, and lost 1 net House seat, for a net gain of two legislative seats, despite the overall trend.
In the wake of that triumph, John Billingsley and Harvey Yates actually wrote op-eds in the Albuquerque Journal attacking Martinez and her team, demanding that the party cut all ties. Billingsley wrote that,
“The Republican Party frankly got wiped out.”
But the reality was the Republicans had finished election night in 2012 with 32 Republicans in the state House—an all-time high in modern history following a presidential election year (Republicans now have 24 members after this week). But Billingsley and Yates were not concerned with facts or New Mexico—they were 100% focused on THEIR spin, THEIR story, trying to turn the grassroots delegates against Martinez, so they could seize control of the state party.
Naturally, eager Lefty bloggers (and of course Democrats) parroted this fairly sick anti-Martinez narrative and some lazy members of the mainstream media even picked it up and reported this fake narrative as if it were a valid assessment of political reality—as if it were true.
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Emails and Xerox copies of letters were sent out under the pseudonym of “John Fremont” (which they sometimes misspelled “John Freemont”) attacking Governor Martinez’s political consultant, accusing him of using the Martinez PACs for his own benefit and accusing the Governor of ignoring certain Republican candidates. The letter told donors not to contribute to any of the Martinez organizations and demanded that Martinez fire her consultant.
(Think about that. The funds being raised by the governor, and her framing of issues in a favorable manner for Republicans were the only things that held the line for the party—and even allowed it to have a net gain during the Obama landslide.)
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It was later discovered that the sender of that anonymous email was Jamie Estrada, who was subsequently indicted and convicted of stealing Governor Martinez’s emails.
Assisting Estrada in the theft of those emails was Anissa Ford. The pair worked in conjunction with Democrat PACs, lawyers, and leaders, including the former Chairman of the Democratic Party of New Mexico, to disseminate those stolen emails in an attempt to destroy Martinez.
As planned, the stolen emails were picked up by liberal bloggers and other media, who were more than happy to help Estrada and Ford divide the party. And they were used by the other Martinez haters to mislead and misinform party activists into believing that Governor Martinez was somehow an enemy of the grassroots voters, and someone who needed to be put in her place (wherever they thought that was).
Meanwhile, Ford and Estrada went to work on campaigns against Republicans who supported Governor Martinez, using their “insider” status to get campaign strategy information to help the Democrats.
Oddly enough, despite this record, Congressman Steve Pearce later hired Ford, something even Michelle Lujan Grisham perceived as grossly unethical and dishonest, as she pointed out in her campaign:
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“Anti-Corruption” & “Anti-Crime” Steve Pearce Worked to get Felon Jamie Estrada’s Sentence Commuted; Bankrolls FBI-Investigated Anissa Ford"
(Estrada went to prison. Ford’s deal with the Government to testify against Estrada and others she had teamed up with to harm Martinez and others, allowed her to avoid similar criminal charges.)
Post-2012: Attack Martinez and Her Team At Every Turn
The “stolen email” caper became a central organizing tool for the anti-Martinez group within the Republican Party. Never mind that this put them in league with the Democrat Party of New Mexico, Left-wing bloggers, and everyone else who wanted to see Republicans fail—the Martinez haters put their antipathy toward her above all other considerations.
And never mind that it was IMMORAL— something even Michelle Lujan Grisham would use to shame Steve Pearce years later.
This dynamic led to the election of John Billingsley, a close buddy of Steve Pearce and Harvey Yates, who actually ran on a platform “to shut Martinez out of the party organization.” Martinez and most other active Republicans were sad to see Newman go because he was someone who saw that the 
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state’s highest-ranking elected official could work in tandem with the party to achieve great success. And she knew that Billingsley was simply part of a petty and pointless clique.
Nevertheless, because of campaign finance laws, Billingsley’s “shutting her out of the party,” which he did, did not stop her from plowing right ahead to try to turn New Mexico into a Republican state.
If shut out from the state party by some petty people, she would go ahead and set up her own political operation. She began raising money to do the work for New Mexico Republicans that the state party either did not want to do or was incapable of doing. It wasn’t the ideal situation, but there was nothing Martinez could do about that.
(Billingsley, for his part, inherited a huge surplus from Monty Newman, then proceeded to run the party into the ground and leave it with a significant deficit. Meanwhile neither striving to accomplish anything, nor succeeding in doing anything.)
2013: The Albuquerque Mayor’s Race and New Mexico Competes
The big race in 2013 was the Albuquerque mayor’s race. In 2009, R. J. Berry had been the first Republican to be elected in Albuquerque in 25 years and he was up for re-election. Democrats believed they could defeat Berry and set the stage to defeat Martinez the next year.
The anti-Martinez “Republicans” encouraged R. J. Berry to distance himself from Martinez and to dump her consultant, who had run his 2009 campaign. That effort failed and Berry won a record-setting re-election landslide, garnering 68% of the vote in heavily-Democrat Albuquerque. Even the most bitter partisan left wing bloggers acknowledged the outstanding effort by Martinez’ team.
New Mexico Competes
Another amazing example of needless backbiting and attacks from within the party (actually they were only attacks from the Martinez haters) was in 2013.
Democrats and Leftist organization had been blanketing New Mexico with hundreds of workers hired by “non-profits” to register Left-leaning voters and promote Leftist ideology. Martinez believed that Republicans had to fight back and that not doing so was political suicide. So her supporters formed a non-profit group to raise money to register conservative voters and engage in promoting conservative issues—that group was called New Mexico 
Competes.
That effort should have received nothing but praise from Republicans—they should have been cheering like crazy. And those who cared about capturing the House did cheer the effort. But not the half-dozen Martinez haters.
The Martinez haters actually attacked the effort. (No, they weren’t registering voters themselves, they just wanted to oppose anything Martinez did.) Andrea Goff even went to a national reporter and attacked Governor Martinez and her consultant by accusing them of being involved with New Mexico Competes.
Keep in mind, there would be nothing improper at all with Martinez or any consultant being involved with a non-profit group. This was because NMC was not involved in any elections, so there would be no coordination issue. In fact, Goff did the exact same thing with Steve Pearce, as he organized a non-profit group called GOAL. And therein lies the real issue—Goff wanted donors to give money to GOAL instead of New Mexico Competes.
In the minds of the anti-Martinez crowd, no degree of pettiness or infighting was too low—and it was always their first option to attack Martinez instead of doing what’s right for Republicans.
Goff Hates Martinez. But Why?
What had led to Andrea Goff to leading attacks on Martinez? Again, it certainly looks like it was sheer pettiness. Goff had split off from her business partner, Jessica Perez, and the two had become competitors. Martinez chose to hire Perez, whom she had a relationship with going back years and years, as her fundraiser.
This deeply upset Goff and she used every opportunity to publicly attack Martinez and anyone supporting the Governor and leader of the Republican .jpg)
party in New Mexico. (If you’re wondering what happens with other political professionals in other states, it isn’t’ this—only in New Mexico do we have such absurd levels of infighting within the GOP ranks.)
But this aside about New Mexico Competes highlights a couple of issues. First, it demonstrates how thorough the Martinez-allied operation was at doing everything that was necessary to help Republicans prepare to succeed in upcoming elections. Second, it’s yet another example of the lengths the Martinez haters would go to oppose all of her efforts, no matter how sound they were, and no matter how fundamental they were to Republican success.
2014: Republicans Capture the House of Representatives
The 2014 election cycle was an historic moment for New Mexico Republicans. Governor Martinez won re-election by the largest margin for a Republican candidate since 1926. In the process, she won control of the Republican state house for the first time in 60 years.
How did that Happen?
While the state party was slowly having its entire lifeblood drained out of it by Billingsley, as he hardly raised enough money to pay the light bill, Governor Martinez, left “cut out” of the RPNM, nonetheless on her own decided to marshal an unprecedented array of campaign 
assets—including Susana PAC, Reform New Mexico Now, and Advance New Mexico Now—melding them with a comprehensive .jpg)
strategy that incorporated winning messages on winning issues. Her efforts overwhelmed the Democrats.
Martinez’s efforts led to millions of dollars being poured into legislative races. She brought in big-names to hold turnout rallies which she strategically placed in competitive districts. And her independent expenditure committees additionally sent about 15 pieces of mail in each district in support of Republican candidates—and sometimes as many as 25 to 30.
She also geared her own advertising to messages that were seen as decisive in a number of Republican races. As an example, she left her "drivers' 
licenses" ads up for the last three weeks of the campaign, precisely because the issue was helping Republican legislative campaigns.
Martinez also had a turnout effort that was unprecedented. It included hundreds of volunteers carrying out neighbor-to-neighbor and peer to peer, door-to-door, phone call and personal contact campaigns. She mailed hundreds of
thousands of absentee ballot applications and launched the same numbers of personal phone calls.
The result was spectacular, the capture of the House for the first time since the 1952 election.
Her operation was so successful that the Republican National Committee adopted much of what was called the "Martinez Model" for the 2016 effort headed up by Reince Priebus that turned out to be the keys to Trump victories in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Carolina, and Arizona.
Martinez carved out Unique Role for herself in New Mexico History
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It must be noted that no governor in New Mexico history—in either party—had ever raised money for a team effort, trying to sweep other party members into office. Neither had extremely powerful and influential senators.
But Martinez proved the adage—Sharing is Caring! She also knew that politics is a team sport..jpg)
Like most politicians, popular governors like Gary Johnson and Bill Richardson, and popular senators like Jeff Bingaman and Pete Domenici, raised money for themselves and spent it on their own races. Martinez was cut from a different cloth.
Post-2014
Republicans were in a great position after election night in 2014. There was an amazing opportunity to take this great victory and transform it into permanent political success for Republicans. But that would have required uniting and that’s not something the Martinez Haters, even after what she had just pulled off, were willing to do.
Instead, the anti-Martinez group immediately moved to maintain control of the state party apparatus (broke as it was) and to further push Martinez away. They went to Republican legislators and encouraged them to operate separately from Martinez. Some legislators chose to pursue that fool’s errand and accelerated their own demise.
Meanwhile, Harvey Yates, perhaps the leading Martinez hater, recruited himself to run against a Martinez supporter, Republican National Committeeman Pat Rogers. Yates convinced a host of marginally-involved delegates to defeat Pat Rogers as RNC National Committeeman.
These people even complained to the FBI that Martinez’s consultant, Jay McCleskey, was improperly using PACs and instigated a year-long investigation. So instead of trying to be a part of a team, the anti-Martinez crowd worked hard not only against the Republican Party but against her team in a very personal way.
When it was becoming clear that the secret FBI investigation was going to end without finding any wrongdoing, the Martinez haters leaked the existence of the investigation to the media in order to harm Martinez and McCleskey. Cangiolosi inadvertently outed himself as the unnamed source confirming the
investigation for a Santa Fe New Mexican article that broke the evening of November 6, 2015.
When the New Mexican article was posted with only a single unnamed source, Cangiolosi realized that he had fingered himself with his earlier tweet and quickly deleted it.
In any case, when the allegations against McCleskey were proven false and the Obama Justice Department closed the investigation after finding no wrongdoing, Andrea Goff, Steve Pearce’s fundraiser, again went public to attack Martinez and McCleskey. This played right into the Democrats’ hands.
2016: Martinez Pushed to the Sidelines
Using ceaseless political and personal attacks, including a ginned-up FBI investigation, and sowing constant discord among legislators, some of whom must not have been very bright (after all, they had just witnessed themselves 
becoming a majority for the first time in six decades) the Martinez haters finally convinced enough people to shove the governor to the sidelines.
For us, it appears ironic that while the Martinez Model was so effective in New Mexico that it was used nationally, certain Republican leaders like Harvey Yates and those running the SuperPAC called "GOAL" decided they did not want to use it anymore. Yates was convinced that he and Ryan Cangiolosi could run a more comprehensive and effective statewide effort. They didn't however.
As neutral observers, we see that as tragic. We would be of the same opinion if a similar dynamic had occurred in the Democrat Party
The Martinez haters promised that they had things under control and, as always, they emphasized that they didn’t need the governor, instead continuing to employ personal and petty attacks—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified petty personal attacks.
What did they accomplish?
They hardly raised a relative dime. And they promptly lost the House in a grotesquely and laughably incompetent manner. In the wake of the disaster, 
neither Harvey Yates, nor Cangiolosi, nor Murphy, nor Goff, or Ford, or Billingsley stepped forward to take pride in their “accomplishment.”
The anti-Martinez crowd looked like the proverbial clown car. Instead of having Martinez's Republican-supporting PACs which had had the ability to raise and spend some $4 million to help elect Republicans in New Mexico, they raised a relative pittance.
All that they had accomplished was to kill the goose that had been laying the golden eggs. All because a half dozen people "didn't like" the governor.
Martinez Meanwhile
While the Martinez haters were losing the state House, the Martinez operation defeated Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez.
Martinez meanwhile had been elected Chair of the Republican Governors Association in 2015. As chair, she and her political team oversaw the
governor’s races in the country during the 2016 cycle with great success. After the 2016, Republicans held 34 governorships—an all-time historic high-water mark.
So while the Martinez team was achieving great success in 2016, it stood in stark contrast to what her haters had accomplished.
Still, they learned nothing. While the Martinez team was winning races across the country, the haters were continuing to work overtime to denigrate, damage, and undercut the Martinez team so she would continue to have no meaningful role in New Mexico in 2018. And now we all know how that movie ends.
2017-18
Following their disastrous 2016, the Martinez haters just forged ahead—apparently bent on permanently destroying the Republican Party of New Mexico—and moved to install Ryan Cangiolosi as state chairman.
Cangiolosi was seen by many as not much more than an errand-boy for Harvey Yates. Cangiolosi was something of an easy mark for the Martinez 
haters because he had been ostracized by Martinez—she believed that while he had been on her staff, he had used his position to push for the new UNM hospital in exchange for UNM authorities hiring him in a cushy position with not too many responsibilities and a fat government-funded salary. .png)
Cangiolosi was heavily lobbying Martinez and others in the Governor’s office to support the new hospital without disclosing that he was simultaneously lining up the job with UNM. That discovery outraged Martinez. In any event, Cangiolosi got the job and still maintains it as his current job at UNM. Martinez saw this as remarkably unethical and broke off all contact with Cangiolosi.
Despite claims to the contrary, Cangiolosi had very little experience running campaigns. After Martinez won the primary in 2010, Cangiolosi was installed as the office manager for the Martinez campaign. Prior to that, it appears largest organizational experience was serving as his church’s music director.
This lack of experience became painfully clear in 2017. The Albuquerque mayor’s race was up and Democrats wanted to do what Republicans had done in 2009—win the mayor’s race and set the table for a victory in the governor’s race the following year.
Cangiolosi did a remarkably inept job in that election and Republicans were obliterated in the Albuquerque mayor’s race.
Campaigns and parties are going to lose some races, and sometimes several races. That’s part of politics—it’s just the way it is. But smart political operatives learn from mistakes. What’s most troubling about how Cangiolosi operated is that he apparently learned nothing from the 2017 debacle and did nothing to correct the plethora of failures as he headed in to 2018.
In the Albuquerque Mayor’s race there had been no credible turnout operation. In 2018, he followed suit—there was no Republican turnout effort .jpg)
statewide and the legislative effort was nothing short of pathetic.
While Martinez PACs had previously matched the leftwing groups in advertising in legislative districts across the state, Cangiolosi and the party didn’t even show up in many of these races in 2018.
Similarly, others among the Martinez haters who had worked so hard to discourage donors from giving to Martinez PACs and created their own PACs to siphon that money away—people like Mark Murphy—simply packed up and walked away from legislative races.
It was as if their only goal in life had been to “get rid of Martinez” and “push her out of the state party apparatus,” and, once that had been accomplished, they seemed to have nothing else to live for.
It as if the Yates-Murphy-Billingsley-Goff-Ford crowd had had had no real thoughts of building up anything or building a legislative majority, but instead 
had always focused all their energy on tearing down Martinez. Once they did that, they stopped and had a beer. Nothing more to do.
Meanwhile, their sidelining of the very efficient Martinez political operation meant that House Republicans were left totally exposed, getting hit with dozens of attack mailers and radio ads while the state party did nothing to match it. When you understand how lopsided the advertising was in these races, the results should not be a surprise.
But it gets even worse.
After our last article, former House Speaker Don Tripp commented that our analysis was “spot-on” and added that “the polling Martinez had done was also very helpful for Republicans.”
This was an important component of the Martinez operation and went largely unnoticed. Martinez approached legislative races in the same manner the NRCC approaches congressional races across the country. They would conduct surveys to help legislators develop effective messages and also monitor all the races to ensure Republicans were not in trouble. If the race was competitive, the PAC would engage. If the race was safe, they would shift resources elsewhere. That’s standard for how credible Independent Expenditure committees operate, whether it is the NRCC, the NRSC, the RGA, or their Democrat counterparts.
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So in 2018, to the extent they polled at all, the RPNM used what looks like fly-by-night pollsters, implemented an absurd strategy, and consequently ended up losing all 12 statewide contested races—an historic all-time record for losing; nine Republican House seats—which is a 64-year record; and scores of local seats with good incumbents and candidates, seats that have never been in trouble before.
That’s the difference between a competent and an incompetent political organization.
The sad part for New Mexicans is that all of this proves that this election did not have to be a disaster for Republicans. We lost this election, because a group of Martinez haters finally succeeded in completely dumbing down the Republican Party in New Mexico.
They not only destroyed the party, the poured salt into the plowed fields so as to ensure the Republican Party is doomed for the foreseeable future.
Future Hopes, Redistricting?
To have hope of ever having a Republican legislature, the Republican Party has to have a seat at the table: 1) control of one of the legislative houses; or 2) the governorship., Gary Johnson and Susana Martinez gave Republicans a seat at the table, the ability to force a compromise.
Thanks to the hater crowd, that seat is gone. The Democrats can now impose permanent super-majorities in both houses of the legislature. The next time the Republicans might have a chance of achieving anything will be the redistricting session to be held in September of 2031. And they will only have even that chance provided they win the 2030 governor’s election.
So if you are a Republican, next time you see Harvey Yates, Mark Murphy, Ryan Cangiolosi, Andrea Goff, Anissa Ford, Jamie Estrada, or John Billingsley, be sure to thank them for destroying your party.
The Path Forward
It’s not clear that Republicans in New Mexico will be able to find the path forward. Republicans will need to build a credible and effective political operation. They will need to make winning elections the primary focus of the party, rather than settling petty political scores. They will need to be smart and strategic. In short, the Republican Party organization will need to be the exact opposite of what it was not only on Tuesday, but in the two years leading up to that fateful date.
As always, NMPJ welcomes any contrary opinions.
Email us (at nmpj@dfn.com) with your feedback, comments, questions and ideas.
Intelligent Political Discourse—for the Thoughtful New Mexican
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