We called it: Conservatives lost the congressional district 1 special election to Melanie Stansbury in a landslide. We predicted Mark Moores might get 35% at the highest. The Secretary of State reports in her unofficial returns (the election isn’t certified yet) that Moores received 36% of the vote to Stansbury’s 60%. Another roughly 5,000 votes went to non-major party candidates which was equal to an extra 3% of the vote. Not enough for Moores, or the Republican Party, to claim that spoiler candidates cost them the race. Candidates like Dunn and Manning just prove that there is a lot of dissatisfaction with the way conservative leaders and the Republican Party have taken New Mexico (has anybody, for instances, sat down and talked with Dunn about how to become a more unified conservative force?).

Perhaps Ed Young, in one of his comments, stated it best, “Ed shares, “Anything with Steve Pearce connected will be a failure. Fix it, GOP.”

The Republican Party of New Mexico’s reasoning for the horrifying loss was explained away by Steve Pearce’s communication team as, “Low voter turnout was a big factor. Republican voters were angry from 2020—many questioned election integrity—and stayed home. Democrats also didn’t show up.”

Why is the party blaming “election integrity” for voters not turning out? Is this Steve Pearce admitting his GOTV strategies failed? Or stating he didn’t have any because he was peddling conspiracy theories? Or? One Republican

So why was the election loss so bad? And who is to blame? Before the election, we released some potential issues we believe impacted the race and, even more importantly, talked about where the blame would lie when Mark Moores lost. Moores ran a poor campaign. He didn’t have a concise message, but just as importantly was the fact the Republican Party of New Mexico led by Chair Steve Pearce, could have used this to prove his worth and impact the state for good.

One insider wrote a lengthy comment on the result of the CD1 special election, “Saying I am not Nancy Pelosi is a lame campaign strategy. The results [Tuesday] were expected given the incompetence of NMGOP. NMGOP Leadership has continued to use the Democrat playbook of identity politics and that is why Republicans continue to lose in New Mexico. When elections are about identity Democrat’s win, when elections are about policy Republicans win. GOP leadership has focused more on who is the party and what the party look likes rather than focusing on policies of freedom and individual liberty. Going forward republicans need to inspire people to get out and vote by pushing polices that give families and individuals more freedom (i.e. school choice and property tax opt out), that put limitations on political power (i.e. term limits and requiring the sunset of all existing federal taxes and federal laws that violate liberty). The strategy going forward needs to be a Mr Smith goes to Washington approach not a I hate half my constituents approach.

But what did the state party do? We know they didn’t try to help…

Ed shares, “This failure falls directly on Steve Pearce. His failure to get behind Moores and the party’s failure to support him is appearing to be Steve Pearce’s legacy, FAILURE! Time for him to exit and let some true leaders take over. There are a number of electable individuals, but without party support, it will be a repeat of this election,” Ed added in another comment, “Anything with Steve Pearce connected will be a failure. Fix it GOP.”

Steve commented, “CD1 was an atrocious mess and if I were Moore’s I would be ticked at RPNM and New Mexico Republicans in general.”

One Twitter user blamed the state Republican Party stating, “[The loss is a] NMGOP problem, they ran a good ol boy with no public appeal. They should have run Elisa Martinez who has been an out spoken Republican & pro New Mexican for years. They get to do this again in a year let’s see who they support. Also where was RNC money & support to get out vote.”

Bill commented, “I have commented on this page several times, the NM GOP is spineless and won’t be to win much of anything in NM.”

What will party leadership do to improve our situation? And will they acknowledge the large role they played in CD 1? Or will they continue to blame voters for believing their last claims of wide sweeping voter fraud (which has yet to be substantiated as impacting previous elections)? Will the party continue to share the message, “Low voter turnout was a big factor. Republican voters were angry from 2020—many questioned election integrity—and stayed home. Democrats also didn’t show up.”