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Democratic U.S Rep. Melanie Stansbury was elected to Congress in 2021, after U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland stepped down to take her current cabinet position. Stansbury handily beat out former Republican state Senator Mark Moores in the 2021 election, then Republican Michelle Garcia Holmes in 2022 by about 10 percentage points. In November, Stansbury will face off against Steve Jones, her third Republican challenger since she’s been in Congress.
Stansbury recently stopped by The Paper.’s office to answer questions about weed, world peace and connecting with constituents.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Paper.: Anybody who watches politics on a national level knows that when you’re in Congress, you’re campaigning and legislating at the same time because your terms are shorter. How do you make time for constituents while you’re flying back and forth?
Stansbury: I live here in Albuquerque and I still live in the same place I lived in before I was elected. My life is, in some ways, very much the same as it always was, having grown up here in Albuquerque. I just have a much longer commute and my commute, on a given week, is about 20 hours of flight time and travel time door-to-door, if I go roundtrip in a week. So I try to maximize the travel time, in terms of my desk time and working on bills and working on legislation. When I’m in D.C., I work from morning until night. I wake up at 6 in the morning and I go to bed at midnight and I’m literally in meetings and campaign events in the evenings. When I’m home here in New Mexico, I am out in our communities. Our district now covers 10 counties. We’re no longer just the metro area, I go all the way to Roswell and Lincoln County. We’re basically on the road all the time, so when I’m here, I’m out meeting with constituents. We do mobile office hours, we hold coffees with the congresswoman and go and visit all of the programs and projects we’re working with.
There were a lot of activists that praised you when you called for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, but they sort of added that they hope to see some bold action from you and Congress. What are some plans or what can Congress do to further peace in Gaza?
So currently, as of just a few days ago, I’m a member of the Progressive Caucus. I do support a cease-fire and I believe it should be the top priority in terms of our international engagement in the Middle East right now. I know from the briefings that we have had from the State Department and Department of Defense in the White House, that it is the top priority also for the White House. Now, unfortunately, at the current moment, the parties who have to actually agree to a cease-fire have not. So the question is, what leverage does the United States government have over those two parties — which are the country of Israel and Hamas, who are the terrorists waging war against Israel? I have been supportive of measures that would give the United States more leverage in those discussions, but the parties are still unwilling to sit down. So, it’s a really difficult situation right now. But I do believe that it is the number one issue that we have to keep working toward, so we’re going to just keep working for a cease-fire and peace until it happens.
We’ve seen numerous legal cannabis businesses lose thousands of dollars in products and money, thanks to Border Patrol checkpoints. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said she’s doing what she can to stop the seizures on her end. What can Congress do and where does this rank as a priority for you?
The issue was first elevated for me a few months ago after the cannabis industry had a roundtable here in Albuquerque, and my office immediately moved into action and talked to federal law enforcement and the rest of the delegation and the Governor’s Office. I think we are in lockstep and I know both myself and Sen. Heinrich’s office have been very vocal in engaging the Border Patrol about this. I mean, this is an industry, obviously, that is burgeoning. I was in the Legislature when we legalized recreational cannabis and was proud to vote for that bill, as well as the decriminalization efforts and expungement efforts to support those who had been previously convicted. But the issue that I think our Border Patrol is struggling with goes back to the addiction crisis. New Mexico does have a very large border with Mexico and the cartels and the criminal enterprises that they work with are trafficking in large amounts of substances across the border. Those substances are methamphetamines and fentanyl that are killing our communities. We were told by Border Patrol that the real solution is manpower and technology. There are very sophisticated technologies available to detect the substances that we’re trying to keep out of our communities. But those technologies have not been provided at the ports of entry here in New Mexico, so we’re working right now with [the Department of Homeland Security] and Border Patrol to try to figure out how to get more resources and technology down there. Obviously, we should not be seizing legal substances that are part of commercial activity, that are part of the recreational cannabis industry and that have impacts on our local entrepreneurs. It’s not the substances that we’re trying to target to keep our communities safe.