Today: Dems Debate For Congress, GOP Picks “Most Conservative” Legislator

Published March 27th, 2021 at 9:10 am, Last Updated March 28th, 2021 at 10:34 am

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And then there was one. The last Republican Party’s State Central Committee selected State Senator Mark Moores as its nominee to represent the Grand Old Party in the June special election to select a new Congressperson for Deb Haaland’s former seat. Moores got 40% of the vote, besting local right-wing radio shock jock Eddy Aragon and other candidates.

Moores is ranked the most conservative legislator in Santa Fe. But he’s also been open to supporting cannabis legalization. It will be interesting to see whether he votes with his party chairman, Steve Pearce, who is against it, or with the 77 percent of New Mexicans (many of whom will vote in the special election) who want it.

The complicated path to a nominee. Democrats will host their last and biggest debate this afternoon at 3:00 pm via Zoom.

• TODAY: 3:00 PM: Democratic Candidate Debate hosted by Dem Party of NM. Registration to watch is free. Find it here.

While Republican rules allow the candidate with the greatest number of votes to become the nominee, Democratic rules are more complicated. If none of the 8 declared candidates gets 50% + 1 of votes cast by the central committee’s members in Tuesday’s online voting, the candidates whose votes equal 50% + 1 will go to a runoff the next day and that process will repeat until someone gets a majority. Sound complicated? It is. It also means it is very likely Democrats may not have selected a candidate until late in the week. You can read the whole process at the DPNM website.

For those looking for a little background ahead of this afternoon’s final debate, we made The Paper. available to all 3 candidates who reached out asking for an interview. You can catch up here.

Party vote counters say that State Rep. Melanie Stansbury and State Sen. Antionette Sedillo Lopez are leading in the committed vote counts, but more than half of central committee voters remain uncommitted. Anyone could pull ahead, especially if the race moves to a runoff.

Whoever Democrats pick this week, they’ll face Moores in an election in just about 60 days. That means we’ll start getting campaign mail, text, calls and TV ads starting in… 3… 2… 1…

By the way, while about half of the Democratic field and Moores are busy running for Congress, they’ll also be back in Santa Fe this week for a special session to legalize cannabis. Sources say a bill, based largely on House Bill 12 sponsored by Reps. Javier Martinez and Andrea Romero, is done. The governor made the call official last week. That’s a strong signal that Democrats think they can do this, possibly with a few Republican votes. No matter what, legislators want to go home before Good Friday so everyone hopes this is done in a day or two.

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