New Mexico is a state that is blue-leaning but not overwhelmingly so. MVP Harris only won the state by a 6-point margin in 2024 which was the closest it has been since GW Bush won the state in the 2004 election. They held the governor chair as recently as 2018 and elected at least one GOP Senator from statehood until 2008.
I’m not saying that we are at any risk of losing a statewide election in New Mexico given this year is likely to be a blue-wave backlash to the Trump regime. However, the state definitely is an outlier in the new polarization based on income and educational attainment. New Mexico ranks towards the bottom of many measures along with states won by Trump three times. Yet it has resisted the Republican Party.
Yet even I am surprised that the GOP could not scrounge up a token candidate to face Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján as he seeks a second term. That’s right — the hypothetically competitive in a red-wave race right now is uncontested by a major political party.
For the first time in [New Mexico] state history a major political party will not have a candidate running for a United States Senate seat.
This epic fail of the NMGOP was revealed this week when Christopher Vanden Heuvel, the lone Republican running in the June primary failed to submit enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. That sets up Democratic Senator Ben Ray Lujan to score a second term with only token opposition, if any at all.
New Mexico has always had a contest between the major parties until now.
The University of Minnesota’s Eric Ostermeier tells The Downballot, “New Mexico is currently one of 20 states which have fielded a Republican and Democratic candidate in every U.S. Senate election since 1914.” That year was the first election cycle, following the passage of the 17th Amendment, in which senators were elected by voters rather than by the state legislature.
In the century after it was granted statehood, New Mexico had at least one GOP senator for much of that time. One of them was the late Pete Domenici, whose service from 1973 until his retirement in 2009 makes him the longest-serving senator in state history.
While Republicans haven’t won a Senate race in New Mexico since 2002, when Domenici secured his final term in a landslide, they hadn’t given up trying—until now.
When Lujan won a promotion from the House in 2020 after beating Republican Mark Ronchetti, a well-known local TV weatherman, he prevailed by a surprisingly modest 52-46 spread. (Ronchetti would perform similarly two years later in his unsuccessful campaign against Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, whose late husband was the senator’s distant cousin.)
Four years later, Republicans tried to make a play for the state’s other seat by recruiting businesswoman Nella Domenici, the former senator’s daughter, to take on Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich. Heinrich, though, defeated her 55-45.
That same year, however, New Mexico showed that while it’s a reliably Democratic state, it’s not a deep shade of blue. Kamala Harris carried it by just a 52-46 margin...
That’s not all — New Mexico Republicans also failed to contest two other statewide races in New Mexico. The positions of State Treasurer and State Auditor have uncontested races as well which guarantees the Democratic Party will retain both races.
For Auditor Joseph Maestas, it’ll be the second time in a row that he’s gone without major-party opposition after winning his first term in 2022 over a Libertarian in a landslide. Fellow Democrat Laura Montoya will have a similarly easy time securing a second term as treasurer, a post the GOP last left uncontested in 2002. Republicans, however, have not won an election for either office since the 1960s.
There is a slim chance that someone can still run under the GOP banner. That candidate would need to collect 2,351 or more valid signatures by March 17. The candidate would then need to surpass that number of votes as a write-in option in the GOP primary. There is no word of anyone who is interested or any organized effort to correct this glaring hole in recruitment.
This impacts other races that the GOP is still trying to contest such as New Mexico’s 2nd district and the NM-GOV race. The 2nd district has two GOP candidates that aren’t lighting the world on fire. While there are a couple serious governor candidates, all attention is focused on Deb Haaland as the next governor.
Besides highlighting the crisis of the NMGOP's long-term relevance, the failure to field a Lujan opponent could also hurt their already long shot chances to take the Governor's office in November. That would require a strong turnout and with no branded Republican senate candidate at the top of the ticket, it becomes even more problematic.
NMGOP Chairwoman Amy Barela takes the hit for not having a back-up plan and for not riding herd on Vanden Heuvel's campaign and ensuring the party fielded a contender.
The GOP senate debacle also emphasizes that New Mexico has not just become essentially a one party state but appears to be slipping into a California type environment where Republicans seek out conservative Democrats to support. That has already happened in some instances.
This continues the trend of Republicans leaving seats uncontested and Democratic candidates contesting every race no matter the odds. However, there hasn’t been a glaring omission like this one until now.
Congratulations on the second term, Sen. Ben Ray Luján!
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