The fact that a Democrat won a special election to fill the seat vacated by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland comes as no surprise, according to a New Mexico political analyst.
State Rep. Melanie Stansbury easily defeated Republican state Sen. Mark Moores for the 1st Congressional District seat Tuesday night. Stansbury expanded the margin of victory that carried Haaland to a brief second term last fall, as she won 79,208 to 46,977, or 60% to 36%, according to the New Mexico Secretary of State’s website. Other candidates collected the remaining 4%.
In November, Haaland earned her second term in Congress by defeating Republican Michelle Garcia Holmes 186,953 to 134,337, or 58.2% to 41%.
Dr. Lonna Atkeson
| University of New Mexico
President Joe Biden nominated her to serve as secretary of Interior, and on March 15, her appointment was approved by the Senate on a 51-40 vote. She resigned from Congress the next day. Haaland is the first Native American cabinet secretary in American history.
Dr. Lonna Atkeson, a University of New Mexico professor of political science, told New Mexico Sun that Stansbury’s big win was further evidence of a district that has become strongly Democratic.
“I don’t think it’s a surprise. I mean, it’s about what you'd expect for a very blue district, a district that's getting bluer and bluer,” Atkeson said. “And so, I think this is what we would expect. I don’t think there’s a big surprise that Congressional District 1 in New Mexico, which is a metropolitan urban area, that it goes Democratic. There was really no race in 2020 here. So this was a bigger race in terms of information but turnout was really light and favored, of course, Democrats, no question.”
Atkeson said about 50% of the registered voters in the district are registered Democrats, and more Democrats voted in the special election.
“So it's a little higher Democratic turnout that what we saw in 2020 and basically that's because we didn't see any DTS (voters who decline to state a party affiliation), independents, Libertarians, other party hardly turn out at all,” she said.
In a victory speech, Stansbury said lessons learned from her mother, who worked in blue-collar jobs to support her family, aided her campaign for the seat that represents Albuquerque, rural Torrance County and rural areas that include the indigenous community of Sandia Pueblo.
“When the moment demands it, when our families and our communities demand it, when our country demands it, we step up and find the solutions for communities and we figure it out,” she said. “And that is exactly what we did in this campaign and that is why I am standing before you tonight.”
Stansbury, 42, is in her second term in the state House of Representatives. She finished second to state Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez in an initial eight-candidate field in a vote of the Democratic State Central Committee, trailing 74-43 on March 31. Neither topped 50%, forcing a second round of voting to select a nominee.
Stansbury defeated Sedillo Lopez 103-97 in a runoff the following day to clinch the nomination. During the brief campaign, both first lady Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman and husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, came to New Mexico to campaign for her.
Stansbury is from Albuquerque. She returned to New Mexico in 2016 after working for the White House Office of Management and Budget and for the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. By 2018 she had defeated seven-term incumbent Republican state Rep. Jimmie Hall in her first bid for elective office, and now, she is a member of Congress.
Stansbury strongly supported President Joe Biden — who won the district by 23 points — in her campaign, endorsing infrastructure improvements and vowing to make climate change, drought and hunger central issues for her in Congress.
Moores made the rising crime rate in Albuquerque and support for law enforcement the focus of his campaign but was unable to gain much traction. He also called for ending the state tax on Social Security, safely reopening New Mexico from pandemic restrictions and protecting jobs.
Atkeson said there doesn’t appear to be any message from voters about the early days of the Biden administration.
“I think if we had had huge support for Moores that would say something,” she said. “But when we just sort of have a status quo election that looks pretty close to what we saw in 2020, slightly, just slightly better for Democrats, I would not say that there’s much there. Basically, we’re just seeing a very blue district go blue.”
Stansbury is a “very big insider” in the New Mexico Democratic Party, the professor said, which is why she was awarded the nomination in a special election seen as heavily favoring the Democratic candidate.
“The test will be in 2022 when she has to face a real challenger,” Atkeson said. “But I wouldn't expect her to lose unless there was some sort of inside Democratic fight for a nomination.”
She said Stansbury is viewed as a politician on the left, “very progressive,” as is Haaland. Democrats have won every election in the district since 2008.
Rep. Heather Wilson, a moderate Republican who later served as secretary of the Air Force, held the seat from 1998-2009.
“She was literally the median House member in terms of votes. And that's certainly not the case anymore,” Atkeson said. “So we've moved from sort of a very centrist district to a very blue Democratic district.”
She said both candidates were inexperienced at this level — “and it showed in their campaigns.” But she said Stansbury benefited from party support and “a pretty good turnout machine on the Democratic side here and especially Bernalillo County.”
Atkeson also is the director of the Center for the Study of Voting, Elections and Democracy and the Institute of Social Research.