ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — COVID-19 restrictions on traditional campaign tactics are winding down or gone.
That’s clear as both parties contest New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District special election race, on Tuesday, to replace now-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
Rather than hammering issues related to coronavirus restrictions, Republican candidate state Sen. Mark Moores has focused on a defund-the-police message. He’s made Democratic candidate Melanie Stansbury’s support for the BREATHE Act, a Black Lives Matter-crafted “reimagining of public safety” proposal for federal legislation, the center of his campaign and critiques.
In a brief stump speech to volunteers last weekend, Moores didn’t mention the pandemic. Neither was it mentioned at an event for Stansbury, a state representative, through her short remarks or those of her Democratic colleagues in the state legislature.
Over the past year-plus, New Mexico was consistently in the top tier of states with the most coronavirus-related restrictions, and Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was routinely the subject of Republican attacks.
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But now, more than 70% of adults in the state have received at least one vaccine dose, and restrictions are lifting. Republicans in some parts of the country centered their campaigns this year on an “open-the-schools” message, but Albuquerque Public Schools has already opened for in-person learning five days a week.
Moores is tough for Stansbury to attack from the left on coronavirus-related measures, too. He and his wife Lisa own a medical diagnostic testing business, Pathology Consultants of New Mexico, that processed thousands of coronavirus tests — not exactly the kind of vaccine-skeptic or mask-truther that makes an easy target for Democrats.
“My experience with COVID is another one of my advantages,” Moores told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “That perspective is definitely something that gives me an advantage going to Washington, and how we recover from COVID and make sure it doesn’t happen again — that America is prepared for the next pandemic.”
That’s not to say that there are not distinct differences between the two candidates, as well as the two other candidates on the ballot, independent former land commissioner Aubrey Dunn and Libertarian Chris Manning.
“We do need to open up, and we need to move forward, and we’ve got to get these small businesses back so the economy can start roaring again,” Moores said in a debate when asked about the pandemic.
Stansbury echoed the national Democratic line asserting a need to pass President Joe Biden’s American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan. “We need to get New Mexicans back to work, and the way we do that is by supporting our families and our communities, investing in jobs,” she said.
The pandemic did find some ways into the campaign earlier in the race, though. Stansbury was on the air early with an ad attacking him for opposing Biden’s American Rescue Plan and “lining his own pockets” by taking PPP loans for his medical business.
And the partisan divide remains when it comes to personal mask politics.
In Moores’s outdoor campaign event, not a single one of the more than 40 people was wearing a face covering. At Stansbury’s outdoor event, she and her staff wore masks, as did the attendees — some of them double-masked.
In the final days of the campaign, though, the candidates have traded more apparent swipes on their personal connection to the “Land of Enchantment” than on coronavirus.
Moores touts his longtime family history in the state. “My family’s been here since the 1600s. I want my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren to be able to stay here,” he said.
But Stansbury alluded to the fact that Moores was born in Bethesda, Maryland, and moved to New Mexico for a football scholarship.
“It’s critical that we elect someone from New Mexico, who grew up in New Mexico, who believes in New Mexico, who will invest in New Mexico, who knows the science, who knows our communities, who knows Congress,” she told a masked crowd.
Moores, meanwhile, subtly knocked Stansbury for moving out of the state for college and spending her career in the Obama administration’s Office of Management and Budget and as an aide in the Senate. She ran for a seat in the state legislature soon after returning to New Mexico and is early in her second legislative term.
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“This is a self-described policy wonk who has spent her entire adult life working on the Hill,” Moores said when talking about her stated support for the BREATHE Act, saying that it shows how “radical she is.”
