Democrat Melanie Stansbury claimed a resounding victory Tuesday night in a contested special election for Congress in New Mexico, easing her party’s fears of a closer result that could have portended a brutal midterm next year.
Stansbury, a state representative, led Republican Mark Moores, 63 percent to 33 percent, when The Associated Press called the race in her favor, a little more than an hour after polls closed. While that margin was likely to narrow somewhat as additional votes were tallied, Democrats hailed her comfortable win as a sign that their base enthusiasm has not waned and that the GOP’s doubling down on “defund the police” attacks backfired.
"While Mark Moores and the GOP spent this special election doing their best Trump impression, Melanie focused on building our country back better, getting folks back to work, and creating an economy for all New Mexicans," said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
The district, which includes Albuquerque and its suburbs, is deep-blue territory. Now-President Joe Biden carried it by 23 points in 2020 and the former incumbent, Democrat Deb Haaland, won it by 16 points before vacating the seat to become Interior secretary.
Both candidates were nominated by local party officials at conventions. Moores, a state senator and former football player for the University of New Mexico, trailed Stansbury significantly in fundraising and spent far less on TV ads. And neither party committee — or any affiliated outside groups — spent any serious money in the race, a sign that the seat was unlikely to change hands.
The parties used the district as a way to test their midterm messaging. For Democrats, that meant selling Biden’s recovery packages and a brighter post-pandemic future. But Republicans mostly repeated their 2020 strategy of portraying all Democrats as insufficiently supportive of law enforcement.
