The Grand Old Party, beaten, battered and belittled in New Mexico for the last six years, might make a top-of-ticket comeback in 2022.
A Republican actually has a better chance of becoming governor of New Mexico than heavily publicized Democrat Beto O’Rourke does of winning in Texas.
That’s not a bold statement. O’Rourke is the most overrated politician in America, someone on the verge of being a perennial losing candidate.
A former congressman from El Paso, O’Rourke assumed he was a Kennedy-esque figure when he raised a record $80 million for his 2018 race against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
Cruz made a good villain outside Texas. People across the land had watched in horror when Cruz campaigned for the former president. They pulled out their credit cards and contributed to O’Rourke.
Donors didn’t have to know much about the challenger. Cruz inspired them.
Everything seemed to be breaking just right for O’Rourke. Money and new voters flowed his way.
Cruz won anyway, besting O’Rourke by almost 215,000 votes. Texans didn’t care if much of America despised their senator.
O’Rourke responded to his defeat by running for a higher office. He entered the 2020 competition for president, but his campaign collapsed around Halloween 2019, months before the primaries began.
Without Cruz as his foil, O’Rourke no longer seemed like a Kennedy. He couldn’t draw money or crowds.
After failed bids for president and U.S. senator, O’Rourke has shifted his interest to state politics. He’s running for governor of Texas.
The Republican incumbent, Gov. Greg Abbott, has plenty of weak points, especially his state’s electrical outages that caused more pain and suffering in the midst of the pandemic.
But Texans have not elected a Democratic governor since Ann Richards in 1990. She ran again four years later against George W. Bush.
Bush defeated her, opening a path for him to pursue the presidency.
Richards was a better candidate than O’Rourke. She also ran in an era when Texans were inclined to elect a Democratic governor.
Voters might ask O’Rourke what he has done lately, other than run for one office after another.
Perhaps only another power failure can stop Abbott. If the incumbent avoids a big mistake, O’Rourke’s chances of victory sink.
New Mexico’s gubernatorial election might offer more suspense. As clumsy and slow-footed as state Republicans are, they have a better chance of winning a governor’s office than O’Rourke does.
None of New Mexico’s eight announced Republican candidates is in the same league as O’Rourke for visibility. Only one, former television weatherman Mark Ronchetti, is known statewide. He lost a U.S. Senate election in 2020.
Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham won’t have any serious opposition in the June primary. She has the advantage of raising money for the November election while hoping the Republicans tear one another apart.
The GOP field will likely have to gang up on Ronchetti to stop a runaway fueled by his having read weather reports on television for 20 years. The others have to hope state history repeats the times when little-known Republicans Gary Johnson and Susana Martinez emerged to win the Governor’s Office.
Johnson, a political novice who owned a construction company, in 1994 ousted Democrat Bruce King, New Mexico’s longest-serving governor. Johnson got a second term in 1998.
Martinez, who was the district attorney of Doña Ana County, won the Governor’s Office in 2010. It was an open seat, and she took it with ease.
Voters reelected Martinez in 2014 by a wide margin, though most of her initiatives had flopped in the Democrat-controlled Legislature.
One trouble spot for Lujan Grisham is her handling of the pandemic. Her boosters will claim she kept the state safe as disease spread.
A hard truth is Lujan Grisham shut down small businesses while letting large ones operate. Her enemies list grew because of it.
The governor’s recent decision to sign a congressional redistricting bill that splits Bernalillo County and divides oil patch communities might be challenged in court. It’s the sort of ugly gerrymandering that can mobilize her opposition.
Heavy turnover in key state positions and Lujan Grisham’s management skills will be among a dozen other lines of attack for Republicans.
Incumbency and cash flow establish her as the favorite. But based on modern history, Lujan Grisham’s seat is not as safe as Abbott’s in Texas.
O’Rourke might lead in headlines. Unless they translate to votes, he will lose a high-profile election for the third time in four years.
Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at [email protected] or 505-986-3080.