This article first appeared in The Center Square on May 24th, 2021.

As the far-left solidifies its stranglehold on all branches of New Mexico’s state government, more than ever we need an aggressive media and informed constituency to demand accountability in a system proven to produce abuses without. These abuses have never been more readily apparent than in the aftermath of a recent Searchlight New Mexico investigation.

In May 2021, the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department fired two high-level employees. Their terminations came after the two employees raised concerns about the agency’s recent shift to the use of encryption and the automated destruction of public records.

The department recently transitioned to the secure text messaging app Signal to discuss a wide range of official business, including the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the care of children in state custody. Officials asserted that they relied on Signal primarily for “transitory communications”. But what is “transitory” in the context of the Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA), the state’s public records law?

CYFD Secretary Brian Blalock defines transitory communications as “employee banter, routine check-ins between workers and other insignificant exchanges not subject to public records laws”.

However, the New Mexico Attorney General’s IPRA guide addresses exceptions generally: “Because of the presumption in favor of the right to inspect, public bodies acquiring information should keep in mind that the records they keep generally are subject to public inspection.”

Wait: I’m confused. IPRA itself makes no explicit mention of the term “transitory”. In fact, IPRA only mentions a few and very specific exceptions under select qualified circumstances where a record is not to be disclosed. These exceptions include matters that fall under attorney-client privilege, certain personnel records, health records, and “protected personal identifier information” such as social security numbers and birth dates, as well as a few others.

These are reasonable exemptions to protect certain information of citizens. What does this mean? It means that no government agency will turn over your social security number to a requester. If a record contains a social security number, the number is redacted. This protects the privacy of citizens. 

And protecting the privacy of citizens in this way is a good thing. One of the greatest freedoms we have is the freedom from interference or intrusion, the right “to be let alone,” a formulation cited by Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren in 1890. Remember: transparency is for the government, privacy is for the citizens.

But CYFD employees are employed by a government agency. Do they have a right to privacy? In the conduct of their job, the law says no.

Obtaining public records from government agencies can be a difficult task. Sometimes the custodians are great people, they do their jobs well, and they make the request process easy. But other agencies put up roadblocks where litigation often becomes an unavoidable outcome

If it was already difficult to obtain certain records, what happens if the agency moves to a platform where text messages are encrypted and automatically deleted? That task is now impossible.

According to the law, these text messages constitute public records, regardless of how “transitory” they are in nature.

The New Mexico Attorney General’s IPRA guide offers insight to contradict the “transitory” qualification: “‘public records’ means all documents, […] regardless of physical form or characteristics, that are used, created, received, maintained or held by or on behalf of any public body and relate to public business, whether or not the records are required by law to be created or maintained”.

With CYFD setting a dangerous precedent, the governor’s office offered similar advice. “Every single text message that you send or receive likely qualifies as a ‘transitory record,’” the official guidance counsels. “We recommend that you delete all text messages which are ‘transitory records’ every ten days. You may delete them more often if you wish.”

This reminds me of George Orwell’s memory holes from his groundbreaking novel 1984:

“When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.”

Well, it’s 2021 and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the obligation to provide these records to requesters has not been absolved. Denying access to records, defaming those who stand up, and delaying a solution to the problem undermines the already troubled credibility of government institutions and their leaders.

Let us conclude with the most important question of all: why would records need to be destroyed if there wasn’t something to hide?

Patrick Brenner is the Vice President of the Rio Grande Foundation, New Mexico’s free-market research institute and think tank. He leads the Foundation’s open government and second amendment efforts.

It was big news over the weekend not just in New Mexico, but around the nation that Virgin Galactic managed to get a test flight to space for the first time.

This is good news for anyone who wants to see paid tourism space flights from Spaceport America (and we at the Rio Grande Foundation are in that group), but we are STILL a very long way from the facility fulfilling its stated purpose. And even THAT doesn’t justify the construction of such a facility on the New Mexico taxpayers’ dime.

The company will next perform a flight that will include two pilots as well as four company employees in the cabin, testing the seats and cabin features that will be used for later commercial flights.

That will be followed by a third test flight with company founder Richard Branson on board. A fourth flight will be a commercial one for the Italian Air Force, carrying several Italian payload specialists doing microgravity research.

If that 4th flight is successful we’ll see when/if manned space tourism flights move forward.

And, in separate but related news, there was our fully-vaccinated Gov. MLG at the launch outdoors wearing a mask in what can only be described as an attempt to undermine faith in the vaccines.

The following appeared at National Review on May 24, 2021.

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released population data showing how the population of America and its 50 states had shifted between 2010 and 2020. As has been the case for decades, Midwestern “Rust Belt” states overall lost representation, while fast-growing states in the Southwest gained seats (Texas added two and Colorado one). For the first time ever, California actually lost a congressional seat.

Yet overlooked by the national media in all of this was what can only be described as the impending creation of a population “donut hole” in the otherwise fast-growing Southwest — that is, my home state of New Mexico.

While Utah and Arizona didn’t add congressional seats as New Mexico’s other neighbors Colorado and Texas did, both states saw double-digit population growth for the decade. New Mexico’s population, on the other hand, grew at just 2.8 percent over that period. That puts the state on par with Vermont and just ahead of Maine, at 2.6 percent.

When neighboring Utah grows at 18.4 percent and Texas grows by 15.9 percent — and your own state’s population barely increases — there must be a problem. Hint: It’s not the weather. A variety of factors have been driving Americans to move from the Northeast to the Southwest, including the search of better weather. But New Mexico’s is unparalleled. It is sunnier than Florida and doesn’t have the oppressive 120-degree summer heat of Phoenix. And it really is a “dry” heat without the muggy humidity of Texas.

As if New Mexico’s minuscule 2.8 percent population growth was not pathetic enough, the details are even more troubling. Over the decade, New Mexico, a state with just over 2 million people, gained 103,506 people over the age of 65. Clearly, the state’s weather, inexpensive housing, and unique cultural offerings are attractive to a certain segment of retirees.

On this week’s interview, Paul sits down with Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Iowa. Muller was in town to speak to the lawyer’s chapter of the Federalist Society of New Mexico. Muller’s expertise is in election law, an area that has gained incredible attention and controversy in recent years. Was the 2020 election “stolen”? How widespread was fraud? What about states that altered their election laws in the waning days before the election?

Determining how much school districts spend on a per-student basis can be a challenging process. According to newly-released data from the US Census Bureau, New Mexico spends $10,177 per-student. That is a higher number than any of our neighbors with the exception of Colorado.

Of course, spending by district varies and we tend to believe that the US Census Bureau is not capturing the full number. Recently, we asked four of New Mexico’s largest school districts for “the District’s annual budget for the 2019-2020 school year” and “student population for the same year.”

Needless to say, the numbers came back quite a bit higher per-pupil than what the Census Bureau data reflects. Needless to say, education spending data are  somewhat opaque even when you have it from the Census Bureau and there are districts in New Mexico that spend MUCH more than $10,177 per person.

APS data is posted online. 

Their annual budget is: $1,475,755,646 spent over 79,366 students

Here is Las Cruces schools data. The District spent $430,295,149 over 24,648 students

Here is Rio Rancho schools budget. Here is their student population. The District spent $309,216,222 over 17,212 students

Here is the  Santa Fe Schools budget and here is the  student population data.

The District spent $311,136,965 over 12,249 students.

Back in 2017 the Rio Grande Foundation led a successful effort to stop a new 2 cent per gallon tax on gasoline.  You can read the text of the ordinance which voters will have the chance to vote on in November, 2022. Not much has changed with regard to the specifics of this ordinance as opposed to the 2017 version. Here are a few points that need to be considered:

• Gas taxes are “regressive.” A new gas tax will affect a large number of low-income families;
• As the ordinance is written, the tax would be used to “rehabilitate transportation systems.” This could mean directly supporting or allowing existing dollars to be diverted to the controversial Albuquerque Rapid Transit program and the city bus system. Any gas tax paid by motorists should at least be dedicated to improving and expanding Albuquerque’s roads;
• A significant portion of the money generated by the tax will be spent on the creation of a collection and auditing apparatus. Some of the revenue created would have to be spent on additional bureaucracy to collect, audit and set up an appeals process relating to the new tax.

Finally, while it wasn’t as much of an issue back in 2017, with the Biden Administration and State policymakers making a headlong push for electric vehicles, it would seem that taxing drivers of gasoline vehicles is patently unfair. The predominantly wealthy drivers of electric vehicles MUST be included in any real effort to increase roads funding.

The leftist faculty at New Mexico’s largest university (UNM) are agitating for the school to “divest” itself from fossil fuels. RGF has PLENTY of issues with UNM, but we’ll just leave the following comments from a 2017 interview with the former president of the school Chaouki Abdallah, “UNM has these spires of excellence, best in the world or top five, but like everything else around this state, the average is bad because you have to make sure everyone is taken care of.”

“Our higher ed spending is more than most other states; the trouble is we don’t spend it wisely and (we) spread it across so many entities. We do need a plan.”

While divesting from oil and gas is more symbol than substance, what if New Mexico’s oil and gas revenues were “divested” from UNM? According to a report from the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, UNM (just main campus) received $205,157,300 in FY 20 with the oil and gas industry providing about 1/3rd of that or $68,727,696.

Set aside all the ways in which UNM works to both directly (divestment) and indirectly (global warming hysteria and left wing indoctrination) undermine its largest source of revenue, New Mexico’s higher education system needs serious reform.

The Albuquerque Journal will hopefully include some follow-up on its recent report on literacy which left out ANY realistic discussion of the school system in New Mexico.

But, at the Rio Grande Foundation we are serious about finding ways to improve educational outcomes and a state that many New Mexicans use to say New Mexico is NOT at the “bottom of the barrel” is Mississippi. Well, as it would happen, Mississippi is leaving New Mexico in the dust when it comes to arguably the most important literacy measure, 4th grade reading scores. You can see the comparison of NAEP scores for the two states below:

What is happening to dramatically improve outcomes in Mississippi schools? For starters they are focusing on it, but this article which discusses the fact that North Carolina is considering adopting reforms from Mississippi provides evidence that Mississippi’s success is turning some heads.

Finally, here are the details on Mississippi’s “LETR’s” system of reading education.

The Albuquerque Journal ran two stories on Sunday and one in today’s (Monday’s) paper about New Mexico’s literacy (really illiteracy) problem. On one hand this is exactly the kind of in-depth reporting that make daily newspapers like the Journal useful, but on the other hand the actual reporting is also what makes the media in general so frustrating.

Three stories in and there is

• No significant discussion of New Mexico’s troubled school system.
• Also, no discussion has been included at this point of Gov. Susana Martinez’s efforts to eliminate social promotion of 3rd graders who can’t read or the unions’ (successful) fight to stop that policy from being imposed.
• Nothing addressing how New Mexico’s unions fought to keep students out of classrooms over the past year and the potential impacts of THAT on New Mexico literacy levels;

Yes, New Mexico faces challenges in improving literacy, but ALL states face challenges. I sincerely hope the ABQ Journal looks at what other states are doing to (successfully) improve literacy outcomes.

The following is a press release from the New Mexico chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors.  The Rio Grande Foundation was vehemently opposed to the County’s adoption of the rule.

The Associated Builders and Contractors of New Mexico is among plaintiffs filing suit challenging Bernalillo County’s community workforce agreement ordinance which would require local contractors to execute a Project Labor Agreement, as a condition of winning taxpayer funded public works construction contracts that exceed $7 million.

This corrupt ordinance requires contractors to employ union labor or force employees to become dues-paying union members. It also compels contractors to pay into a union pension and healthcare fund while working on a county construction project. “

This scheme is a handout for organized labor forced upon our construction community and workforce, more than 90% of which chooses not to join a union.” said ABC New Mexico President & CEO, Carla Kugler. “Employees will never see the benefits of this ordinance unless they stay unionized.” “Mandating PLAs is nonsense, discriminates against non-union firms and workers and is anti-competitive, unfair and a violation of state and federal law.”

Bottom Line: The county’s community workforce agreement rigs the bidding process for New Mexico’s construction community by violating the fundamental rights of contractors, subcontractors, and their employees under the first and fourteenth amendments and the National Labor Relations Act.

Project labor agreements drive up the costs for construction projects. Studies of government mandated PLAs in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Ohio found that PLAs increased the costs on non-federal projects funded by federal, state, and local tax dollars perhaps more than 20% per project, needlessly cost hardworking taxpayers. Twenty-four states have outlawed or restricted government-mandated PLAs, ensuring fair and open competition on taxpayer-funded projects and ultimately resulting in savings to taxpayers and more opportunities and jobs for all qualified local small businesses, minorities, and women in the construction
industry.

The lawsuit seeks to permanently prohibit the county from enforcing its community workforce agreement. Associated Builders and Contractors is a national construction industry trade association representing more than 21,000 members. Founded on the merit shop philosophy to provide
equal opportunities to all contractors and workers. ABC works to help employer members develop people, win work and deliver that work safely, ethically and profitability for the betterment of the communities in which ABC and its members work.

The COVID rules imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and State of New Mexico continue to evolve rapidly regardless of the science, but again there has been a major change to the rules. Now, according to the latest rules, masks have been dropped as a requirement for fully vaccinated people. This is for indoors as well as outdoors. Gov. Lujan Grisham has adhered to these new guidelines.

This is mostly good news, but there are a few problems:

1. Children are STILL required to wear masks because most of them have not been vaccinated and the vaccines have not been approved for children. This is hugely problematic and will require pushback from parents and school officials, especially non-public schools;
2. For no reason whatsoever the FAA (and other public transportation modes) are continuing to require masks;
3. Many businesses, especially major corporations, will likely attempt to keep mask mandates in place.

On this week’s interview, Paul talks to Charles Sullivan. Sullivan is a New Mexico-based retired attorney and writer at the popular political website American Thinker. You can read some of Sullivan’s articles here.

A fast-growing list of Republican-led states are saying “thanks, but no thanks” to the Biden Administration’s misguided unemployment supplement.

According to CNBC the list is now 14 states that have rejected the additional unemployment money which Rio Grande Foundation and others have argued is keeping Americans from rejoining the workforce.

The states include Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming.

A separate article from the UK Daily Mail had fantastic data but it became outdated based on the number of states continuing to grow rapidly.

The overall article is fantastic with numerous details on the economic harm of paying people to stay home and not work. While it will be a long time (never) before New Mexico’s leftist governor rejects what she considers “free” money, the number of conservative-led states is growing and it would seem that several Republican-led governors could still take action.

As has been widely-reported, New Mexico businesses cannot fill jobs while the State continues to have the 3rd-highest unemployment rate in the nation.

According to the Daily Mail the average U.S. salary for an individual in 2019 was $31,133. This means the average Americans could earn more money in coronavirus-era benefits instead of going back to work.  The following chart from the piece does a great job of illustrating how attractive staying on unemployment with the $300 supplement is relative to other options:

The following is from political commentator Joe Monahan as pertains to statements that Democrat Melanie Stansbury made in relation to military spending and the potential impact on New Mexico.

The following statements are all true:

1. Stansbury didn’t actually answer the question;
2. From an economic perspective the size and spending at New Mexico’s national labs is unnecessary and unsustainable and ultimately sucks necessary resources and talent away from New Mexico’s relatively tiny private sector;
3. Stating as such is poison for political candidates of both parties who universally agree that already federally-reliant New Mexico should receive even more money from Washington.

On this week’s podcast conversation, Paul and Wally discuss the latest revisions MLG has made to her emergency orders.

While nearly all counties are in Turquoise, Chaves County remains in the yellow for some hard-to-understand reason.

The disappointing national jobs report and rise in unemployment appears to have been caused by President Biden’s overly-generous extended unemployment benefits.

New Mexico’s unemployment rate is 8.3% which is the third-highest in the nation, but businesses are having real issues finding workers. To her credit, Gov. Lujan Grisham has reinstated a requirement that those on unemployment actually search for a job as a condition of receiving unemployment benefits. But, Montana and South Carolina are really tackling the issue by eliminating the added unemployment benefits. Montana is giving workers a bonus after they keep a job for 4 weeks. 

New Mexico oil and gas royalties set a monthly record on STATE lands.

According to a Bloomberg piece, the US will need a lot of land for Biden’s zero-carbon economy. Already government policies vastly inflate the amount of land needed for energy production.

In a shorter (10 minutes) adendum podcast Larry Behrens is head of Power the Future New Mexico. Paul and Larry discuss Gov. Lujan Grisham’s planned ozone restrictions which target the oil and gas industry in NM.

As RGF has noted recently, Gov. Lujan Grisham and other New Mexico Democrats perform a daily “balancing act” between their left-wing base which opposes oil and gas outright and economic reality which is that New Mexico is heavily-dependent on the Industry for jobs and tax revenues.

The Gov. recently outlined new rules regulating ozone which can be a pollutant at high levels. Details of those rules can be found here. These rules, if adopted, are just the latest means of imposing new regulations on the Industry, but are they needed? How bad is the ozone problem in New Mexico and specifically in the oil and gas regions of our State?

According to the American Lung Association, New Mexico’s oil patch is nowhere to be found among the 25 most-polluted areas of the US when it comes to ozone (Las Cruces is considered part of the El Paso region):

Furthermore, according to other data from the Lung Association, Doña Ana County actually has by far the highest number of high ozone days of any area of New Mexico. That part of the State produces no oil and gas and is not downwind of production.

Nationwide ozone as an environmental problem appears to be on the decline. According to the US EPA ozone in urban areas has declined dramatically over the last two decades:

Furthermore, with most of New Mexico’s oil and gas industry in rural areas, the EPA finds that ozone has declined even farther from a lower starting point:

Public comment is not open yet.

New Mexico’s counties are required to provide various public records. Unfortunately the process of requesting many of those records is onerous. That’s where the Rio Grande Foundation comes in.

We have requested, received, and published public payroll records and contracts for New Mexico counties. You can find that information here.

To their credit the following counties publish payrolls and other information online to be accessed by the public at any time:

Bernalillo County

Sandoval County

Santa Fe 

Over the winter the RGF took a drive through various “scenic” areas of Albuquerque. The short clip below is what you might see on a typical commute into downtown.

The Rio Grande Foundation is happy to see Gov. MLG (finally) moving to reopen New Mexico by bringing more counties into the Turquoise (most free) level in her recently-released framework. But we have never bought into her concept and consider the data below one of the reasons why.

The Gov.’s framework is based on three basic data sets outlined below. Broadly speaking, for the first two (case rate and positivity) lower is better while a higher vaccination rate is better.

But, to indicate how senseless the entire system is, take a look at the three real-world counties below. Two of the three are “turquoise” while one of them is “yellow.” Which one is it? Does it make any sense whatsoever? We say no and explain below.

Check out the actual county data cut-and-pasted below. We don’t want ANY New Mexico county to be in a more restrictive category. In fact, we STRONGLY believe that Gov. Lujan Grisham should end the emergency order IMMEDIATELY. But, the data presented below (and above) show Roosevelt County (Portales area) to be in the least restrictive turquoise category while Chaves County (Roswell) is performing better on all three metrics and yet remains in yellow.

San Juan County (Farmington area), also in turquoise, has much higher case rates and test positivity, but does have a higher vaccination rate. What is driving the disparity? Who knows? It is hard to make sense out of a senseless system.

Recently the US Census Bureau published data on a variety of population issues. New Mexico’s Legislative Finance Committee apparently received the data early and had a paper with further analysis ready to go upon the Bureau’s release.

I have included a few charts from the paper below with additional commentary. Most notably New Mexico’s population growth grew quite slowly compared to its neighbors and even trailed the US as a whole. The growth among various population groups is curious. The number of children and young people declined over the past decade, but saw some growth in the 25-44 year old age group. But, the number of 45-64 year olds who also tend to be at the peak of their earning potential and thus pay the highest taxes, declined. Not surprisingly New Mexico’s 65+ population grew faster than any other group by far.  Curiously, and unsurprisingly, migration to New Mexico was negative during the last decade. This is especially concerning because it shows that for all of its physical beauty and cultural uniqueness, New Mexico is not considered an attractive place to live by those who can choose to live anywhere in the US.  Perhaps, one of the problems is that New Mexico struggles with high poverty rates? More troubling is the fact that New Mexico’s high poverty levels didn’t improve much over the last decade. 

On this week’s interview, Paul sits down with Ana Garner a New Mexico-based attorney with NM Stands Up! Garner and Gessing discuss the need for change in the way Gov. Lujan Grisham has controlled the State and its response to COVID 19.

• MLG completely revamps her emergency orders. Overall, the situation is much better. Moving to full opening by late June depending on vaccination progress; Youth sports outdoors.
• Mask mandate changes. More to come?
• On May 1^stafter being closed for more than 1 month, New Mexico golf courses reopened.
• Fallout for New Mexico census, LFC report.
• Passing the buck for NM’s slow population growth.
• Stansbury tells Channel 4 the economy is her “number one issue” yet voted consistently for higher taxes.
• APS enrollment continues to plummet, yet money is not an issue at APS.
• Breaking: In a major economic shot in the arm for New Mexico, Intel will invest $3.5 billion and hire 700 permanent workers for its Rio Rancho plant.
• The Gov. says she will “incentivize” people to go back to work. RGF on KOAT 7 discussing why people aren’t getting back to work despite NM’s elevated unemployment rate.

The following appeared at National Review on May 4, 2021.

Nancy Pelosi’s majority in the House of Representatives continues to shrink. The recent swearing-in of Republican Julia Letlow of Louisiana has taken the House Democrats’ majority down to 218–212. This means that Pelosi has a mere two-vote governing majority with which to push the Biden administration’s big-government agenda.

The GOP will soon have another chance to reduce Pelosi’s margin for error when voters in New Mexico’s first congressional district (which includes Albuquerque and its environs) go to the polls to elect a replacement for Biden’s newly minted secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, a Democrat. Early voting begins today, while Election Day itself is June 1.

The district is classified by many in the national media as a “blue” district that should safely remain in Democratic hands, and as recently as November 2020, Haaland defeated Republican challenger Michelle Garcia Holmes by an overwhelming 58–42 percent margin. The seat was previously held by New Mexico’s current Democratic governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, and before that, now–senator Martin Heinrich, also a Democrat.

But Republicans have faced challenges in candidate recruitment in recent years in this congressional district. The last time they had a truly top-notch challenger was in 2010, when Jon Barela lost just 52–48 to Martin Heinrich, and in 2009 Heather Wilson, a Republican, held the seat, having done so for a decade. With this race being the sole topic of a special election and so much at stake in Washington, this could be a much more interesting contest than outsiders expect.

The candidates to replace Haaland could not be more different. While there is a serious independent contender and the Libertarians technically have major-party status, the Republican and Democrat contenders are state legislators with long histories of voting on important policy issues. Republican senator Mark Moores has been in the New Mexico Senate since 2013. In addition to his prior experience as a staffer for various Republican officeholders Moores played offensive line for the University of New Mexico Lobos.

Melanie Stansbury, on the other hand, was unknown in the state until she ran for the New Mexico house in 2018. Her prior political experience was in the Obama administration’s Office of Management and Budget.

The legislative track records of these two candidates are also drastically different. For starters, Stansbury strongly believes that New Mexicans should have their tax burdens increased rather dramatically.

In 2019, she voted for HB 6, which subsequently became law. Among other provisions, the bill increased taxes on auto sales, imposed taxes on Internet purchases, and increased New Mexico’s personal income tax. Ironically, this tax hike took New Mexico’s top personal income-tax rate from 4.9 percent (set by former Democratic governor Bill Richardson and the Democrat-controlled legislature) and brought it up to 5.9 percent. Moores voted against the tax hike, but it was subsequently signed into law by Governor Lujan Grisham, despite the state having a surplus in excess of $1 billion at the time.

In their most recent legislative session, the New Mexico legislature was back to raising taxes, and Stansbury was more than happy to go along. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and a state unemployment rate that remains among the worst in the nation, the combined forces of New Mexico’s resurgent oil and gas industry and the massive economic stimuli out of Washington again put the New Mexico budget comfortably in surplus territory.

Nonetheless, Stansbury and other Democrats in New Mexico’s legislature voted for and passed numerous tax hikes. HB 122, which failed after House approval, was subsequently folded into SB 317 and ultimately signed into law. Stansbury voted for the bills both times. The bills increase a tax imposed by the state on health-insurance premiums from 1 percent to 3.75 percent — a tax increase of 275 percent. Moores voted against the tax hike.

As if that were not enough to illustrate the stark difference between these candidates, Stansbury joined her Democratic colleagues in the New Mexico House to push even more egregious tax legislation in the form of HB 291. This bill which passed the House with Stansbury’s support would have again increased New Mexico’s personal income tax, this time to 6.5 percent, but (more problematically) would have revised the state’s personal income-tax structure to make the higher tax rates kick in at much lower income levels than under current law.

On top of this, the proposal Stansbury endorsed would have allowed property-tax assessments to increase by up to 10 percent annually if the property was not occupied by the owner. The current cap in New Mexico limits annual increases to the already-substantial rate of 3 percent per year. The measure was intended to target Texans with second homes in New Mexico, but it would have applied to apartment and condo dwellers as well.

Fortunately for New Mexicans, cooler heads prevailed in the (also Democrat-controlled) Senate Finance Committee, which eliminated the tax hikes from HB 291 before the bill passed into law.

These are just the tax hikes endorsed by Stansbury in her three short years in the New Mexico legislature. During her time in office, she has voted to ban local governments from enacting “Right to Work” laws on the local level, and she voted for New Mexico to abandon the Electoral College, saying instead that it should dedicate its five electoral votes to whatever candidate won the popular vote. The latter would have dramatically diminished what influence small-population New Mexico has in presidential races for no benefit aside from her ideology.

Stansbury is a true big-government radical. Her advocacy of big government in the New Mexico legislature places her to the left of Nancy Pelosi. At a time when every race matters in a closely divided U.S. House, conservatives cannot ignore this special election in a “blue” but winnable district.