There’s a moment, about 45 minutes into a February 2026 podcast interview with conservative host Arik Kotkowski, when the host asks Greg Cunningham – the Republican nominee for New Mexico’s Second Congressional District – whether his own mother has questioned his politics.
“My mother asked me, mijito, are you going to be one of those extremists?” Cunningham recalls her saying.
“And you answered yes,” Kotkowski replies.
“I said, absolutely, mom.”
Cunningham laughs about it. The host laughs about it. And in most political environments, that’s the kind of clip that ends a campaign. But in the New Mexico Republican Party circa 2026, it’s not a gaffe. It’s the whole sales pitch.
This November, New Mexico voters will be asked to consider a Republican ticket that, taken as a whole, looks less like a mainstream opposition party and more like a window into the post-Trump fever dream of American conservatism. We’re talking about:
- A Governor candidate who embraced a meeting with Donald Trump, proposed eliminating the state’s personal income tax to deliver a tax cut to the wealthiest New Mexicans, and even floated the idea of using toxic oil and gas wastewater to cool AI data centers.
- A U.S. Senate candidate who posed for photos at an election conspiracy event with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon and Mike Lindell (MyPillow CEO and infamous elections conspiracy promoter) – and who leads a secession project aimed at detaching counties from New Mexico.
- A Secretary of State candidate who founded a group to roll back the Voting Rights Act, contributed articles alongside NM’s most infamous election deniers who suggested “firing squads” for election officials, and described her work in explicitly Christian terms on a podcast that ended with the host saying, “If we don’t vote, the devil wins every time.”
And that’s just the bigger statewide races. Below is a tour through the Republican ticket – from governor to the state house – with the documented receipts.
Read it once and you’ll understand why the Republican Party of NM is getting weirder and more grim by the day.
The Governor’s Race: Gregg Hull
Gregg Hull, the former mayor of Rio Rancho, has spent his campaign trying to position himself as a regular guy – pro-business, moderate, with a proven record. But the closer you look, the more his candidacy reveals itself as the leading edge of a national movement with a lot of storm clouds behind it.
The Trump connection. Hull called the possibility of a Trump endorsement “a pretty cool thing,” met with Trump in 2019, and has already received hundreds of thousands of dollars from major donors who have backed Trump. During his tenure as Mayor, the City of Rio Rancho even declined to charge Trump’s campaign $240,000 in public safety expenses for a rally – leaving Rio Rancho taxpayers on the hook.
Would Hull welcome Trump’s vision for a “New America” to our beloved state? It sure seems that way.
Read our full breakdown: The Real Gregg Hull: Call Centers, $42M School Shortfall, and Some Very Weird Policy Ideas
The data center pitch (with bonus toxic wastewater). Hull fully opposes a moratorium or ban on AI data centers, saying it “sends the wrong signal at exactly the moment we should be competing for these investments.” He has also suggested using “produced water” – the toxic wastewater that comes out of oil and gas wells – on facilities like Oracle’s massive Project Jupiter data center.
In Hull’s New Mexico, there’s no need to worry about chemicals ending up in our air or water, that’s someone else’s problem.
The private equity healthcare plan. Hull has openly proposed using state and federal funds to seed private equity ownership of New Mexico clinics and hospitals. His own words from a campaign podcast (21:37): “Can we pair those dollars with private equity and have private equity come in and maybe set up the clinic, and then use those dollars to pay those private equity firms. And then once those dollars are gone, then it’s private equity that’s actually running the facility at that point in time, and you don’t leave a burden on local government.”
New Mexico already has the highest number of private equity-owned hospitals and nursing homes in the country. Hull seems to want even more.
The U.S. Senate Race: Larry “Lead” Marker
While Larry “Lead” Marker, doesn’t appear to be a competitive candidate running against incumbent Ben Ray Luján, he has made his troubling positions and affiliations clear.
Election denial, up close. During his 2022 campaign for Public Land Commissioner, Marker shared photos on social media of himself at a 2020 election conspiracy event with Steve Bannon and Mike Lindell – two of the central figures in the movement to overturn the 2020 election.
The Clements crowd. Marker has contributed articles to an extreme right-wing blog alongside infamous election deniers Erin and David Clements, who claimed the 2020 election was stolen, led efforts to overturn results in Otero County, and publicly suggested “firing squads” for election officials.
The 2023 referendum push. Marker was involved in failed 2023 attempts to overturn multiple bills – including the Voting Rights Act and Native American Voting Rights Act – through a statewide ballot measure.
The secession project. Marker also leads a project called the “Chisum Territorial Alliance,“ which aims to have a handful of counties secede from New Mexico.
Lieutenant Governor: David Gallegos
Lieutenant Governors don’t tend to wield a lot of decision making power, but it’s still worth mentioning that David Gallegos – running on the Gregg Hull ticket – is one of the state’s most prominent anti-abortion voices.
He has compared abortion care to the Holocaust, called New Mexico “the abortion capital of the world,” and claimed without evidence that abortion access increases human trafficking.
If that’s not strange enough for you, in 2021, he also sponsored legislation to explore giving up southeastern New Mexico to Texas.
Congressional District 1: Ndidiamaka “Didi” Okpareke
Republican candidate Didi Okpareke openly supports Trump and said in an interview: “I really think he has the best interest of the country at heart” and “I like how much I’m paying for gas, I really like how much my groceries cost right now.”
While she said that in 2025 – before Trump’s disastrous Iran war drove up prices even further – it still speaks volumes.
Congressional District: Greg Cunningham
Greg Cunningham’s “absolutely, mom” moment is just the entry point.
On immigration. In a March 2026 interview, Cunningham referred to immigrants as “the human invasion” and said he does not believe news media reports that ICE is grabbing regular people (and not criminals) off the street – despite extensive documentation of exactly that.
The church connection. Cunningham appears to be campaigning in coordination with Legacy Church, in apparent violation of IRS rules for 501(c)(3) organizations. Legacy’s pastor, Steve Smotherman, regularly uses the pulpit to condemn same-sex relationships, transgender people, and abortion, and Cunningham has echoed those positions, telling voters that “marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman“ and that his focus in office will be “protecting religious liberty, so no church or person of faith is ever forced to violate their beliefs.”
The abortion pledge. In 2022, Cunningham signed a pledge committing to “ending all abortion” and “all assisted suicide.” When asked in a June 2026 Santa Fe New Mexican interview whether he still holds that position, he declined to answer yes or no, saying only “I will remain consistent to my beliefs.”
MAGA royalty. Cunningham was named by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson as a rising star, and Trump himself said he likes Cunningham because he is “straight out of central casting.” If that doesn’t raise enough questions, there’s also the $7,000 donation to his campaign from Palantir’s Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, who has applauded the Trump administration’s adoption of AI for the Pentagon and compared opposition to data centers to “suicide” for American prosperity. Additionally, Cunningham is endorsed by the extreme anti-abortion MAGA group LUCA.
The 2024 House District 29 positions. While running for state house in 2024, Cunningham also said he would support reinstating qualified immunity for police officers – limiting lawsuits against them – and would oppose Paid Family Medical Leave and increased environmental protections for New Mexico’s land, air, and water.
Congressional District 3: Martin Zamora
Republican candidate Martin Zamora, a Clovis rancher and former state legislator, is running on finishing the border wall, increasing penalties for violent offenders, cutting federal regulations, and standing up to what he calls “radical environmental policies.” He has advocated for tax breaks for the wealthy and fewer protections for workers.
In a June 2026 Santa Fe New Mexican interview,, he refused to say whether he would allow abortions for women who become pregnant through rape or sexual assault. As a state legislator, he twice voted to uphold a 1969 law criminalizing abortion that was later repealed.
In the same interview, he recycled a long-debunked myth about how a Democrat Secretary of State telephoned Republican Yvette Herrell to “tell her she had won” a 2018 race she actually lost by nearly 4,000 votes.
Public Lands Commissioner: Michael Perry
When asked about the Trump administration’s push to remove a 10-mile buffer zone protecting Chaco Canyon from oil and gas extraction, Republican candidate Jeff Perry said bluntly: “I can’t do anything against it” even though the State Land Office manages state trust lands in the area.
Perry opposes the 2025 law raising the oil and gas royalty rate to 25% on prime Permian Basin state trust leases – a change that would generate an additional $1 billion for public schools over the life of the bill. He also supports increased bonding for oil and gas operators but said he “hasn’t researched it enough” to support moving the minimum bond from $10,000 to $150,000.
He has also described renewable energy as “of no beneficial use to New Mexicans” because wind and solar leases return 3-6% compared to oil and gas at 25%.
Secretary of State: Ramona Goolsby
Ramona Goolsby, the Republican nominee, may be the most consequential down-ballot race on this entire ticket – because the Secretary of State runs New Mexico’s elections.
The 113,000-person lie. Goolsby claimed, without evidence, that 113,000 people on New Mexico’s permanent absentee voter list had moved out of state. There are only 59,000 people on the list total, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
The Referendum Project. Goolsby led The Referendum Project, which sought to roll back the New Mexico Voting Rights Act and the Native American Voting Rights Act – laws passed in 2023 to make elections more accessible for residents of rural communities, pueblos, tribes, and nations.
Election denial, full circle. Goolsby served as Librarian for the New Mexico Election Transparency Network – a group arguing to restrict voting access and cast doubt on local elections – at the same time she was employed as a poll worker for Sandoval County, where she signed a code of conduct to uphold public trust in elections. She also contributed 20+ articles to an extreme right-wing blog alongside Erin and David Clements and was named by Clements as an “audit partner” in his New Mexico Audit Force, which was investigated by the U.S. House Oversight Committee for allegedly spreading false information about elections and intimidating voters.
“If we don’t vote, the devil wins.” In a September 2026 podcast, Goolsby described how she would bring Christian ideology to her work and agreed with the host when he said, “If we don’t vote, the devil wins every time.” On the same podcast, she called abortion access “an abomination” and said she was recruited to run by Republican Sen. David Gallegos, one of the state’s most active anti-abortion lawmakers.
The State House: The Pattern Goes Deeper
If the statewide ticket sounds a bit alarming, the Republican Party’s state house line up of candidates is where things get even weirder.
House District 6. Paul Spencer leads his platform with “fighting the war on children” and explicitly calls for protecting “traditional family values and parental rights” – language used by national anti-LGBTQ+ groups. He also links to material from the American Family Association, designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for decades of work “combating the homosexual agenda.” He describes himself as “Pro-Life” and dismisses climate change as “pseudo climate change,” despite the realities of water scarcity and post-fire flooding that farmers, ranchers, and tribal communities in the district are already dealing with.
House District 8. A special investigation by the New Mexico State Auditor found that Rep. Brian Baca violated Los Lunas School District policy when he received $11,365 in sick leave pay while working at the state legislature in 2024 and 2025. The same audit found that Baca’s wife worked as a special education facilitator for nearly a decade without the required state license and was paid $64,500 in stipends she didn’t qualify for – while Brian Baca was the administrator in charge of the district’s human relations department.
House District 27. Jahnelle Garcia has repeatedly listed a home address in campaign filings, but a local reporter spoke with the homeowner who has actually lived there for over a year. In a June 2026 interview, Garcia said she directs people to pregnancy crisis clinics like Carenet, that she would cut off all funding for abortion access if elected, and that abortion care is not a legitimate part of reproductive health. She also made a striking remark about poverty, saying: “I’m not broke like Africa. Like my company sponsors over 150 kids around the world through Compassion and World Vision.” She has called gender-affirming care a “fad” and compared it to getting a tattoo or buying alcohol, and openly admits to not showing up to vote on most issues — “I’m sure someone will check my voting record… I voted in the big ones.”
House District 30. Jerry Trujillo’s platform condemns the Immigrant Safety Act and pledges to “restore cooperation between state and local agencies and the federal government on public safety.” His survey responses to a far right group called Alliance Defending Freedom include thinly veiled support for conversion therapy – a practice universally condemned by the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychological Association, and American Psychiatric Association as harmful, ineffective, and unethical.
House District 31. Rep. Nicole Chavez served as Team Leader for the New Mexico chapter of LUCA (Latinos United for Conservative Action), a group whose mission includes promoting religion in government and schools and banning abortion access. Campaign finance records show BorderPlex Digital Assets LLC – the developer of Oracle’s Project Jupiter data center – contributed $10,000 to her campaign in 2025, and the Santa Fe New Mexican reported that her husband is a lobbyist who represented BorderPlex, raising conflict-of-interest questions. In March 2026, she sent a letter urging the New Mexico Environment Department to approve Project Jupiter’s air permit despite record-setting pollution levels.
House District 36. Julia Ruiz says she would have voted against the Reproductive & Gender-Affirming Health Care Act, the Reproductive Health Provider Protections Act, and School-Based Health Centers. She supports requiring voter ID, eliminating the gross receipts tax, identifies as a “constitutional conservative,” and she also responded to an Alliance Defending Freedom survey with thinly veiled support for conversion therapy.
House District 37. In November 2020, as a sitting Doña Ana County Commissioner, Isabella Solis voted against certifying the county’s 2020 general election canvass – a 3-2 vote – amid unsubstantiated allegations from the audience, including a claim that “someone who was born in 1902 voted.” Her campaign is also funded by oil and gas donors and the Republican establishment, including a $5,000 contribution from Kimberly Skaggs, the former NM GOP Treasurer charged in a hit-and-run crash.
House District 38. During her time in the legislature, Rebecca Dow voted against income tax rebates, clean energy standards, prohibitions on intimidating election officials, caps on predatory loan interest rates, paid sick leave, repealing qualified immunity for police, the repeal of the abortion ban, requiring police body cameras, and expanding healthcare access. She was also the founder and executive director of AppleTree Educational Center and was the subject of a 2016 civil lawsuit in which a family sued after their child was sexually assaulted by an AppleTree/Boys & Girls Club employee. The suit alleged the employee was hired without proper vetting and was promoted to a position allowing isolated contact with minors, even after a teenager had already accused him of asking an inappropriate and explicit question. Dow settled the lawsuit for $260,000. The employee was convicted of criminal sexual contact with a minor and required to register as a sex offender. AppleTree was also named in an additional lawsuit regarding sexual abuse of a minor on its premises and has been the subject of multiple CYFD violations.
House District 44. Adam Stanley Prior’s positions include opposing reproductive and gender-affirming health care, opposing school based health centers, supporting voter ID, eliminating the gross receipts tax, and his Alliance Defending Freedom survey response offers thinly veiled support for conversion therapy as well as support for school choice/vouchers.
House District 50. In April 2023, Kenneth “Ken” Brennan was one of four Edgewood commissioners who voted to join other conservative-leaning municipalities in passing an ordinance citing a federal law to “restrict access to abortion” – specifically, to “prevent the mailing of medications used in abortion.” When the NM Supreme Court blocked enforcement, Brennan said he did not regret the vote, claiming mifepristone “can be very dangerous if they’re not taken properly,” despite the drug being FDA-approved for over 20 years with very low complication rates.
House District 53. Ben Luna Jr.’s former top-paid campaign worker allegedly harassed the incumbent lawmaker multiple times from April to July 2026, including approaching her and her husband at events while brandishing a tripod and a phone or camera, and was captured on video calling the lawmaker “baby” or “princess” and insulting her husband. Luna also has close ties to extreme groups like Turning Point USA and Coalition of Conservatives in Action, and runs a video channel featuring anti-LGBTQ+ content with local and national right-wing figures. In 2023, he also attended the gun rights rally in Albuquerque where participants called to execute the governor.
House District 60. As a legislator, Rep. Joshua Hernandez co-sponsored an invasive “Parental Bill of Rights” (HB 296) that would force schools to report all personal information of students to their parents, with a specific focus on surveilling LGBTQ+ students.
House District 68. David Adkins sponsored bills to ban late-term abortion, require parental notification when a minor seeks abortion, and reinstate the death penalty in New Mexico. He also sponsored “tough on crime” bills with no diversion, treatment, or behavioral health investments, and advanced multiple bills to roll back driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants.
What This Slate Tells Us About the Modern NM GOP
Individually, any one of these facts could be a campaign commercial. Taken together, they describe a party that has decisively broken with the mainstream of New Mexico political life.
This is a ticket who has institutionalized the 2020 election denial movement – from Marker’s photos with Bannon, to Goolsby’s alignment with the Clementses, to Solis’s vote against certifying the 2020 canvass.
It’s a ticket that has internalized the anti-LGBTQ+ playbook of national groups like Alliance Defending Freedom and the American Family Association, and is running multiple candidates who explicitly support conversion therapy.
It’s a ticket funded by oil and gas money, with multiple candidates who would prefer not to talk about climate change or out of control floods and fires, would prefer not to put a price on pollution, and would prefer not to protect the 10-mile buffer around Chaco Canyon.
And it’s a ticket whose highest-profile statewide candidate has proposed eliminating $2.2 billion in revenue for schools, hospitals, and infrastructure in order to deliver a tax cut to the wealthiest New Mexicans – while floating the idea of cooling data centers with oilfield wastewater.
In a state where we value hard work, family, and the importance of looking out for each other, Republicans seem to be headed in the opposite direction. “Faith, family, and freedom” doesn’t mean much when your activities contradict your campaign website, stump speeches, and bummer stickers.
The Republican ticket in 2026 isn’t offering an alternative vision of New Mexico. It’s offering a fully imported, nationalized version of MAGA ideology that has nothing to do with who we are.
Voters in November will get to decide whether to import it. We’re betting no one wants that whole “New America” thing.