The candidate herself assigned credit to the "grit and determination" of her team. They went to work minutes after their first big loss Wednesday--37.2 to 21.6 percent. No doubt that was a major reason for the success as were numerous late high profile endorsements.
In any election there are also demographic and ethnic considerations. We asked longtime Dem political consultant Sisto Abetya how the 200 Dem Central Committee members from the ABQ district broke out in the final round:
Joe, Sixty-six percent of the votes were cast by Anglos and 34 percent minorities. Stansbury received 54% of the Anglo vote and Sedillo Lopez received 46%. Sedillo Lopez received 54% of the minority vote and Stansbury 46%.
When it came to gender Abeyta said 60 percent of the men voted for Stansbury and 39 percent for Sedillo Lopez. 51 percent of women voters went for Stansbury and and 48 percent supported Sedillo Lopez. Both received 1 percent of the nonbinary vote. So it was the men who appeared to move the nomination Stansbury's way.
The question lingers: Would Stansbury have won a regular primary election featuring thousands of Dem voters instead of just 200 party insiders?
She may have had a tougher time. There were eight candidates running and a plurality not a majority would have decided a primary election.
In the first round at the Central Committee--the plurality election--Sedillo Lopez scored that 16 point win over Stansbury 37 to 21 percent but when forced to get a majority she came up short.
One other issue would have confronted Stansbury in a primary. A majority of Dem voters are Hispanic and Sedillo Lopez would probably have been the strongest and best financed Hispanic candidate in the field.
There have been murmurs about Stansbury, if she is elected, getting a Dem primary challenge in June of 2022 when she would be expected to seek a full two year term. History says don't count on it. Congressional incumbents, whether appointed or elected, have access to a mountain of resources, financial and otherwise.
It's a quirky law that permits party central committees to nominate candidates for vacant congressional seats. The law will probably will be revisited by the legislature in the future (an attempt this year failed) but for Melanie Stansbury that quirk may have made her a United States Congresswoman.
PROMINENT SUPPORTERS
Well-known names came in for both Stansbury and Sedillo Lopez when crunch time arrived with the final round of voting Thursday.
Among those with endorsements for Stansbury, 42, were State Sen. Katy Duhigg, former Lt. Gov. Diane Denish (who supported Georgene Louis in the first round), State Treasurer Tim Eichenberg, Julie Heinrich, former Land Commissioner Ray Powell Jr., veteran lobbyist Vanessa Alarid and former NM first lady Clara Apodaca
Pushing Sedillo Lopez late in the game were State Sen. Mimi Stewart, State Rep. Andres Romero, House Majority Leader Sheryl Williams Stapleton and former Sec. of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron.
State Rep. Georgene Louis and activist Selina Guerrero, who both sought the nomination, threw their support to Sedillo Lopez after losing the first round.
ELECTION '21
The special election to fill the vacant seat of of Rep. Deb Haaland who was named Sec. of Interior will be held June 1. Republican State Senator Mark Moores is the GOP nominee and Chris Manning is the Libertarian Party candidate. Former GOP Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn Jr. says he will present petition signatures to get on the ballot, making it a four way race.
Early in-person voting in Bernalillo County will begin May 15th.
The winner of the election will fill out the remainder of Haaland's term that runs until the end of 2022.
ROCKY START
The White House is removing the Interior Department’s chief of staff, Jennifer Van der Heide, who recently planned a 50-person indoor party at the agency that the White House ordered canceled, and is moving her to a senior counselor job at the agency, according to two Biden administration officials.
The White House’s Cabinet affairs office ordered that party, which was intended to celebrate Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s confirmation, to be called off amid fears it could become a superspreader event. . . A White House spokesperson said that Lawrence Roberts, who was the head of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs at the end of the Obama administration, will be the new chief of staff.
It's nice to make history, but there's a price to pay when you shine so brightly in the limelight.
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(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2021
(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2021