Four GOP candidates vie for District 3 nomination

Republicans are fighting to turn a historically blue U.S. House district red with potential wedge issues.

But first, one of four GOP candidates must win the Republican nomination for the 3rd Congressional District on June 2.

Since the district’s creation in 1983, only one Republican has held the seat. But three candidates on the ballot are using guns, abortion and how Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has handled the COVID-19 pandemic to give themselves an edge.

Former Santa Fe County Commissioner Harry Montoya, engineer Alexis Johnson and Navajo Nation member Karen Bedonie all say they’re critical of gun shops temporarily being closed after they were listed as nonessential businesses in a previous public health order meant to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Angela Gale Morales of Rio Rancho also is running as a write-in candidate.

A subsequent health order has allowed gun stores and other retail shops not previously considered essential to reopen under certain restrictions, but Republicans in the race remain critical and slam the governor for closing churches during the pandemic, along with severe business restrictions that have left many shops in dire economic straits.

Although Democrats in the primary have remained largely laudatory of the governor’s efforts to fight the spread of the virus, Republicans have taken a no-holds-barred approach when it comes to bashing Lujan Grisham’s handling of the crisis.

Montoya, a 60-year-old Nambé resident who was a Democrat until last year, criticized the governor for prohibiting elective surgeries and not listing gun shops as essential businesses and under a previous health order.

“For me, church is essential,” Montoya said. “That’s to me something that should not have been No. 1 on the list of places to shut down.”

Bedonie, who lives at a nontraditional address in the Navajo Nation, where COVID-19 has hit the hardest in New Mexico, also criticized the governor for instituting a lockdown in Gallup — a move she said has made it harder for many in the rural region to get groceries.

When asked about her message to voters, Bedonie said: “We need better labeling for meat distribution that’s coming into the country. We need to support our dairy workers, we need to support our oil field workers. ... We need our economy to boom.”

A May 5 online campaign ad released by Bedonie features a photo of the Republican staring dreamily into the distance, holding a rifle with an American flag decal.

“When the world seems uncertain and God needs warriors to kneel and our president needs conservative reinforcement, we are in a political and spiritual war against tyranny and evil,” Bedonie says in the ad. “It is time for us to set our differences aside and help unite and take our country back.”

Then a message appears in the screen that reads “WARRIOR AGAINST SOCIALISM.”

Johnson, a Santa Fe resident, said she believes the governor’s orders “completely shutting down the economy definitely is going to hamper our small businesses” and predicted “a lot of small business owners are going to be voting Republican.

“The forgotten New Mexican exists, and they’re not being represented,” she added. “And actually, the far-left here in Santa Fe — they couldn’t even identify a New Mexican if they saw one, a native-born New Mexican.”