Dems pick Stansbury to run in CD1 special election
Stansbury chosen over Sedillo Lopez to run for Haaland’s former seat
The Democratic Party of New Mexico on Wednesday selected state Rep. Melanie Stansbury to run in the June 1 special election for the 1st Congressional District seat vacated by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
“I am running for Congress because I believe deeply in our communities and our ability to bring meaningful change,” Stansbury said in a news release Wednesday night. “As we head into the general election, we know we can get the job done.”
Stansbury received 103 of 201 votes from Democratic central committee members in the district, defeating state Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez in a runoff election.
Both lawmakers represent legislative districts in Albuquerque.
In the first round of voting between eight candidates Tuesday, Stansbury received 43
votes to advance to the runoff with Sedillo Lopez, a retired University of New Mexico law professor who initially received 74 votes.
Stansbury will face Republican state Sen. Mark Moores, who has represented Albuquerque’s Northeast Heights since 2013, in the race for a seat that has belonged to Democrats since 2009.
“This has been a fantastic opportunity to hear from so many of our leading Democrats about the issues that matter most to voters,” Democratic Party of New Mexico Chairwoman Marg Elliston said in a statement. “Every campaign ran a great race, and now we look forward
to coming together to put our full support behind Representative Melanie Stansbury.”
Haaland won reelection in November with 58.2 percent of over 321,000 votes cast. Stansbury, who was born in Farmington and grew up in Albuquerque, defeated seven-term Republican incumbent Jimmie Hall in 2018 to win her seat in the Roundhouse. Democrats hold a 219-211 majority in the House. In its news release, the Stansbury campaign touted legislation passed last year that provided free school lunches to around 12,500 New Mexico students who previously didn’t qualify as well as her experience in Washington, D.C., where she worked as a staffer at the White House Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.