Republican Party of New Mexico set to elect new chair from five candidates

Dec. 2—Steve Pearce set out to turn the state red when he became chairman of the Republican Party of New Mexico six years ago — a tough feat in what has become a reliably blue state.

But Pearce, a former congressman and state representative whose third and final two-year term as chair ends Saturday, said he never envisioned the goal to be a short game.

“Our objective has been to build a stable state party organization and then build 33 stable county organizations, and that’s a pretty slow process, but we’re making good headway,” he said in a telephone interview Monday, his first since announcing he wouldn’t be running for a fourth term.

“We got a long ways to go,” he added. “That’s the reason that the states who have done this say, ‘Hey, this is not a sprint, this is a marathon.’ And so we’re patiently building a structure, convincing everybody locally that we have the ideas for the future, and [President-elect Donald] Trump has really put that on steroids.”

Pearce, 77, said his decision not to seek another term shouldn’t come as a surprise.

“This is not just a sudden move on my part,” he said. “I actually tried to get people to run for the office a couple years ago.”

He faced four challengers in 2022 after Republicans’ poor showing in the midterm election. But Pearce, a conservative Republican who has the backing of the party establishment, emerged the winner.

This year, he won’t be on the ballot.

GOP chair contenders

Members of the party’s State Central Committee will have five candidates to choose from during the GOP’s 2024 Biennial Convention on Saturday in Truth or Consequences.

The five candidates — four men and one woman — are:

* Amy Barela, an Otero County commissioner who currently serves as the state party’s 1st vice chair.

* John Brenna Jr., a former Bureau of Land Management manager who has served as chairman of the Republican Party of Valencia County since 2020.

* Robert Kwasny, a self-described artificial intelligence pioneer who ran unsuccessfully for Bernalillo County clerk in the Republican primary in June.

* Mark Murton; a career Army officer and former manager at Sandia National Laboratories.

* Mick Rich, founder and president of a commercial and industrial contracting company who ran unsuccessfully against U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich in 2018.

A sixth would-be contender — state Sen. Joshua Sanchez, R-Bosque — withdrew his candidacy. A spokesperson for the state GOP referred inquiries to Sanchez, who could not be reached for comment.

Rich, perhaps the most well-known candidate, said he considered running again for the U.S. Senate. But he said Republicans’ chances are slim in the existing environment.

“There’s something inherently wrong that the Republican Party is doing, and they haven’t figured it out,” he said.

Rich, who earned a civil engineering degree from Oregon State University, called himself a problem solver.

“I look at things in a unique way and do things in a unique way, and I said, ‘I’m going to put my own desires on the back burner, and I’m going to run for the chairmanship,’ ” he said.

Rich, 70, said Pearce was “starting to wear out his welcome” as chairman of the state GOP.

“If he was winning elections, I wouldn’t be running,” Rich said. “I would be supporting Steve Pearce. But it’s not about Steve Pearce. It’s not about any one individual. It’s about our state and turning it around.”

Rich said he considers Barela his toughest competition.

“I don’t think Amy is any different than Steve Pearce, personally. They’ve been working together for years,” he said, adding Pearce’s supporters are Barela’s.

Barela, 49, said she considers herself the best qualified candidate and one who would be able to build on the momentum Pearce has established.

“I know the structure of the party, the purpose of the party and so I can just take it and keep on moving forward and build it over the next two years to help turn the state red,” she said.

Asked whether Republicans would want to elevate a party executive who has been first vice chair for two years, Barela said her experience would be beneficial, allowing her to hit the ground running. She also said she would be “a little bit more aggressive” as party leader, making the GOP more visible statewide.

“If we put somebody in there that doesn’t understand the structure, they’re going to spend all their time learning on the purpose and the structure of the party,” she said. “It’ll make the party go backwards from where it’s at. We are … in the position to turn the state red over the next two years.”

Murton, 68, who has lived in New Mexico nearly three decades, said he’s running to enhance citizen involvement and improve party operations. He emphasized the need for better collaboration with county parties, volunteer recruitment and addressing fundraising challenges.

He listed three primary objectives: win elections, prepare good candidates and grow the party.

“To do that, we need an infusion of volunteers,” he said. “We need volunteers to not have to make it up as they go, so we need business processes, and we need to train up the next generation of leaders, basically, and that’s kind of what I did in my career.”

Kwansy, 72, highlighted his experience in the tech industry, saying he pioneered “the original computer stores” in 1975 and started pioneering artificial intelligence 24 years ago. Kwasny criticized the current state of the party, emphasizing the need to modernize communication strategies, particularly by converting written and radio content to video format to better reach the state’s diverse population.

“The problem with state GOP is that it’s operating at a 1987 level,” he said. “Where the Democrats love their data, the Republicans, especially the New Mexican Republicans, have not been embracing data.”

Pearce touts successes

Pearce, however, said the state party has made big strides during his tenure as chair. He rattled off a long list of successes, including increasing voter turnout, electing more Hispanic females to the state Legislature and increasing Republican voter registrations in recent cycles. He noted Trump got a higher number of votes this year than in 2020 in a majority of the state’s 33 counties.

“We closed the gap by 50,000 votes,” he said. “That was a huge deal.”

Pearce also said the party has made “tremendous inroads” in Native American communities, gained ground in some traditionally Hispanic Democratic counties and got Trump to visit the state before Election Day.

“We just methodically are … putting the blocks together to build a Republican structure that is trustworthy, that is representative of the state, that will get things done,” he said. “When you’re talking about a lot of the successes, none of them are big, splashy things, but they’re all the basis of a long-term foundation that we’ve needed to do here for a long time.”

Follow Daniel J. Chacón on Twitter @danieljchacon.

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