Mark Moores must have struck a nerve.

The Republican’s advertisement accusing Democrat Melanie Stansbury of wanting to defund police has the Democratic Party of New Mexico in damage control mode.

Which should give Moores some hope. 

Early voting in New Mexico’s first Congressional district starts Saturday in the race to replace now-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who won the seat with a comfortable 58 percent majority last year.

Lions don’t concern themselves with the opinions of sheep, as the saying goes. That a House seat that hasn’t seen red since 2009 and which literally every political elections analyst in the country rates “Safe D” is getting any attention at all is a sign Democrats aren’t confident about a victory.

Even The Washington Post has stepped up shill for the Democrat.

“On April 20, Stansbury Zoomed in to a forum sponsored by the New Mexico Black Voters Collaborative,” The Post reported.

“Moores skipped it, citing a scheduling conflict. But it was there that Stansbury was asked whether she’d support the BREATHE Act, a legislative proposal from the Movement for Black Lives, which grew out of last summer’s protests against police violence. The measure has never actually been introduced in Congress. She didn’t rule it out.”

That’s one way of putting it.

Another way of putting it is quoting what Stansbury actually said, which is:

“We need to pass the BREATHE Act in Congress.”

And that is exactly what Moores included in his ad.

The Democratic Party of New Mexico dodged the statement entirely, accusing Moores of “lies,” “fear mongering,” and “false claims” before pivoting to Stansbury’s past voting record on public safety. The Post also avoided her quote, writing 1,800 words analyzing the odds, the angles, and the Republican’s failure to completely disavow Trumpism.

Luckily there’s video. She said it, and no amount of past voting or elections analyzing hides the fact.

The question is, does the BREATHE Act in fact defund the police?

According to BreatheAct.org, yes:

“This visionary bill divests our taxpayer dollars from brutal and discriminatory policing and invests in a newvision of public safety — a vision that answers the call to defund the police and allows all communities to finally BREATHE free.”

If Stansbury doesn’t actually want to defund the police, she shouldn’t see a “need to pass the BREATHE Act in Congress.”

To be fair, it’s possible she doesn’t.

It’s 2021 after all. Race politics makes people say all sorts of dumb things.

But by saying she supports the BREATHE Act Stansbury is either lying — saying what she thinks will get her elected — or she doesn’t know what the Act is really advocating.

(This wouldn’t be the first time a New Mexico politician was caught off guard, but at least Gary Johnson had the candor to ask, “What is Aleppo?”).

It wouldn’t mean much that Stansbury hasn’t come out with a retraction. Challenging the racial status quo is political suicide for Democrats, but it is surprising that she doubled down.

“I was like: Where did this come from?” Stansbury said in response to the ad, according to The Post.

“I literally laughed out loud, because it was so outrageous. Like, here is the $11 million dollars in public safety investments that I helped get for our community.”

Stansbury reiterated the position on NM In Focus on May 07, 2021, responding to questions about her support for the BREATHE Act, “We have to have this conversation about policing and systemic racism.”

“I’m interested in supporting and empowering and centering our communities in the conversation and considering any kind of legislation that will help to address not only our crime epidemic but to address the systemic racism that is built into our very broken criminal justice system,” she said.

This is nothing more than racial pandering. Prison populations are based on crimes committed, not race, and the data backs this up, which is why talking points like “systematic racism” and “hands up-don’t shoot” and “I can’t breathe” are the go-to slogans for Leftist politicians. If they acknowledged race realism, the subject would be dead. 

During the KOAT CD1 candidate debate on May 9, 2021, Moores asked Stansbury directly about her support for the BREATHE Act, referring the proposed law’s plan not only to end policing as we know it, but also prisons and “punishment paradigms.”Based on the estimated 10% funding reduction this would cause, Moores asked what military base in New Mexico she would close.

Her response was textbook redirection. She listed her her resume, her STEM credentials and sociology degree, spewing hollow rhetoric about “ensuring that tour communities are safe” and “standing for social justice, protecting rights, and addressing economic and social welfare.”

Without irony, Stansbury has accused the Republican Party of using “polarizing rhetoric,” stating that “the issues that matter most here are things like education, addressing public safety, addressing systemic poverty in our state, and protecting the environment,” according to The Post.

She’s one for four, but cutting funding for police isn’t how most voters would “address public safety.”

As for the “polarizing rhetoric,” the BREATHE Act is the product of a Black Lives Matter conspiracy that falsely claims that police are disproportionately shooting black people.

“And because the Democratic Party is the party that has really, like, reflected those values, I think there’s been a migration of people to say, those are New Mexican values.”

Maybe Moores, like, has a better shot at winning CD1 than, like, we originally thought.