When You’re Too Toxic for Other Republicans

While this might be a bit inside baseball for those who haven’t lived in New Mexico, when state Republican leaders are taking to the Washington Post op-ed to call out Trump naming former New Mexico congressman Steve Pearce to head the Bureau of Land Management, you know there’s a lot of hate for a very bad person.

 I am conservative and I live in New Mexico. I believe in the old Republican virtues: limited government, personal responsibility, fiscal discipline and competent leadership. But I left the Republican Party because, after Pearce took control, those values gave way to something else entirely: bitterness, infighting and ineptitude.

A state party chair has two jobs: raise money and win elections. Under Pearce’s leadership, New Mexico Republicans did neither. Over his six years, Pearce alienated moderates, purged reformers and lost credibility with donors.

The result has been irrelevance. During Pearce’s time as state chairman and continuing today, Republicans have languished as a superminority in both chambers of the state legislature. Democrats in New Mexico hold a 26 to 15 Senate majority and a 44 to 26 advantage in the House. Once-competitive districts now elect Democrats by double digits. Pearce’s own congressional district — once a conservative stronghold in the southern half of the state — has flipped. Oil and gas producers, long the GOP’s core constituency, abandoned ship. Under Pearce, energy companies began donating more to Democrats — not because their principles changed, but because Republicans lost so much power and purpose. When the backbone of New Mexico’s economy decides the state GOP is immaterial, something has gone deeply wrong.

Worse, Pearce’s tenure within the GOP itself was defined by factional warfare, not leadership. The feud between the camp of Gov. Susana Martinez and the one surrounding Pearce tore the party apart. While Martinez worked to broaden the Republican base, Pearce doubled down on grievance politics and purity tests. The result was predictable: The GOP lost statewide races and credibility.

This approach will not work at the Bureau of Land Management. The agency has responsibilities managing oil leases, mineral royalties, grazing permits and wilderness areas, and it must balance the interests of ranchers, tribal nations, environmentalists and energy producers. That takes diplomacy and competence. Pearce, however, has spent his career alienating the very stakeholders he would be required to work with. In Congress, he voted against environmental protections, dismissed climate science and pushed to expand drilling in sensitive areas such as Otero Mesa.

Of course, the Trumpian ideal is to break everything, but the oil and gas industry doesn’t necessarily want everything broken.

Also, the New Mexico Republican Party is turning into what happened in Oregon. In both states, not long ago, Republican could compete statewide and often win. Today? Forget about it. In states where actual moderate Republicans could still win, the Republican Party is filled with outright lunatics who only people totally filled with hate will vote for. Of course, hate is dominating other former purple states such as Ohio and Florida. So it goes both ways. But unnecessarily, both Oregon and New Mexico Republicans have made themselves utterly irrelevant, which just feeds their own persecution narratives and makes them even more nuts.