Sent to newspapers 10/16/2026
2026 Is A Time For Nuance
It hasn’t been a great week for the White House. The new press secretary was fired after five days on the job, not just for being incredibly bad at it but also for not being able to remember whether or not she was a lawyer. The ambassador to Greece was fired after it was disclosed that she was selling access to the White House and the IRS commissioner in exchange for getting her $100,000 AMEX bill cleared.
And one of Trump’s former lawyers is having a fight with his former ambassador to Germany who was also briefly the director of the Kennedy Center. First, a $5.6 million donation to the Kennedy Center made by the lawyer has been “misplaced.” Second, the lawyer and her husband want first dibs on the oil development contracts in Venezuela but they seem to have been sidelined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Meanwhile, pieces of the Kennedy Center’s ceiling are falling down.
That’s just this week. Oh, and the president pulled the sanctions on Russian diesel through April in a last-ditch attempt to get prices down, which really made some Senate Republicans mad. This was after the announcement last week to livestream the firing squad execution of convicted mass shooter Nadir Hasan. Thursday, Trump rescinded the livestream order due to widespread negative feedback, including that of his own vice president.
This really can’t be ignored. The latest Fox News poll released this week showed government corruption as the top concern of more than 1200 people polled – 88% said they were either “concerned” or “very concerned.” Inflation was next with 85% of respondents expressing concern.
Here’s where it is tempting at the polls to lump in your local candidates with the national mess. Yes, the midterms are going to likely be very bad for Republicans. That doesn’t mean that every Republican is very bad.
It’s easy to feel disillusioned right now. If there were any year to finally vote “people over party,” 2026 is it. National Republicans are just, well, awful – either corrupt, complicit, or cowardly. But New Mexico Democrats, in several cases, have gotten pretty shady.
More to the point, if you’re also concerned about public corruption, the problem here isn’t with Republicans. I’ve written throughout the summer and fall about this. Whether it’s public indecency, blatant nepotism, overt conflicts of interest, or statewide campaigns to overturn medical malpractice reform – this is all what New Mexico legislative Democrats have brought us – and all in the last six months. Besides a Federal fraud conviction, of course.
Here, there are very few Republicans running for statewide office. The most significant races are for governor, and the three open congressional seats. The most serious GOP congressional candidate is Didi Okpareke, challenging Democratic incumbent Melanie Stansbury in CD1. Okpareke is a pharmacist from Rio Rancho, fairly moderate, and very knowledgeable. In a 30-minute televised debate this week, she was the clear winner, distancing herself from the President and challenging Stansbury on support for crime prevention and any possible role she may have had in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Former Republican PRC Commissioner James Ellison is running for State Treasurer and brings solid experience to the job.
I’m seeing a lot of outrage over GOP candidates who have campaign contributions from corporate sources. This is misplaced anger. Democrats have corporate money, too, and more of it. Chevron and Oracle are among the largest donors to one of the biggest New Mexico PACs, The Speaker Fund, managed by the Speaker of the House.
(I need to make a correction here to last week’s column: I listed former Speaker of the House, Brian Egolf, as a separate donor to House candidate Lisa Curtis. This is an error; the Secretary of State still lists The Speaker Fund in some instances under Egolf’s name erroneously as he established it in 2020. The Speaker Fund is now led by the current speaker of the House, Javier Martinez of Albuquerque. I apologize for the confusion.)
For that matter, blaming data center development on Republicans is also a false flag attack. The Mother Of All Data Centers, Project Jupiter, is absolutely a Democratic project – championed by the governor and set into motion by the not-Republican Doña Ana County Commission.
My view from right-of-center is that New Mexico can’t afford another blue tsunami like 2018. Tying your local GOP candidates to the trainwreck in the White House might feel satisfying but it’s not ideologically valid in a lot of cases, and particularly invalid in the case of public corruption.
If you want better government, you have to eliminate political grift. Here’s an example – unfolding before our eyes – of how the two parties have handled personal ethics with regard to personal employment and public office.
Thursday, State Rep. Andrea Reeb of Clovis (R-64) resigned her seat after a Federal judge ruled it was improper for her to have held it while serving as a special prosecutor in the Alec Baldwin “Rust” prosecution. She was appointed in late 2022 while she was a candidate, and she resigned from the special prosecutor position in March of 2023, stating she no longer wished to be a distraction. The State Ethics Commission and Attorney General Raúl Torrez ruled her that her serving the position was appropriate.
Reeb was not a legislator when she was appointed, resigned just months after being elected, and resigned her legislative seat after the Federal ruling. She has acted with the highest level of principled integrity.
Meanwhile, Rep. Andrea Romero of Santa Fe (D-46) has made different choices. As chair of the New Mexico Truth Commission, a bipartisan legislative commission to look into Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes in New Mexico, she was also hired as the staff attorney for the commission (I’m sure the hiring committee felt no pressure to hire her). When she was ordered by the Attorney General to resign that position, she used the commission’s retained PR firm to issue the statement. She has retained her chair position on the Truth Commission, and her House seat.
Is every Democrat in New Mexico corrupt? Of course not. But the history of our state has made pay-to-play a little too easy and that has occurred largely on a Democratic watch.
If you’re rejecting Trump because of the gross corruption, I simply suggest that your down-ballot votes also reflect the same consideration. That might not result in a straight-party ballot.
Merritt Hamilton Allen is an executive and former Navy officer. She appeared regularly as a panelist on NM PBS and is a frequent guest on News Radio KKOB. A Republican for 36 years, she became an independent upon reading the 2024 Republican platform. She lives amicably with her Democratic husband north of I-40 where they run one head of dog, and one of cat. She can be reached at merritt@merrittocracy.news.