There\u2019s a lot of debate about how exactly the J.R. Damron campaign crumbled and John Dendahl stepped into the race.<\/p>\n
Political blogger Joe Monahan<\/a> says Sen. Pete Domenici led the charge. An article in the Santa Fe New Mexican<\/a> seems to confirm some of Monahan\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n But a Domenici staffer disputes the claims in an article today in the Albuquerque Journal<\/a>. And the Wednesday Morning Quarterback<\/a>, a Republican blog, accuses Monahan of being a Democrat with a political agenda.<\/p>\n How do we sort through all this?<\/p>\n A few thoughts:<\/p>\n \u2022 Certainly, as the daddy of the state\u2019s Republican Party, Domenici knew what was going to happen before it happened. That doesn\u2019t necessarily mean he approved Damron\u2019s departure, but it\u2019s unlikely the party would have OK\u2019d placing the controversial Dendahl on the ballot without Domenici\u2019s (at least tacit) approval.<\/p>\n \u2022 It seems likely that many of the state party\u2019s leaders were pushing Damron to step up or step down. His campaign had gone nowhere despite the fact that \u2022 Damron wasn\u2019t likely thinking about dropping out of the race for very long before it happened. He recently quit his practice and became slightly more active in the campaign.<\/p>\n \u2022 Local party leaders around the state did not know this was going to happen, so there was no widespread conspiracy to force out Damron.<\/p>\n \u2022 Damron is gone. That\u2019s the end. Dendahl is the candidate now. The real question is what\u2019s going to happen in November, and I\u2019ve heard from several prominent Republicans in recent days that they don\u2019t like his extreme views and aggressiveness. He has a tough road ahead, and getting a late start doesn\u2019t help.<\/p>\n \u2022 This incident reveals the disarray of the state Republican Party. The party has now put up two candidates for governor, and neither had much chance of capturing consideration beyond the core of the Republican Party. Aren\u2019t there better Republicans out there willing to take on There\u2019s a lot of debate about how exactly the J.R. Damron campaign crumbled and John Dendahl stepped into the race. Political blogger Joe Monahan says Sen. Pete Domenici led the charge. An article in the Santa Fe New Mexican seems to confirm some of Monahan\u2019s claims. But a Domenici staffer disputes the claims in an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}