Three face off in GOP primary for U.S. Senate

Candidates have similar positions on key issues but have also leveled attacks against one another

As in other congressional primary races in New Mexico this year, the Republican candidates for U.S. Senate share similar positions on key issues.

For instance, all three candidates oppose sanctuary cities and illegal immigration, and they support expanding the border wall with Mexico. And two of them even have the same political hero: Ronald Reagan.

Mark Ronchetti said he shares the former president’s “belief in the power of the individual to control their own destiny,” while Gavin Clarkson called Reagan “the first president that ever inspired me.”

What distinguishes the candidates most is their backgrounds — and the attacks they’ve leveled on each other as the race has heated up ahead of the June 2 primary.

The field of three contains an assortment of professional experience. Elisa Martinez is an anti-abortion activist, Ronchetti was chief meteorologist for KRQE-TV and Clarkson is a former New Mexico State University professor who served briefly in President Donald Trump’s Interior Department.

They’re also from different parts of the state: Martinez is a Gallup native, while Ronchetti lives in Albuquerque and Clarkson in Las Cruces.

The winner of the primary will face Democratic U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján and Libertarian Bob Walsh in the November general election. U.S. Sen.

Tom Udall, the Democrat who holds the seat, is retiring.

In recent interviews, the candidates sought to show how they were different from their opponents.

Martinez, who placed first in delegate support at the state Republican pre-primary convention in March, says she’s the only candidate in the race who “has actually taken on the far left in New Mexico and … won.”

She was referring to her efforts as head of the group New Mexico Alliance For Life to lobby against legislation last year that would have repealed an old, unenforceable statute that makes it a crime to perform an abortion in the state. The bill, which was backed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, was defeated.

Martinez, 46, said one of her three priorities should she become senator would be to “end the innocent bloodshed of abortion and empower women in crisis pregnancies to choose life.”

She added she is running for the seat because “career politicians are responsible” for New Mexico being “last in everything good and first in everything bad.”

Ronchetti, 46, finished second at the pre-primary convention but with enough votes to automatically get on the ballot.

He said he decided to get into the race because he and his family could no longer “live somewhere where we felt like there’s so much potential and so many things that are so positive about this state, but then there are these issues that just don’t seem to be addressed.”

Those top issues, Ronchetti said, are crime and education, adding that partisanship and lack of discourse had prevented them from being solved.

“The reason I think I’m the best choice for this is that we have to now start to branch out and drop the politics … and start to address the problems that affect this state,” he said in an interview.

Clarkson, 51, noted that he’s the only candidate in the race to have served in the Trump administration.

He said as senator he would focus on boosting private employment in New Mexico and also would visit all 33 counties once a quarter in order to talk to New Mexicans who “don’t feel like their voices are being heard in Washington, D.C.”

Clarkson, who ran unsuccessfully for two posts in 2018, gathered enough signatures to earn a spot on the ballot after he didn’t reach the threshold of 20 percent of the vote at the pre-primary convention.

He said he wasn’t concerned about those results, calling the convention “the epitome of machine politics.”

Attacks have gotten plenty of attention in the race as well.

Last month, Clarkson and Martinez slammed Ronchetti after a video surfaced of the meteorologist appearing to criticize Trump.

Clarkson called Ronchetti a “Never Trumper” and questioned whether the former TV weatherman had Republican values.

Martinez piled on, calling for Ronchetti to drop out of the race. On Friday, she released a video with more footage she said was evidence he “ridiculed the president.”

Martinez also criticized Clarkson for resigning from his Trump administration post just five months into the appointment after the Interior Department’s inspector general put out a report harshly criticizing a loan program he oversaw. The investigation found no violations.

“He needs to come clean and apologize,” Martinez said.

Asked about those accusations, Clarkson called them “fake news attacks” that were put out by the “same sources that brought us the Russia hoax and the impeachment witch hunt.”

On Thursday, Ronchetti called the comments from the video a “joke” and said “plenty of people have issues now that we’re all dealing with that are far more important.”

He also suggested the other candidates were spending too much time on the attack.

“I think if you spend your whole campaign talking about another candidate, that shows a lot more about you than the other candidates,” he said.

The winner of the primary will face Democratic U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján and Libertarian Bob Walsh in the November general election.