It seems like election season just ended and the next one remains a ways off, but Ken Brennan, Edgewood mayor, is already tossing his hat into the ring, running for District 50 state representative slot.
Brennan, a Republican, is challenging incumbent Matthew McQueen (D-Santa Fe), who took office in 2015.
Signatures to appear on the ballot are due at the Secretary of State’s office by Feb. 6, but Brennan said he should have more than enough signatures compiled, as well as a buffer amount, well before that deadline.
Brennan said he is uncomfortable with McQueen as the town’s representative in Santa Fe after the incumbent spoke against the commission’s move to inhibit abortion by passing a resolution to prohibit the mailing of abortion pills, claiming it is in adherence with the federal Comstock Act. The commission’s law was successfully challenged through a public signature campaign and the commission recently scheduled the issue for a mail-in special election.
Brennan said that because of the move, McQueen threatened the town’s capital outlay funding and that the representative also during the redistricting process in 2020 insisted that Edgewood be moved from Rep. Stefani Lord’s (R-Sandia Park) district into his to weaken a conservative stronghold.
“If he did not insist Edgewood be a part of his district, I would not be running,” Brennan said. “I fully support (Rep. Stefani Lord). But he said he wanted to get those radical people down south under control and punish them. And when he came into our town meeting, when the abortion ordinance was being discussed, instead of voicing his opinion, he came in threatening the town.”
That meeting was the deciding factor, he said.
“That was the night I decided I am going to run, and I have been piecing things together ever since,” Brennan said. “We’re dealing with a person who is not a part of our town.”
Rep. McQueen, however, scoffed at Brennan’s assertions.
“Unfortunately, Mr. Brennan often seems to not know what he’s talking about and just makes stuff up to fill in gaps in his knowledge,” McQueen wrote in an email. “The boundaries of all the State House districts were proposed by the Citizen Redistricting Committee and adopted, with very little change, by the Legislature. I was not involved in the drawing of the boundaries for House District 50 or any other district.”
As for the anti-abortion issue, he did say that the commission had better things to do with its time and money.
“I did tell the Town Commission that if they continued to waste time and money on political stunts (like the illegal and vindictive local abortion ban) that I would assume they had sufficient funds to meet community needs like roads, parks, and sewers,” he wrote. ”Unfortunately, the Town Commission continues to waste taxpayer dollars.”
As for slighting the town, however, that is not something McQueen said he plans to do.
“I am in my 10th year of serving House District 50, and during those 10 years the district has always included a portion of the Town of Edgewood,” he wrote. “I will continue to serve the district and the town to the best of my ability.”