Republican Stefani Lord won the race for House District 22.
According to unofficial results from the New Mexico secretary of state’s website, Lord had 56% of the vote, Democrat Fred Ponzlov trailed with 35% and independent Zack Withers had 9%. Lord, who lives in Sandia Park, has held the seat since she was elected in 2020.
“I represent the East Mountains, which is a very complex district,” Lord said. “Fred came in with the lowest I’ve ever seen for a Democrat running against me, and I think this because he was not a viable candidate, and he did a lot of shouting and yelling at people on social media, and then he just split the vote with Zach, and I knew that was coming.”
Ponzlov said that by reelecting Lord, voters missed an opportunity to stop crime in New Mexico at the source, and said putting more cops on the street and giving offenders longer sentences will do nothing to solve the problem.
“It’s disappointing because I think Stefani Lord is not doing the best for the district that she should be doing,” Ponzlov said. “But you know, the people pick who they want to, they get who they deserve.”
This was one of the few races during New Mexico’s 2024 election season with three candidates. The race was contentious because Ponzlov and Withers agreed that District 22 needed new leadership. Ponzlov said Lord has some ideas and plans that are dangerous to New Mexicans, especially her stance on Second Amendment rights.
“She wants to get rid of all background checks for guns,” Ponzlov said. “So someone could get out of prison on a Tuesday, buy their AK-47 on a Wednesday and kill someone on Thursday.”
According to Lord’s campaign website, she was running for reelection “to continue the fight against radical left-wing policies that do not represent New Mexicans or our values. Over the past two years, she has seen outside money flowing into our state given to radicals who present extremist bills that harm the people of our state and our way of life.”
She said that the East Mountains are a complicated area with overlapping bipartisan issues, like crime and even human trafficking.
Lord says that she wasn’t surprised to see an independent candidate split the vote, but she thinks many of the people who voted for her are moderate Democrats, and says she’s frustrated that votes on the higher tickets don’t always represent that.
“I think it does a disservice to our moderate Democrats to not really have their voice heard in New Mexico,” she says.
She is from California, what is she talking about.