2026 Candidates speak at Republican Party meeting

By Lynn Janes

On October 6, 2026, the Republican party of Grant Count held a meeting to conduct business and hear from some candidates for the upcoming election in November. Two spoke at this meeting.

Mike Starr, chair, addressed the need to make sure people vote and suggested texting or calling at least ten people to remind them. Midterm elections don't historically have as many people voting as they do in the presidential election years. This will be an important election for the whole state. He added the sooner you vote, the sooner your name will be taken off the mailing lists for the mailers that will be sent out.

Representative Luis Terrazas called into the meeting. He had been in Santa Fe working on state representative business and was on his way back to Silver City. He saw across the state and country people had lost enthusiasm and had to find it again. As Starr had said earlier the candidates needed the people to make sure people vote and to call or text as many people as possible to have them vote. Candidates throughout the state had lost with as little as 20-500 votes. "When people say their vote doesn't matter it is absolutely the opposite."

"I volunteer to support my community because I love you, I love Grant County, and for those reasons I run." He went over how easy it would be with a few phone calls or texts to increase the low voter turnout for midterm elections.

Larry Marker, running for US Senator, had come from the eastern part of the state to speak to the group. Before he started, he let everyone know about a website that evaluates the judges and has their records, so you know who to retain and who not to. www.Judgethebench.com . it has been a project of Ramona Goolsby, candidate for Secretary of State. It will help the voters research each judge.

Marker said he would be the first Republican senator since Pete Domenici in 2002 who served until 2008. He went over some of the other Republican candidates statewide he had been working with and thought they would all be worthy of being voted for. He had not seen a harder working group because they have been traveling all over the state to speak and answer people's questions. All would be very willing to speak to a room of Democrats. He said he would be reaffirming his faith in Jesus Christ and would be standing for life. "We are going to stand our ground."

"When it comes to my faith in Jesus Christ. I am pro-life. I'm opposed to transitioning children at any age with or without parental consent. I've spent a lot of the last six to eight years of my life fighting all of those issues, which is a lot of that got me into politics."

Marker had been an independent oil and gas producer, and it had led him into politics and the legal system. He brought up covid and said one day people would look back and realize a lot of people woke up then. It tested the mettle of a lot of people and a lot failed. Those people would have to look within, but those that stood strong will look back and see it as the deciding moment for the country. He had never liked to speak publicly but became a Gideon about fifteen years earlier and had learned to speak publicly doing church presentations. He said it prepared him for this election run.

He was born in Hobbs and raised in Roswell. "I am your typical southeastern New Mexico guy." The election was about 30 days away and early voting had started on the date he spoke.

As a senator he would be in Washington DC a lot. Currently the United States has about a $40 trillion debt and increasing every day. "It is hard to fathom that much money and being that far in debt." The deficit spending projection for the year will be $1.9 trillion. He explained $1 trillion of that would be interest which a lot of that will be bonds. He realized some of this information would be boring, but he loved researching and studying history and the constitution. "We have to handle our debt with spending less money and making more money." He added that all spending has been done by the senate and not Trump. Appropriations originate in the House of Representatives and the Senate approves it. Overspending in the United States has been the responsibility of the House of Representatives and Senate.

His main concern will be the deficit and government spending. It will take lowering spending and not increasing taxes but expanding the tax base. He referred to the comment Trump makes about drilling for oil. The government generates as much income drilling offshore as onshore. New Mexico is the second largest producer of crude oil in the nation and the next thing that needed to be expanded will be mining and agriculture.

He reiterated that taxes did not need to be increased, just the tax base. Economic development would increase the tax base by having more small businesses, the backbone of the country. "We create more small businesses, more people going to work, more people making better money. That is how you increase your tax base. We increase the opportunity for people to generate income. Therefore, rising tide lifts all boats. It's the same model that the candidates that are running on the red ticket are saying. Rising tide lifts all boats." The government needs to focus on economic development instead of entitlement programs.

Marker said that the US government has been the biggest contributor to the gross domestic product within New Mexico. Surprisingly it has not been oil and gas which would be second. He had been referring to Los Almos and Sandia Labs, which in the future will be a huge advantage to the state. The other part of this includes the military bases and other federal government facilities. He will be responsible for making sure they maintain the appropriations for these facilities.

Agriculture has dropped to number sixteen or seventeen and dropping every year on gross domestic product in New Mexico. It should be part of the foundation of the state. Small towns have been dying because agriculture has suffered. This has happened because of water issues and regulatory agencies. Every step of agriculture adds value to the product and has an economic impact. Beef production in New Mexico is at the lowest in 60 years.

From there, Marker went into imparting some little know information about water in New Mexico. A lot has been spoken to about desal water and brackish water. These both need to be looked at, but processing brackish water into useable water would be the best. He said they talk about this at each election and then do nothing about it when they get in. Desal water is produced water out of the ground that is very salty with a lot of minerals. Brackish water is dirty water not useable for drinking or for crops. Brackish water can be cleaned up much more cheaply than desal water. The Permian basin in New Mexico produces over a billion barrels every year. New Mexico has developed a technology to desalinate produced water. He explained in detail about desal water and brackish water. Brackish water has fewer contaminants. New Mexico has some of the largest aquifers of brackish water in the entire country and he has a very comprehensive plan to supply water and pay Texas back the water owed plus supply Elephant Butte and the Pecos River what were needed to rebuild the agriculture in the state.

El Paso has been using technology created in New Mexico to desal 22 million gallons of water a day. He added the federal government has six different departments that would help support the desal of water in the state.

What he wanted to focus on today would be people going out to vote. He added he really wanted to see term limits. He compared 2020 to 2026. In 2020 Ben Ray Lujan had won by only 54,000 votes statewide. Currently the state has about 58,000 more registered Republicans than in 2020 and 8,000 fewer Democrats. For the first time in the history of New Mexico (two months ago) less than 40 percent of the population has registered as Democrat. A lot of moderates have come out of the Democrat party. The other number of voters fall in the "decline to state," because many state organizations have been registering people to vote. In his traveling around the state, he has seen a lot more excitement on the Republican side of the ticket.

The New Mexico Republican party has a problem with messaging. In the last general election, the Republican party had a 70 percent voter turnout and had been 4 percent better than the Democrat party. He predicted that in this election the Democrats would have their typical 50-52 percent voter turn out.

Marker said the Republican candidates have been working harder than any group he had seen in the past and most came from the grass roots. They are sick of what has been going on in New Mexico. All of these grassroots organizations have been coming together and moving in the same direction.

He had a campaign consultant from Washington DC that thought he knew everything, but Marker told him he didn't know voters in New Mexico. He asked him the odds of his being put on the ballot as a rival as a write in. The campaign consultant said zero. Marker had needed a little over 2,300 votes to have his name on the ballot and ended up with 31,169 votes. "We have already done the impossible." It was the most write-in votes ever cast for federal office in the history of the country. "That's the grassroots legitimate Republicans not RINOs coming together."

Marker said "A lot of people are intimidated when they go to the polls. Many do not vote because it is intimidating." He had people tell him this and that had been why they came up with a card that has all the information they need about early voting and the red ticket and they also have sample ballots for people. This way they could see what it would look like and be ready. They hoped it would provide enough confidence to walk in and vote. He added that they would need to do some work in southeast New Mexico because they only had a 14 percent turnout last time. "Those people are the reddest counties we have in the state of New Mexico with the worst voter turnout. For those guys, the election's over in the June primary because we rarely have a Democrat run for anything."

Marker thanked everyone for their time and reminded them about the website www.Judgethbench.com . It has a lot of good information on judges in the state. To find out more about him you can go to www.LarryMarker.com.