NM SOS Disqualifies Republican from Ballot for Senate, Leaving Only the Democrat on the Ballot

The New Mexico Secretary of State disqualified the Republican candidate for US Senate and two other Republicans from the ballot for “not meeting the requirements” for ballot access. The one Democrat who was disqualified was running against an incumbent. 

Uh, yeah, right. 

This seems to be the new Democrat tactic: keep Republicans off the ballot to “save democracy.” 

As you recall, Democrats tried to do the same thing to President Trump last year, in addition to all the lawfare that kept him tied up in courtrooms during the campaign. 

🚨Report: Republicans in New Mexico won’t have a candidate for the 2026 general election against Democrat Incumbent Senator Ben Ray Luján

The only candidate who was running was disqualified

This is the first time this has ever happened New Mexico State history pic.twitter.com/WL0Hw6acN6

— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) February 12, 2026

What was striking to me about this story wasn’t just that four candidates who were running for national office were disqualified by the Democratic Secretary of State, ensuring that no Republican would even be on the ballot for the US Senate seat and that the Democrats wouldn’t have to face opponents; it was the complete lack of information about exactly why, even in news stories. 

All we learned was that the candidates were “disqualified.” The Albuquerque Journal  reports the bare fact of disqualification without any other information, besides saying that the Democrats would now be unopposed and cruise to victory. 

The Washington Examiner covered the story as well, relying on the Journal’s report, but it seems that no New Mexico journalist even bothered to investigate the underlying facts, despite this move having enormous consequences. 

Incumbent Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) will now cruise to a second term, barring an unlikely defeat in a Democratic primary.

“He’ll continue earning their support on the campaign trail while doing the job they elected him to do by lowering costs and delivering results for New Mexico,” campaign spokesman Adan Serna told the outlet in a statement. “That commitment does not change based on who else is the ballot.”

Lujan won his first Senate election in 2020 with 51.72% of the vote, compared to his Republican rival’s 45.62%.

Two other Republicans and one Democrat were also disqualified from the ballot — Republican House candidate Carlton Pennington, Republican gubernatorial candidate Belinda Robertson, and Democratic House candidate Thomas Wakely, who was mounting a primary challenge to Rep. Gave Vasquez (D-NM).

Gee, you would think that New Mexico residents would deserve to have that information. Even I was curious, and I didn’t just search for news stories on Google or anything. I went to Perplexity to see if it could dig anything up, and…nope. The only thing we know is that it is claimed that he didn’t submit enough petition signatures, but we have no accounting of the process used, by how many signatures he failed to get, or anything but the most basic fact that the SOS claims that he failed. 

Christopher Vanden Heuvel (often shortened to “Christopher Heuvel” in posts) was disqualified from the 2026 New Mexico U.S. Senate ballot because he did not submit the minimum number of valid voter signatures required on his nominating petitions under New Mexico election law.

What the rule requires

New Mexico requires candidates to file nominating petitions signed by a number of voters equal to at least 2% of the votes cast for their party’s gubernatorial candidates in the last primary for that office. The Secretary of State’s office reviews those petition sheets and throws out signatures that are invalid (for example, not registered in the right party or district, duplicates, bad information), then totals the remaining valid signatures.

How it applied to Heuvel

When the Secretary of State’s office finished checking Christopher Vanden Heuvel’s petitions for the 2026 U.S. Senate race, he fell short of that required valid-signature threshold, so the office ruled him “disqualified” for the June primary ballot. Because he was the only Republican who had filed for that Senate race, his disqualification left no Republican candidate on the November 2026 Senate ballot in New Mexico.

Given the fact that Democrat Secretaries of State are now in the habit of trying to kick candidates off the ballot, you would think that SOMEBODY in the media would do something more than just be a stenographer. After all, the Secretary of State is a partisan office, and controls ballot access and hence the whole democratic process. 

Colorado, Maine, and (briefly) Illinois took formal steps to remove Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot, and all are strongly Democratic at the statewide level.

States that actually removed him

• Colorado – The Colorado Supreme Court (all justices were appointed by Democratic governors) ruled on December 19, 2023, that Trump was disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and ordered him off the state’s 2024 primary ballot.

• Maine – Maine’s Democratic Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows, issued a decision on December 28, 2023, removing Trump from the Republican primary ballot under the same “insurrection” clause.

• Illinois – On February 28, 2024, a Cook County circuit judge ordered Trump removed from Illinois’ GOP primary ballot, again citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

In all three states, the decisions were quickly put on hold while appeals moved forward, and the U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that individual states cannot disqualify federal candidates for president on this basis, which effectively blocked these removals from taking effect.

But no, Pravda is in the business of being stenographers for the establishment, no matter how questionable their actions. 

Why ask questions when The Truth™ is spooned out to you? Why do any pesky investigative reporting when you can take a press release from a Democrat and treat it as gospel? Why even reach out to the people disqualified to get their take on the issue? That takes so much effort, and they are the bad guys anyway. 

Yes, I know that New Mexico is not considered a competitive state these days, but how could it be? Competition is not even allowed anymore. 

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