NM Senate Head to Head: Luján's Record vs. Marker's Case

1. The longest clock in the delegation

Melanie Stansbury has had five years in her seat. Ben Ray Luján has had nearly eighteen.

He won a seat on the Public Regulation Commission in 2004 and was elected to the U.S. House in 2008. He chaired the DCCC in 2018, the year Democrats retook the House, and won his Senate seat in 2020. In 2019 he became assistant speaker, the No. 4 Democrat in the House. He now sits on the Senate's Agriculture, Budget, Commerce, Finance and Indian Affairs committees.

Few New Mexicans in Washington have held more seniority, more leadership access or more committee leverage. His father was speaker of the state House. This is not a newcomer who hasn't had time to learn where the levers are.

So the question is simple. With that much time, rank and influence, why is New Mexico still at the bottom?

The Record:

• PRC (elected 2004), U.S. House (2009–2021), U.S. Senate (2021–present).
• Assistant speaker, 2019–2021; DCCC chair, 2018 cycle.
• Voted against President Trump's positions 93% of the time.

2. The scoreboard after 18 years

• 49th in overall child well-being (2026 KIDS COUNT).
• 50th in education for the 10th straight year, with an education score of 1.
• 50th in family and community, driven by the nation's highest share of children in concentrated poverty (20%).
• 48th in child poverty, and the only non-Southern state with poverty still well above the national rate.
• 47th in premature death. Life expectancy in McKinley County is 63.9 years, compared with 83.0 in Los Alamos County.
• First in the nation for property crime, with about 900 overdose deaths in 2025, up 21% while national overdose deaths fell.

The defense is coming, so get it out of the way. A U.S. senator doesn't run PED, CYFD or the state police. All true. None of it is a defense. Luján comes from Santa Fe's governing family, in a state where his party controls the governor's office and both chambers of the Legislature. If anyone could pick up the phone and make last place politically expensive, it was him.

The test: name one time in 18 years he publicly pressured his own party in Santa Fe over a 50th-place ranking. A letter with a deadline in it, not a statement of concern.

3. The fentanyl that walked

From 2023 to 2025, DEA agents in New Mexico watched hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills move to dealers without seizing them, in order to build bigger cases. One internal report described agents watching a 74,000-pill delivery at an Albuquerque mobile home park.

A 19-year agent, David Howell, filed a whistleblower complaint in mid-2023. The U.S. attorney during that period was Alex Uballez. The Senate confirmed him by voice vote in May 2022, and Luján and Sen. Martin Heinrich put out a joint statement welcoming the confirmation. Uballez later told the AP that authorities "at times allowed drug shipments to go unseized."

Luján did act, but only after the AP published its investigation in June 2026. He then led the delegation in asking the DOJ inspector general to widen its review. He sits on the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control.

That is three years between the whistleblower complaint and the senator's letter. In those years New Mexico's overdose deaths kept rising.

The Record:

• Howell's complaint was filed mid-2023 and ruled unsubstantiated by DOJ in September 2024.
• AP investigation published June 22, 2026.
• Inspector general review announced August 2026.

4. The border vote

The Laken Riley Act requires detention of immigrants without legal status who are charged with theft, burglary, assaulting an officer or crimes causing death or serious injury. It passed the Senate 64–35 with Democratic votes. Luján voted no. It's now law.

This comes from the state with the nation's worst property-crime rate. Theft, the main charge the law targets, is the very category where New Mexico ranks first.

Luján now says he favors "strong border security" and "100% screening — inbound and outbound." His record has to be measured against that.

The Record:

• S. 5, Laken Riley Act: Nay, Roll Call 7, 64–35 (Jan. 20, 2025).

5. Energy: the industry that pays for the schools

Oil and gas money funds New Mexico classrooms. Luján voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, which raised the federal onshore royalty rate from 12.5% to 16.67% on new leases and put royalties on vented and flared methane. That means higher costs for the independent producers in the Permian.

In August 2026 he sponsored a permanent ban on mining claims across the Chama Basin watershed.

He will point to his orphaned-well plugging law, and fairly so: it created jobs. But it pays to clean up after the industry. It does nothing to grow it.

The Record:

• H.R. 5376, Inflation Reduction Act: Yea, Roll Call 325, 51–50 (Aug. 7, 2022).
• S. 5282, Chama Basin Watershed Protection Act, introduced Aug. 6, 2026.

6. His best case, and where it stalled

Credit where it is due. Luján helped pass the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act expansion and led the effort to create the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon fire fund. Congress appropriated $5.45 billion.

Four years after the federal government's own prescribed burn got away, FEMA has paid $3.51 billion on 24,502 claims and faces nearly 30 lawsuits over delays. The claims office director received a six-figure smoke-damage payout for his Angel Fire home.

Passing the bill was the easy part. Making the agency deliver was the job.

7. The alternative on offer

Larry "Lead" Marker was born in Hobbs in 1963 and raised in Roswell. He has worked in oil and gas, farming, ranching, manufacturing and construction. He ran for land commissioner as a Libertarian write-in in 2022 and for the state Senate as a Republican in 2024, losing both by wide margins. He reached the general-election ballot after a write-in primary in which his campaign says he drew more than 30,000 votes.

He has no federal record. Here is what he says he would do differently:

• Border: Tie Homeland Security funding to verified interdiction metrics, block nominees who won't enforce immigration law, and hold fentanyl oversight hearings.
• Energy: An "all-of-the-above" approach covering oil, gas, hydrogen and nuclear, plus an end to "permitting paralysis." He also wants to "rebuild our mining industry" and keep independent producers in business.
• Debt and Social Security: He calls the roughly $40 trillion national debt the top issue and says stabilizing Social Security would be his first legislative priority.
• Agriculture: Defend grazing rights and water access, and stop "lawfare" by federal agencies.
• Data centers: Treat them "like you would treat a feedlot": away from towns and off shallow water tables.
• Disaster relief: Faster payouts for Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon victims.

He has also broken with Trump on two points: he says the president lacks constitutional authority to impose tariffs, and that Congress should limit his power to wage war.

An Albuquerque Journal poll shows Luján ahead 53–38. Marker has the harder road. He also has no 18-year record to explain.

Where they stand

8. The verdict

He held leadership in both chambers, five Senate committees and nearly two decades of seniority. He has wins to point to: RECA, the fire fund, orphaned wells. But for a family in Gallup, Española or Roswell, the scoreboard hasn't moved. New Mexico is still at the bottom in quality of life.

Voters can change their representation in November. They cannot change the outcomes.