New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District is being sold as a “closely watched” race about public safety. The numbers say something sharper: this is a verdict on the crime wave, overdose crisis, and officer exodus produced under one-party Democrat rule in Santa Fe — and on whether Gabe Vasquez’s record matches the tough-on-crime story he’s suddenly telling voters.¹ ²
The Record So Far
Start with the scoreboard, not the slogans.
New Mexico ranks near the very bottom nationally for safety, with one of the highest violent crime rates and the highest property crime rate in the country, based on the latest FBI data.³ Violent crime sits roughly double the national average per 100,000 residents, and property crime leads the nation outright, putting New Mexico in a statistical league of its own for burglaries, thefts, and auto crime.³
Those outcomes sit on top of a law-enforcement system hollowed out over time. New Mexico’s Democratic governor has acknowledged the state is operating with roughly 1,000 fewer sworn officers than a decade ago, a shortfall so severe she ultimately declared a public-safety emergency and deployed National Guard troops into Albuquerque to try to stabilize the situation.⁴ ⁵ When the governor herself is saying she “doesn’t feel safe” in her own state, it’s not an opposition talking point — it’s an admission from inside the party that has run the place for six straight years.⁵
The Overdose Divergence
The crime story wouldn’t be complete without the drug story — and here again, New Mexico stands out for the wrong reasons.
Nationwide, overdose deaths fell roughly 14–21 percent in 2025 according to federal provisional data, suggesting some tentative progress after decades of climbing numbers.⁶ Yet New Mexico was one of only a handful of states where overdose deaths still rose by double digits year-over-year, with public health officials warning that fentanyl is driving a disproportionate share of those deaths compared to the rest of the country.⁶ ⁷
State health data show New Mexico’s overdose death rate hovering near double the national average, with fentanyl involved in a majority of cases and some rural counties seeing spikes of several hundred percent in a single year.⁷ Even as other states began to bend the curve downward, New Mexico’s overdose trend line continued to bend up. The question for voters in NM-02 is simple: if the state is losing more people to drugs while the nation is slowly losing fewer, what exactly did the current approach accomplish?
From Rhetoric to Results
Against that backdrop, Gabe Vasquez is trying to sell himself as a public-safety moderate — a border-district Democrat who respects law enforcement, supports “commonsense” gun laws, and wants “proactive crime prevention” across southern New Mexico. His problem isn’t that he says those things now. His problem is that he said very different things when it counted.
During the summer of 2020, as a Las Cruces city councilman, Vasquez privately told a constituent he would offer his “full support” to cutting the city’s police budget in half.⁸ In another message, he wrote that he “wholeheartedly and absolutely” supported the Black Lives Matter movement’s push for “police reform” and budget changes.⁸ In an on-camera appearance at a protest, he framed the issue this way: “it’s not just about defunding police, it’s about defunding a system that privileges white people over everyone else.”⁹
Those are not stray likes or retweets — they are his own words, written and spoken at a time when activists were quite literally drafting emails urging city councils to slash police budgets and reroute the money elsewhere. When CNN and other outlets uncovered those statements during his first campaign, his staff quietly deleted some of the more incendiary social media posts while insisting he now opposes “defunding” and supports “responsible” public safety funding instead.¹⁰
A campaign can delete tweets. It can’t delete the results of the worldview that produced them.
What He Actually Voted Against
In Congress, the pattern hasn’t been as simple as “always against enforcement” or “always for it.” Vasquez has supported some law-and-order measures, including a bill increasing penalties for illegal reentry after deportation and legislation aimed at cracking down on fentanyl trafficking.¹¹ But the headline votes that define the border and crime debate tell a different story than his campaign mailers.
Vasquez voted against the Laken Riley Act, which would require federal authorities to detain noncitizens charged with certain serious crimes and prioritize removal of those convicted of violent offenses.¹² He didn’t just quietly vote no — he later touted his opposition, arguing the bill went too far, even as the murder that inspired the legislation became a national symbol of what happens when criminal noncitizens cycle through the system without consequence.¹²
He also voted against a border-security and law-enforcement funding package commonly referred to as the Secure America Act, which would have locked in multi-year funding for Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.¹³ His own office subsequently issued a statement explaining he voted to reject a Department of Homeland Security funding proposal because it provided “more money without reforms.”¹⁴ That is not a denial that he opposed the funding; it is his rationale for doing so.
These votes matter because they’re concrete. They’re the kind of decisions that either increase, decrease, or at least maintain the resources given to people on the front lines of NM-02’s border and crime issues. In each case, when given the option to stand clearly on the side of detention, removal, and long-term enforcement funding, Vasquez chose no.
The Gun Question
Second Amendment issues are not an afterthought in a district that stretches across ranch country, oil and gas territory, and border communities where law enforcement may be 30–60 minutes away — if they’re coming at all.
Vasquez is proudly endorsed by national gun-control organizations that have made federal bans on so-called “assault weapons,” expanded background checks, and red-flag-style laws their core agenda.¹⁵ His own congressional issue page describes him as a supporter of “responsible gun ownership” and lists backing for bans and storage mandates that align almost perfectly with the wish lists of national gun-control groups.¹⁶
That alignment doesn’t automatically make him “anti-gun” in every respect. But it does put him squarely on the side of restricting what law-abiding New Mexicans can own and how they can carry, at the same time their communities rank among the most dangerous in the country and their local police forces are understaffed. Voters in NM-02 can decide for themselves whether that combination feels like protection or exposure.
Who’s Standing With Whom
Endorsements don’t decide races on their own, but they do signal who law enforcement and first responders believe they can work with.
In this cycle, Republican challenger Greg Cunningham — a Marine Corps combat veteran and retired Albuquerque Police Department detective — has secured endorsements from police and sheriff groups that represent street-level law enforcement in New Mexico, along with the backing of former Rep. Yvette Herrell and President Donald Trump.¹⁷ Those endorsements come from people who have spent their careers responding to the kinds of calls NM-02 residents make when something goes wrong.
Vasquez, by contrast, has touted support from firefighter unions and the union representing Transportation Security Administration employees — important public servants, but not the people who respond to 911 calls in Las Cruces, Roswell, or the colonias along the border.¹⁷ On paper, both men can say “first responders support me.” In practice, only one is being carried into this race by the people whose job it is to arrest criminals and investigate violent crime.
Cunningham’s Case to the Jury
Cunningham has no voting record in Congress, which means he can’t point to past floor votes the way Vasquez can. What he does have is a career spent inside the systems that are currently failing: Marine Corps service overseas, then years as an APD detective and undercover officer working narcotics and violent crime in a city that has become shorthand nationwide for shootings and carjackings.
In interviews and campaign stops, Cunningham frames his candidacy less as a partisan crusade and more as an extension of that service: he argues he has spent years taking on gangs, traffickers, and cartel-linked networks in the field, and now wants to give those same front-line officers the laws, resources, and backing they need from Washington.¹⁷ The National Republican Congressional Committee has put him in its “MAGA Majority” program, pouring national resources into the race on the theory that a law-and-order candidate in a Trump+ district can beat an incumbent who voted against marquee enforcement bills.¹³
Voters in NM-02 will ultimately decide whether that biography — Marine veteran, narcotics cop, “I’ve been there” — is more convincing than a sitting congressman’s assurances that he supports “proactive crime prevention” even as his earlier rhetoric and later votes tell a more complicated story.
The Broomstick and the Avalanche
Vasquez’s defenders will point to the times he has voted for certain enforcement measures, or to his later assurances that he doesn’t support “defunding” the police. They may mention his participation in sheriff roundtables, his attendance at law-enforcement listening sessions, or his support for specific bills aimed at fentanyl and reentry. They will likely emphasize the DHS funding package he says he would have supported if it had been structured differently — a bill that never passed and therefore never delivered a dime in actual border security.
Put against the scale of the crisis, that defense looks less like a fire hose and more like a broomstick trying to slow an avalanche. New Mexico still leads the nation or hovers near the top in crime and overdose deaths. The state still has 1,000 fewer officers than it did a decade ago. The overdose curve bent down for most of the country and up for New Mexico. And in Washington, when it came time to cast votes that would either detain criminal noncitizens or fully fund border enforcement, Vasquez joined the no column.
Campaign statements can be revised, tweets can be deleted, and press releases can be rewritten. Outcomes can’t. New Mexicans in NM-02 will decide this year whether they want another two years of the same broomstick approach against a mountain of crime and drugs — or whether it’s time to let a different set of hands try to dig the state out from under the avalanche.
Endnotes
- Coverage describing NM-02 as a “closely watched” race focused on public safety — Albuquerque Journal
- Analysis of NM’s one-party control of state government since 2019 and its impact on public safety — Associated Press/statehouse reporting
- FBI and national crime-data analyses ranking New Mexico near the top nationally for violent and property crime per capita
- Reporting on New Mexico’s statewide law-enforcement staffing shortages and the estimate of 1,000 fewer officers than a decade ago — NewsNation/PBS interviews with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham
- Governor’s declaration of a public-safety emergency and deployment of National Guard troops to Albuquerque — state and national news coverage
- Federal provisional data on 2025 overdose deaths showing national declines and New Mexico’s outlier status with double-digit increases — CDC/major national outlets
- New Mexico Department of Health data on overdose deaths, fentanyl involvement, and county-level spikes — NMDOH releases and state health dashboards
- Emails from Vasquez as a Las Cruces city councilman pledging “full support” for cutting the police budget by half and “wholehearted” support for BLM budget changes — NRCC/CLF document releases and local reporting
- 2020 video and reporting of Vasquez discussing “defunding police” and “defunding a system that privileges white people” — national cable and campaign-archive coverage
- Reporting on Vasquez deleting prior progressive tweets attacking police and rationalizing 2020 unrest once he launched his congressional campaign — CNN KFile
- Congressional records and press releases on Vasquez’s votes for specific law-enforcement and fentanyl-related bills
- Floor-vote records and coverage of the Laken Riley Act, including Vasquez’s votes against and subsequent public defense of those votes — congressional roll-call reports and national news
- NRCC and congressional reporting on the Secure America Act and other border-security funding packages opposed by Vasquez
- Official statement from Vasquez’s office explaining his vote to reject a DHS funding proposal as “more money without reforms” — posted statement and local coverage
- Endorsement announcements for Vasquez from national gun-control organizations such as Giffords and Everytown for Gun Safety
- Vasquez’s official House issue page on “Rights and Freedoms,” including his stated positions on guns and related legislation
- Reporting and campaign materials detailing endorsements for Greg Cunningham (police and sheriff groups, former Rep. Yvette Herrell, President Trump) and for Vasquez (firefighter and TSA unions), plus biographical information on Cunningham’s Marine and APD service
