Democrats held on to a suburban House seat in New Mexico on Tuesday, with state Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D) easily winning the Albuquerque-area district filled until this spring by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

Stansbury defeated state Sen. Mark Moores, who worked to make the race a referendum on Albuquerque’s rising crime rate. Republicans, hopeful that suburban voters might abandon Democrats over their embrace of police reform, were stymied by a Stansbury campaign that emphasized her own support for law enforcement funding.

Stansbury’s victory, projected by the Associated Press little more than one hour after polls closed, will give Democrats 220 seats in the House, offering a bit more breathing room to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ahead of an expected summer push on infrastructure spending. Two Republicans will face each other in the runoff for another vacant House seat, in Texas, on July 27. Two open seats in Ohio, split between the parties, will not be filled until November, and a safely Democratic seat in Florida will remain vacant until January 2021….

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That result stoked national speculation that Democrats were struggling to excite their base with former president Donald Trump out of office, but the national GOP largely stayed away from New Mexico.

Trump, who has endorsed Republican candidates this year in races where they have been favored, made no comment on the race, and the parties’ congressional committees, which made no investment in the Texas race, stayed out of this one, too.

Moores won the support of the Albuquerque Police Officers Association, which also had opposed Haaland’s reelection last year, while Stansbury touted the support of President Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D), a political ally who once held the 1st District seat…..

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