Armed Attacks on American Democracy

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

When the votes were counted in last November's election for the state representative position from New Mexico's 14th house district, there really wasn't much of a surprise.  The district, which had a long history of being a Democratic stronghold, re-elected the Democratic incumbent, Miguel Garcia, by a very wide margin.  Garcia, in fact, has held that position for the past twenty-six years.  The final vote totals were Miguel Garcia (the Democrat) 5,588 votes or 73.6% of the total vote, and Solomon Pena (the Republican) 2,005 votes or 26.4% of the total vote.

Democrat Garcia creamed Republican Pena by over 47 percentage points!   The Democrat received more than two-and-a-half votes for every one that the Republican got.

It wasn't even close!

So, of course being a die-hard Trump Republican, the losing candidate immediately hit the streets of Albuquerque complaining that he had been cheated and the election had been rigged.  Pena's primary argument for backing up those claims was based on what he said were large numbers of people who had told Pena that they would vote for him.

Surely nobody would lie to a politician!

Solomon Pena (age 39) may have felt some personal animosity toward his Democratic opponent because during the campaign Rep. Garcia had brought up Pena's past criminal history including a conviction for a "smash and grab" burglary, but a court had decided that felony convictions in New Mexico did not disqualify candidates from being on the ballot.  (The Albuquerque Journal has reported that Pena had 19 criminal convictions, including for burglary and larceny, and that he had served seven years in prison.)

Now it appears as though the unsuccessful political candidate may be headed back to prison.  This past Monday Pena was arrested for hiring individuals to fire guns into the homes of four New Mexico elected officials, all Democrats,  including two country commissioners and two state representatives.  One of the representatives reported that bullets had gone through the bedroom of her sleeping 10-year-old daughter.  Police are also investigating two other politically-related shootings in the Albuquerque area but have not, as yet, tied those to Pena.

A report by National Public Radio (NPR) alleges that Pena paid four men $500 each to shoot into the homes of the Democratic politicians, and that in at least one instance he had done some of the shooting himself.  

According to information in the criminal complaint, a confidential witness had given detectives from the Albuquerque Police Department information that Pena had been unhappy with the first three shootings because they had taken place too late at night and had struck the homes too high - and that he had "wanted them to aim lower and shoot around 8 p.m. because the occupants would more likely not be laying down."  That same witness went on to say that the more aggressive approach made the gunmen uneasy because that would be more likely to cause death or injury.

Pena's complaint about a "rigged" election is, of course, a straight-line extension of Donald Trump's attack on the Democratic process by claiming that his presidential election loss had been due to a stolen election.  There was no physical evidence to back up Trump's claim, and there was none in Solomon Pena's case either - nor has there been any compelling evidence brought forth in Republican Kari Lake's claims that she was cheated out of the governorship in Arizona.  Claiming election fraud seems to be just one more box that GOP candidates feel they need to check when they lose an election, an act that aligns them even more tightly with Donald Trump.

But now, with gunfire, election-denying has reached a higher, and far more dangerous, level.  Albuquerque's mayor, Tim Keller, said:

"I know that fundamentally, at the end of the day, this was about a right wing radical, an election denier, who was arrested today, and someone who did the worst imaginable think you can do when you have a political disagreement, which is turn that to violence."

Armed criminals threatening and intimidating poll workers and elected officials do not bring about fair elections.  They are agents of chaos who aim is to stoke fears and prejudices and to subvert democracy - and when democracy dies, so too will our freedoms.

This fight is too important to ignore.