A former police officer and Republican candidate for a competitive New Mexico House seat featured a man who pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges in a campaign ad last week as he centers his campaign on public safety and law enforcement.
Greg Cunningham, a former Albuquerque police officer, appeared in an ad produced with the National Republican Congressional Committee that featured Raymond De La Cruz.
De La Cruz pleaded guilty in 2001 to two charges of cocaine trafficking with intent to distribute, according to court documents. De La Cruz did not serve jail time but was sentenced to probation. He was then arrested in 2005 for violating his probation, which he admitted to, extending his probation by two years.
The ad spotlights Cunningham’s career as an officer and Marine. The video shows two men working in a barber shop talking to a customer about why they will vote for Cunningham. The ad also appears to mistakenly mislabel the two men seen working in the shop by switching their names on screen.
“I’ve been cutting his hair for 30 years,” the men say in conversation with one another. “Yeah, he’s a retired cop, Marine. He’ll cut taxes, bring back jobs, let us keep more of our money.”
Cunningham is challenging Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-NM) in November and has made law and order central to his campaign.
“As a Marine who served this state for over 20 years in law enforcement, including working undercover to take on cartels, I am unapologetically for law and order,” Cunningham told the Washington Examiner in a statement.
Cunningham also said De La Cruz “made a mistake” and wants to give New Mexicans “willing to work hard a fighting chance.”
“Ray is my barber and a hardworking New Mexican who made a mistake, he bore the consequences, and has built a business and a life for himself. Democrats have wrecked New Mexico, and I want to turn our state into a land of opportunity. That starts by giving any New Mexican who is willing to work hard a fighting chance,” he said.
Republicans are trying to make public safety a contrasting issue against Vasquez, as it has followed him since his first election to Congress in 2022.
That year, a local news interview resurfaced from the 2020 George Floyd protests, in which Vasquez, wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a mask, called for defunding the police. But he has since tried to move back to the center on the issue of policing, through different pieces of legislation, such as one that aimed to update drone and counter-drone technologies to help law enforcement agencies combat border cartels and track public safety threats.
Republicans continue to point out those previous comments, along with the congressman’s own past. In 2005, the congressman was criminally cited for marijuana possession and possession of drug paraphernalia. In both cases, he was released with a criminal summons, and the cases were suspended. A separate time, police in El Paso had allegedly executed an arrest warrant for Vasquez for overdue traffic violation fees in the state, though his attorney denied he was arrested at the time this resurfaced.
AOC ENDORSES DEMOCRATIC HOPEFUL IN DEEP-RED VIRGINIA DISTRICT
“Gabe Vasquez had a warrant issued for his arrest, failed to appear in court, and then spent his political career trying to defund the police as revenge against law enforcement,” NRCC Spokesman Reilly Richardson told the Washington Examiner. “Now he’s sending his DC Democrat thugs after hardworking New Mexicans who dare speak out against his radical policies. We will not be lectured by a defund the police radical trying to cover his tracks.”