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Democratic Rep. Melanie Stansbury Shows Democrats How to Communicate [1]

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Date: 2025-07-06

Democratic Representative Melanie Stansbury Knows Communication Counts “Bigly”– “Team Blue” Must Get Voters Outside of Their “Choir Base” July 6, 2025

Many of us are familiar with the saying, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?” Wikipedia noted that the magazine “Scientific American” answered that, “Sound is vibration, transmitted to our senses through the mechanism of the ear, and recognized as sound only at our nerve centers. The falling of a tree or any other disturbance will produce vibration of the air. If there be not ears to hear, there will be no sound.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_a_tree_falls_in_a_forest_and_no_one_is_around_to_hear_it,_does_it_make_a-sound%3F

Well, let’s take that saying and apply it to current U.S. politics. Demagogue/Dictator wannabe Donald, as we all know, was able to push through on July 3, 2025 his “Big Beautiful (No, Ugly) tax cut bill on a party-line vote in the U.S. GOP-dominated House after it had previously gone through the GOP compliant Senate majority with the help of Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and VP Vance’s tie-breaking vote. This bill which radically slashes $1 trillion from Medicaid, adds $ 4.5 trillion to the debt, and reduces food assistance will horribly impact anywhere from 11-17 million Americans to pay for a top 1% tax cut. https//: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/us/politics/democrats-trump-bill.html

In the recent Quinnipiac Poll, only 27% of registered voters support this legislation Trump signed on July 4, 2025. The Fox News Poll finds just 38% support. Morning Consult polling gives this law an awful 36% rating, while the Washington Post and ABC News Poll finds and even lower 23% approval score. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-gops-big-bill-is-massively-unpopular-if-people-actually-know-about-it_n_6866ec08e4b079fbbcb3ac67

Democrats plan to run on this GOP attack on the middle class and poor “big time” in the 2026 midterms to take back the House where they are already favored. They may even stand a chance of taking back the Senate from the GOP as well after N. Carolina’s Thom Tillis decided not to run again. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-gops-big-bill-is-massively-unpopular-if-people-actually-know-about-it_n_6866ec08e4b079fbbcb3ac67

However, there is one big problem “Team Blue” faces. Forty-eight percent (48%) of Americans have not heard anything about this bill, including, according to the Huffington Post, 56% of the voters who had supported Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 but flipped to Donald in 2024. The Huffington Post added that two-thirds (66%) of the voters who passively consume news or actively avoid news know “nothing about this legislation.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-gops-big-bill-is-massively-unpopular-if-people-actually-know-about-it_n_6866ec08e4b079fbbcb3ac67

According to Morning Consult, only 17% of the public have said that they have heard a lot about the legislation’s cuts to the popular Medicaid program. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-gops-big-bill-is-massively-unpopular-if-people-actually-know-about-it_n_6866ec08e4b079fbbcb3ac67

In fact, Democratic Representative Melanie Stansbury aptly noted, just before the GOP whipped its House members into line, “I think that people who are watching politics and concerned about our democracy are following this closely and understand what an abomination this bill is.” However, she added, “But you know, people that are just trying to live their lives and get by, I don’t think they realize that their health care, food assistance, environmental programs are all about to be gutted in just a few short hours.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-gops-big-bill-is-massively-unpopular-if-people-actually-know-about-it_n_6866ec08e4b079fbbcb3ac67

Let’s meet Melanie Stansbury.

Third-term U.S. Representative Melanie Stansbury (46) currently represents New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District (CD). The New Mexico 1st is the district centered around the Albuquerque area in Bernalillo County and contains almost all of that city and some of its suburbs. It additionally has a large chunk of rural southeast New Mexico, from Santa Rose and Fort Sumner south to nearby Roswell, the site of a supposed flying saucer landing in 1947. This area, known as Little Texas, has cattle ranching and grows cotton. It also has oil as an economic pillar. The 1st also has the fast-growing Rio Rancho area which is home to a large Intel plant plus broadband providers. https://almanacofamericanpolitics.com , 2024, National Journal, 2023, pp. 1271-1272

Although Little Texas is a generally conservative area, the NM 1st has a 2025 Cook PVI (Partisan Voting Index) score of D+7. There is a strong presence of Native American tribes in the 1st, including the Navajo. The NM 1st is the most Democratic congressional district in a state that Wikipedia noted has an all Democratic congressional delegation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico%27s_1st_congressional_district

Farmington, NM native, Melanie Stansbury was raised in Albuquerque. She received a 2002 Bachelor’s degree in human ecology and natural science from Saint Mary’s College of California and a 2007 Masters of Science from Cornell University where she focused upon Native American tribes’ water rights. https://almanacofamericanpolitics.com , 2024, National Journal, 2023, p. 1270. She started her career as an ecology instructor at New Mexico’s Museum of Natural History and Science. She later settled in Washington, D.C. As a White House Fellow, Stansbury worked as a policy adviser on the Council of Environmental Quality. She was also a consultant at Sandia National Laboratories. During Obama’s administration, she worked in the OMB (Office of Management and Budget). She further worked on the staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and later served as an aide to WA State Democrat Senator Maria Cantwell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Stansbury

As an aide to Sen. Cantwell, Stansbury helped craft water legislation for the Pacific Northwest. https://almanacofamericanpolitics.com

In 2018, Stansbury started her political career by winning election to the east Albuquerque 28th district of the NM House of Representatives. She defeated the 7th-term GOP incumbent by a 7.4% margin. She was re-elected to the NM House in 2020 against another Republican by a 9.8 % margin. She was vice chair of the Energy, Environment, and Natural Resource Committee where she introduced legislation to improve the energy conservation and water resource management of New Mexico. https://almanacofamericanpolitics.com , https://ballotpedia.org/Melanie_Ann_Stansbury

When Dem. Deb Haaland resigned after being confirmed as Biden’s Sec. of the Interior, Stansbury won a special election in June, 2021. She easily defeated her opponent Mark Moores by 24. 8 points. First Lady Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff, VP Kamala Harris’ husband, campaigned with Stansbury. In 2022, Stansbury was re-elected to the House against Michelle Garcia Holmes by 11.5 points. And in 2024, Rep. Stansbury defeated a third GOPer, Steve Jones, by 12.8 percentage points. https://almanacofamericanpolitics.com , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Stansbury

In the House, Rep. Stansbury is a strong Democrat. According to the political “Five Thirty Eight” website, Rep. Stansbury voted with President Biden 100% of the time. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-congress-votes/house/ And remember when Donald entered the House chamber for the 2025 Joint Session of Congress, a Rep. held up a sign that said, “this is not normal” to protest the mass firing of federal workers? Well, that individual holding up that sign was none other than Rep. Stansbury! https://www.abqjournal.com/news/article_16552e8a-fa27-11ef-8131-4f1e055dd9c5.html

It is quite clear that Rep. Stansbury, with her joint congressional session moment, certainly knows how to “go viral,” get attention in our digital age, and reach many Americans who are “low information voters” who don’t normally follow politics. Far too many Democrats have to understand that the only way we can get our message across to take back the House and evem the Senate in 2026 is to make sure that not just well-informed “political junkies” and activists know what Donald and GOP congressional locksteppers are doing with this cut Medicaid Great Big Ugly Bill. When almost half of Americans have not really heard anything about this bill, as I previously noted, “Team Blue” will have to start pumping this message about this unpopular bill 24/48/7 ASAP. Democrats must make sure this message that Donald and his GOP are not on their side heavily breaks through to average voters. One of the reasons Kamala Harris lost was because, IMHO, only a small minority of voters who constantly followed politics clearly understood Donald’s plans to trash the 99% and destroy our democratic guardrails. The great majority was not “tuned in” to Democratic ads or paying attention to the race. They either stayed home or flipped from Biden to Trump. We must make sure that our message opposing Donald and his GOP cult is clear, catchy, and seen ALL over the country. Otherwise, the horrible GOP reactionary “tree” will fall in the media “forest” and the majority will not hear how bad it is. We must follow Rep. Stansbury’s advice and her tactics to save our democracy in 2026 and in all future elections.

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