Candidates speak to Republican Party of Grant County meeting

By Lynn Janes

On August 4, 2026, the Republican party of Grant Count held a meeting to conduct business and hear from some candidates for the upcoming election in November. Two had come for this meeting and future meetings they will be having more statewide candidates come speak and take questions.

A fundraising dinner will take place September 19, 2026, at the Grant County Veterans Memorial Business and Conference Center. It will include candidates running in the upcoming election.

Brenda Tozer, Daughters of the American Revolution, came to present her project to the group and ask for help, Project Patriot Chaplain's Closet. The primary hospital wounded soldiers will be taken is in Germany. They arrive with nothing, and this has been a non-funded humanitarian program under the Department of Defense that exists to meet their immediate human needs such as clean clothing and other items. The program serves around 150 warriors every month. Tozer said this has been personal to her because her husband had been evacuated to Germany after being injured by an IED. He remembered receiving a duffle bag with clothing and other items and had deep gratitude. It had inspired her to make this her long-term service commitment.

Tozer's goal for this year has been 10 bags at a cost of about $2,000 each which includes the shipping internationally. This fundraiser would be continuing.

Wayne Olver, candidate for Grant County Sherriff, came to speak. He said he had come from a law enforcement background and retired from it after 22 1/2 years. He had moved to this area to care for his wife who needed a more temperate climate but had now passed away. Olver has seen things with the sheriff's department he has not liked and can only be fixed from the inside.

He had run against the current sheriff but had not won in 2010. He sees current violations happening and would like to take care of it. Some of the people had questions for him concerning ICE and other issues. They had some discussion on what he could do to increase his chances in the election.

Ramona Goolsby, candidate for Secretary of State, provided a little background of herself. She and her husband moved to New Mexico to do contract work for the Veterans Administration, and they came from Oklahoma. She had spent five years in the Army Reserves nurses corps. She loved it and wanted to give back. Goolsby is a nurse practitioner and medical provider. She had come to New Mexico for work, but her husband's mother had been raised in Albuquerque. His grandfather had been an attorney and grandmother a teacher. Goolsby said she has had 40 years of ranching experience.

In 2020 she saw things that should have never happened in this country. People's rights had been violated and care not provided because of people being sent home. People could not visit loved ones and families crumbled. She knows about trauma, PTSD and mental illness. Suicide had been happening to veterans and now it had hit everyone. Other states around New Mexico had not done as badly.

She asked why it had happened, and it had been policies and not medical decisions. The policies had been made by political people who had no idea what they were doing. Policy problems came from elections and Goolsby started doing research on the elections. A small business came from it called Gabby Center for Accountability. The government should be accountable to the people. People had been trying to obtain information from the state with IPRA (inspection of public records). Some had been afraid to put their names on these requests and approached Goolsby. They do IPRAs and research on just about anything but mostly ethics. She has filed close to 100 ethics complaints in the last five years and most with success. People in government should be held accountable.

The other part of her business had been the purchase of voter rolls. "Voter maintenance is very important." Federal and state laws must be followed in removing people from the voter rolls. Counties had sent lists of people who had moved, deceased etc. and the current secretary of state put them back on the rolls.

Goolsby had analyzed Grant County and used a national organization called Electors List, a national change of address at the postal service, Propriety Change of Address is more reliable than property tax records. Anyone can purchase voter rolls. Grant County showed total registration of voters to be 21,787. On the incomplete data and errors, it showed 11,722. She went on to explain the election process, which is extremely complex and on purpose. When filling out voter registration forms mistakes can be made. The forms will be taken to the clerk's office for someone to input the data. She did not say there had been fraud, but mistakes made. The process needs monitoring. Grant County had 1,221 people that had moved out of the county and 99 had already registered at a new address. Nonresidential properties had 627 people registered but added people may use their business address to register. She had only found one person deceased on the voter roll.

When campaigning Goolsby does not just call conservatives, she calls democrats, libertarians and decline to state. "We all want the same thing." When she has asked democrats what they think about voter ID and they all said it would just be common sense. Everything people do generally requires an ID. The city of Rio Rancho voted to require ID for their municipal elections. Rio Rancho does not have a crime problem because they enforce the law.

She went over some statistics on voter registration and said democrats have declined 40 percent and the republicans had been stable. They have seen a significant rise of 30.8 percent in decline to say, who now make up 27.5 percent of the voters in New Mexico. This has been a big step for the state. A discussion went on about IDs not necessarily making you a citizen and the problems surrounding it and remedies.

The other part of the position of Secretary of State concerns business corporate fillings, applications, trademarks, UCC )Uniform Commercial Code)  filings, etc. Currently Goolsby said these have not been fulfilled in a robust way. She has had numerous businesses, attorneys and CPAs tell her when they call the Secretary of State they receive different answers from different people on questions. The office should be a service office and promoting business in New Mexico.

A person attending asked Goolsby what her thoughts were  about mail in ballots. She said there would be times for them when someone has been incapacitated or in the military, but others should not. Currently the state has a statute for a permanent absentee list that she did not agree with it.

Goolsby said, "New Mexico is not a poor state; it is a poorly run state." She had a vison of people actually flourishing and wanting to stay here.

Another person that attended asked her how she felt about the voting machines. She said the machines had been shown to be able to be manipulated. She had watched a demonstration showing how easily it could be done. The machines have been connected to the internet for the entire election leaving them vulnerable to interference. "If they can hack the Pentagon, do you not think they can hack other things?" She knew of six methods she had been trained on personally to do hand counts that would be very efficient. It would require going back to precincts but easily done.