Otero County: New Mexico's Florida

     It's a shame Couy Griffin was given Trevor McFadden as a judge. McFadden, who compared the Capitol insurrectionists to Black Lives Matter protestors and said the government was coming after them too harshly, convicted Griffin of only one of two misdemeanor charges against him in the first Capitol riot bench trial and then sentenced him to 20 days time served in jail with a year of probation, community service, fines, and reparations.

     Couy Grffin was no ordinary Capitol rioter. He was the founder of Cowboys for Trump and a commissioner for Otero County, New Mexico, Trump Central in the state. Griffin threatened to come back to the inauguration of Joe Biden armed, and he was arrested in D.C. soon before the inaugural ceremony. He has said he will not run for any elected office in 2022 because he has lost faith in the election system, but he did one final piece of damage to democracy on his way out.

     Just days before his sentencing, Griffin and his two fellow Republicans on the three-member Otero County Commission refused to certify nearly 8,000 votes cast in the primary over suspicions related to the voting machines. They didn't cite even any theories of what they suspected happened: they literally just said they were suspicious. The judicial branch is becoming an important part of our fight to save democracy, as the New Mexico Supreme Court had to step in and force Griffin and the other commissioners to not disenfranchise 8,000 people. January 6th and the surrounding events were a test run for stealing future elections, folks.

     This incident happened just days before Griffin was sentenced. Griffin also has a long criminal history, from illegally trespassing on and stealing from White Sands National Monument to illegally and improperly registering Cowboys for Trump. He has also long called for political violence, saying, "the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat."

     After Griffin's arrest in January 2021, one Otero County resident feared that the area would get a bad reputation, saying,"that's not who we are." Well, by an overwhelming margin of two to one, it is. America had reason to think so in 2021 and again in 2022: Otero County is New Mexico's Florida.