DALLAS —
For years, Greg Cunningham worked behind-the-scenes in law enforcement, embedding with precursors of Antifa and crafting sting operations that led to high-profile arrests in New Mexico.
Now, Cunningham is running for Congress against the type of person he told the Washington Reporter in an interview he would previously have been tasked with removing from protests before they became riots.
At the first-ever Republican National Convention midterm convention in Dallas, Cunningham said that Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D., N.M.), is exactly the type of person he would have had to
separate “from the rest of the crowd [at riots], because [with] most riots, it’s not the entire crowd that goes into it thinking that they want to get rowdy. There’s always a small group of people that whip the crowd up, and Gabe is one of those. 25 years ago, my job would have been to go in that crowd, identify him, and have him removed, so that we don’t have a riot on our hands.”
For years, Vasquez was a local anti-law enforcement activist, giving fake names to local media outlets for interviews in which he attacked law enforcement, as the Washington Free Beacon has reported for years. But while in Congress, Cunningham conceded that Vasquez has “actually done a pretty masterful job of portraying himself as a moderate, and as someone who is nonpartisan.”
“But,” Cunningham cautioned, “if you look at his actual votes, that’s really not who he is…This campaign needs to highlight the juxtaposition between who Gabe Vasquez says he is and how he actually votes, and those are two entirely different things, and my job is to transpose those things over one another and expose who he really is. When are at an Antifa protest in a mask, giving a fake name and screaming to defund the police, that’s who you are.”
Cunningham’s case to voters in New Mexico’s 2nd District, which was carried by President Donald Trump, is that he and Vasquez “are complete opposites by history.”
“You can tell so much about a man based on who he is and his history,” Cunningham said. “My history shows that I am willing to put my life on the line for the things I love, for the things that I believe in, as a Marine, as a police officer, as a business owner, as a father, and as a grandfather. My history shows that I can follow the law, enforce the law, and that is what New Mexico needs right now.”
While Cunningham conceded that, as a former undercover officer, he doesn’t like discussing his past, he’s adjusted to the realities of the campaign trail. “ I’ve had to rewire my brain to some degree; that’s just who I am,” he said. “I don’t believe in spotlighting myself. I just want to get the work done. Let’s do the right thing for the people, for the community, and let’s go.”
“If you’re gonna force me to admit things,” Cunningham said, “I’ll admit that I was the undercover agent who infiltrated Antifa back in 2002 during the anti-war protests. I have actually eaten lunch with, marched with, and planned civil disobedience with these guys. Actually, back then it was called Black Bloc. It was not called Antifa yet. It was the precursor to Antifa.”
He added that he’s also “done huge federal cases. One of them was called the Memphis Mob case in which we cleaned up Albuquerque. That was my brainchild. That was something I put together. I’ve done federal border cases, DEA cartel cases, HIDTA, which is High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. I’ve done HIDTA cases. That experience, being an actual problem solver, that’s what my job is. I’m a problem solver, and that’s the skill set that I want to bring to Congress. I don’t want to set up meetings. I don’t want to set up committees or task forces to study a problem. I want to focus on what’s the problem? What’s the solution? What’s the straight line there, and let’s get it done? I’ve been undercover. I’ve made decisions in high-pressure situations before, so I bring a calm. I bring an even keel.”
His experience both at home and abroad during Operation Desert Storm gave Cunningham an up close and personal look at both the radical left and radical Islam. He explained that “the people I dealt with in Black Bloc were at their core anarchists. They hated authority, and America was that authority to them. They weren’t interested in protesting anything in particular; they just hate America. And when you say resurgent, as a police officer, as somebody that works in these gray areas, I would actually say that it’s always been there. It’s just growing exponentially.”
While he was abroad, he noted that “being a combat Marine and being in the theater of combat in Desert Storm, and seeing Islam and what it is, and how Sharia law is at odds with our Constitution, is very important. The influx of Sharia law and Islam, combined with the progressives in their party, that alliance that they have, is very concerning.”
For both the radical left and for radical Islam, Cunningham said that technology has made it easier for them to expand. “Quite frankly, what you’re holding in your hand on your phone, with social media, things grow so much quicker, and they grow exponentially faster than they used to,” he said. “The use of media and the mediums that they have available is a big change; they’re able to touch infinitely more people than they could in the past.”
Closer to home, Cunningham wants to bring those experiences to focus on issues like immigration, law enforcement, and border security. New Mexico’s state-level policies have hamstrung law enforcement, he explained.
“As a police officer, we have no bail, so they don’t hold people to bail in New Mexico, so it truly is a revolving door,” he said, adding that “people need to understand that ICE…used to be in our county jails. This meant that as criminals were arrested, they were subject to screening right then and there, and they would remove them from our county jail. They would take them into federal custody and take care of them through the process. Now, through our policies in New Mexico and nationally, to some degree, we’re not allowing our ICE officers to go into these detention centers and separate criminals when they need to be.”
“A lot of what you’re seeing with our ICE and border agents having to go find them now, is a result of this,” he explained. “Where do you find people? Where they lay their head and where they work. So you’re forcing what’ll be a dynamic situation. Now you’re forcing guys and girls to put their gear on, pull their guns out, and go get this criminal that we know is a violent criminal. You’re putting other people in harm’s way, and you’re creating a situation where that’s what the media is focusing on. If we would just allow ICE to work at the jail level like they’re supposed to, we would eliminate a lot of what you’re seeing right now.”
While the race for New Mexico’s 2nd District is going to be one of the most closely-fought races in the country, Cunningham said that his experience with the Marines and in his two former campaigns have helped prepare him.
“As a state House candidate, we don’t have staff, so you learn how to knock doors yourself,” Cunningham said. “You learn how to raise money yourself. You learn how to set up events. You learn how to do everything. You learn how to use social media. It’s just training, and I was in a very competitive district then, so it was a battle from the very beginning. You learn at a very foundational level, what politics is, and what a campaign is, we’ve taken that experience and we’ve thrown it into what you see today.”
Below is a transcript of our interview with Greg Cunningham, lightly edited for clarity.
Washington Reporter:
Greg, you are running for Congress in New Mexico’s second district. Tell me why it was important for you to come here and speak from the main stage about why you’re running for Congress.
Greg Cunningham:
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. New Mexico has been ignored for a very long time. We have a sort of an inferior complex to some degree sometimes, and I think that was probably not the politically correct thing for me to say, but we’re frustrated. We are last in every metric that we should be first in, and first in every metric we should be last in, and we cannot get help from our legislators, from the people that we elected to lead us. My presence here today sparked that issue, and it gives New Mexicans who are frustrated a voice. It gives them confidence, and it gives them hope. That’s what we’re here to do.
Washington Reporter:
As you’ve been campaigning, what have been the top issues that you’ve been hearing from voters in New Mexico’s 2nd District?
Greg Cunningham:
Like the rest of the country, we are working class state, a hardworking state. We get up early. We work hard. Groceries and gas, like everybody else, are the top issues. We have the oil and gas industry there. Lee and Eddy Counties are in New Mexico is the number two oil producing state in the industry, and Lee County, New Mexico, is the number one oil-producing county in the country. There is no reason that New Mexico needs to be as poorly-run as it is. We have agriculture as our next biggest industry. We have agriculture. We have oil and gas. We have rare earth minerals. New Mexico has everything it needs to lead this country in every metric that we have available to us, and that’s what we’re here to do.
Washington Reporter:
How does your background in public service as a law enforcement officer arresting some of the most prominent bad guys in New Mexico factors into that campaign when the economic issues are at the forefront of voters’ minds?
Greg Cunningham:
New Mexico was number one in violent crime in the United States. When you go into Walgreens stores, things are locked up. We’re not arresting or keeping our criminals in jail. People are standing in line, paying for things that they had to call a store associate over to get, and people are walking out with baskets full of stolen goods, and no one’s stopping them. There’s this sense of lawlessness. There’s this sense of hopelessness. Until we restore law and order, how can we get business and industry to relocate to New Mexico is really important to figure out. How do you get Fortune 500 companies to look at New Mexico? Gabe Vasquez has done everything he can to destroy the oil and gas industry, and how can he now point to the gas pump and say, ‘oh my gosh, gas is so expensive, even though we’ve done everything we can to destroy it for four years’? How can he act surprised that prices are high? We need to elect new leadership that is going to put us on a new direction, and we free up New Mexico for energy and gas so that we don’t keep depending on another nation on the other side of the planet.
Washington Reporter:
Tell me about your own career in law enforcement. You’ve been at the forefront of some of the highest-profile cases in New Mexico, and you’re being very modest about that. Tell us a little bit more about that.
Greg Cunningham:
That’s been the hardest part of this process for me, because I worked undercover for many years, and when you work undercover, as it implies, you do everything behind the curtain. You don’t draw attention to yourself. You don’t take credit for your work. And so, this arena, being a candidate, is exactly opposite of that. I’ve had to rewire my brain to some degree; that’s just who I am. I don’t believe in spotlighting myself. I just want to get the work done. Let’s do the right thing for the people, for the community, and let’s go. If you’re gonna force me to admit things, I’ll admit that I was the undercover agent who infiltrated Antifa back in 2002 during the anti-war protests. I have actually eaten lunch with, marched with, and planned civil disobedience with these guys. Actually, back then it was called Black Bloc. It was not called Antifa yet. It was the precursor to Antifa. I’ve done huge federal cases. One of them was called the Memphis Mob case in which we cleaned up Albuquerque. That was my brainchild. That was something I put together. I’ve done federal border cases, DEA cartel cases, HIDTA, which is High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. I’ve done HIDTA cases. That experience, being an actual problem solver, that’s what my job is. I’m a problem solver, and that’s the skill set that I want to bring to Congress. I don’t want to set up meetings. I don’t want to set up committees or task forces to study a problem. I want to focus on what’s the problem? What’s the solution? What’s the straight line there, and let’s get it done? I’ve been undercover. I’ve made decisions in high-pressure situations before, so I bring a calm. I bring an even keel.
Washington Reporter:
You’ve run for office before and you’ve come up short. What lessons did you learn from that in terms of how to shift that mindset of yours from being undercover to being at the front of the room speaking from the stage?
Greg Cunningham:
Here, I look at my background in the Marines. If you fail in training, there’s no such thing as a fail. And even if you do fail, even if you don’t do something right, you get up and you do it again, and you keep doing it over and over and over until you get it right. That’s my mentality here. As a state House candidate, we don’t have staff, so you learn how to knock doors yourself. You learn how to raise money yourself. You learn how to set up events. You learn how to do everything. You learn how to use social media. It’s just training, and I was in a very competitive district then, so it was a battle from the very beginning. You learn at a very foundational level, what politics is, and what a campaign is, we’ve taken that experience and we’ve thrown it into what you see today.
Washington Reporter:
Can you talk about what you’ve seen the left become? You were talking about embedding in the precursor of Antifa. It’s been one year since Charlie Kirk was murdered, and it’s almost the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and you see a resurgence of left-wing violence, of support for Islamic terror abroad for sure, and perhaps also at home. What is the root of that?
Greg Cunningham:
The people I dealt with in Black Bloc were at their core anarchists. They hated authority, and America was that authority to them. They weren’t interested in protesting anything in particular; they just hate America. And when you say resurgent, as a police officer, as somebody that works in these gray areas, I would actually say that it’s always been there. It’s just growing exponentially, and being a combat Marine and being in the theater of combat in Desert Storm, and seeing Islam and what it is, and how Sharia law is at odds with our Constitution, is very important. The influx of Sharia law and Islam, combined with the progressives in their party, that alliance that they have, is very concerning. Quite frankly, what you’re holding in your hand on your phone, with social media, things grow so much quicker, and they grow exponentially faster than they used to. The use of media and the mediums that they have available is a big change; they’re able to touch infinitely more people than they could in the past.
Washington Reporter:
When you were working in law enforcement and in the Marines, did you have a thought ‘I wish our policymakers would do this, that, or the other thing to combat these threats’? Have you given thought to if you win in November, how you would want to use your position in Congress to combat that?
Greg Cunningham:
A lot of those things are state-level things in New Mexico. As a police officer, we have no bail, so they don’t hold people to bail in New Mexico, so it truly is a revolving door. But the one thing I will tell you is that people need to understand that ICE, back then was called the Immigration and Naturalization Service, used to be in our county jails. This meant that as criminals were arrested, they were subject to screening right then and there, and they would remove them from our county jail. They would take them into federal custody and take care of them through the process. Now, through our policies in New Mexico and nationally, to some degree, we’re not allowing our ICE officers to go into these detention centers and separate criminals when they need to be. So, a lot of what you’re seeing with our ICE and border agents having to go find them now, is a result of this. Where do you find people? Where they lay their head and where they work. So you’re forcing what’ll be a dynamic situation. Now you’re forcing guys and girls to put their gear on, pull their guns out, and go get this criminal that we know is a violent criminal. You’re putting other people in harm’s way, and you’re creating a situation where that’s what the media is focusing on. If we would just allow ICE to work at the jail level like they’re supposed to, we would eliminate a lot of what you’re seeing right now.
Washington Reporter:
Let’s bring this home and talk about your opponent, Gabe Vasquez. My former colleagues at the Washington Free Beacon have been reporting for years on how he would use fake names at protests to attack cops and law enforcement. In 2026, he’s campaigning as a bipartisan lawmaker, which seems like a very drastic shift. How do you see him in the context of what you’ve just been laying out, with the growing surge of the left wing in American politics?
Greg Cunningham:
He’s actually done a pretty masterful job of portraying himself as a moderate, and as someone who is nonpartisan. But, if you look at his actual votes, that’s really not who he is. I’m glad you asked that. That’s what this campaign is. This campaign needs to highlight the juxtaposition between who Gabe Vasquez says he is and how he actually votes, and those are two entirely different things, and my job is to transpose those things over one another and expose who he really is. When are at an Antifa protest in a mask, giving a fake name and screaming to defund the police, that’s who you are.
Washington Reporter:
Is it accurate to say that that version of Gabe Vasquez that you’re describing right now is the type of person who earlier in your career you were tasked with embedding to to unmask?
Greg Cunningham:
Separating them from the rest of the crowd was important to do in the moment, because most riots, it’s not the entire crowd that goes into it thinking that they want to get rowdy. There’s always a small group of people that whip the crowd up, and Gabe is one of those. 25 years ago, my job would have been to go in that crowd, identify him, and have him removed, so that we don’t have a riot on our hands.
Washington Reporter:
Now you’re trying to do that in November. So, you’ve got under two months to go. You’re running against an incumbent Democrat. What is the most important thing for voters in New Mexico’s 2nd District, to know about you, and to know about Gabe Vasquez?
Greg Cunningham:
We are complete opposites by history. You can tell so much about a man based on who he is and his history. My history shows that I am willing to put my life on the line for the things I love, for the things that I believe in, as a Marine, as a police officer, as a business owner, as a father, and as a grandfather. My history shows that I can follow the law, enforce the law, and that is what New Mexico needs right now.
