“Those are the kinds of things that cause people to totally distrust the government,” Townsend said. “When they see these [messages] of, ‘You need to stay home and you can’t have your family for Christmas and you can’t do this and you can’t do that,’ but I’m going to sit here and eat Wagyu beef and buy hundreds of dollars of alcohol with your tax dollars. What in the world would you expect them to think?”

Tripp Stelnicki, Grisham’s spokesperson, told the Sante Fe New Mexican: “There’s a difference between inviting someone into your house for the Super Bowl or someone’s birthday and having three or four Cabinet secretaries there to talk about their budgets amid an unprecedented economic downturn and to work out what we’re going to propose or recommend to the Legislature given the changing economic forecast.”

“I mean, the governor does live there, but it’s not like she’s inviting them into her living room,” he said.

Grisham has faced accusations of hypocrisy before. She reportedly defied her own COVID-19 lockdown order against non-essential businesses last May when she ordered a jewelry store to open for her own convenience, according to local outlet KRQE News 13.

After advising New Mexicans in early April to venture out only for essentials such as food, Grisham called Lilly Barrack on Paseo to order expensive jewelry. “The jewelry was bought over the phone, but the employee went to the store, got the jewelry and placed it outside the door of the store where someone who knew the governor picked it up,” KRQE reported. “This is according to the person who runs Lilly Barrack stores. She says she didn’t know about it until after it happened. She also said no one was allowed in the stores at that time due to the public health order.”