Legacy Church, a nine-campus megachurch in New Mexico led by pastor Steve Smothermon, has endorsed Republican congressional candidate Greg Cunningham and Republican gubernatorial candidate Gregg Hull in the 2026 midterms. Both endorsements are direct violations of the Johnson Amendment, the 1954 federal law barring tax-exempt nonprofits from endorsing political candidates. The endorsements are not subtle: Smothermon told his congregation to "support his campaign, get registered, and vote to flip this seat" for Cunningham, and posted publicly that Hull "should be the next governor." The timing is not accidental. The Trump administration's IRS issued a 2025 court filing arguing churches could endorse candidates to their congregations. A federal judge blocked that proposal in March 2026, but the DOJ appealed in September — meaning the legal question is actively in play as Legacy makes its endorsements. Smothermon has been testing these boundaries for over a decade, endorsing candidates in state and local races since at least 2011, distributing highlighted sample ballots in 2014, and calling the sitting Democratic governor "demonic" in 2022. The Cunningham race is nationally significant. He's running to unseat Democratic Rep. Gabriel Vasquez in one of New Mexico's few competitive districts — one Trump carried in 2024 even as Vasquez won his House seat. House Speaker Mike Johnson has campaigned for Cunningham twice, Senate Majority Leader Steve Scalise stumped for him in October, and Trump endorsed him on Truth Social in April. Cunningham himself has credited Charlie Kirk, who spoke at Legacy Church, as his political inspiration, calling the church "a home away from home." The enforcement vacuum is the story. The Freedom from Religion Foundation filed an IRS complaint over Legacy's 2022 electioneering. Nothing happened. Smothermon's statement to the Guardian frames the Johnson Amendment as unconstitutional censorship and claims the church "earns every bit of our tax status" through social work. This is not a church accidentally crossing a line — it's a deliberate challenge to a law that the current administration is trying to dismantle from the other direction. The scale of the phenomenon extends well beyond one New Mexico church. A recent analysis by researchers at Notre Dame, Dartmouth, and the University of Pennsylvania found that 14.7% of churches engaged in direct political advocacy and endorsements during the three months surrounding the 2024 election. The Johnson Amendment still exists on paper, but enforcement has been functionally dead since Trump's first-term executive order limiting Treasury Department action. Legacy Church carries its own baggage. Smothermon's nephew received a 45-year prison sentence in 2020 for abducting two men and killing one of them. A patient of a church-operated residential drug treatment facility sued for sexual abuse in 2024; Legacy denies the claims. The church has also protested same-sex marriage, school bathroom policies, and Covid-19 precautions. Solomon Peña, the 2022 state house candidate who hired hitmen to shoot at Democratic officials' homes after losing his race, attended Legacy Church. What's happening is a coordinated test: churches push further, the administration weakens enforcement, and the appeals court decides whether the IRS can legally stand down. If the DOJ appeal succeeds, the Johnson Amendment becomes a dead letter — not repealed, just unenforced. The tax-exempt subsidy that flows to all nonprofits, including churches, would then effectively fund political machinery with no public accountability for how endorsement power maps to congregational consent.
