COMMENTARY:
New Mexico’s Second Congressional District is one of the 12 most competitive Democratic districts in the nation, according to the Cook Political Report.
They list 21 districts as a toss-up heading into November’s midterm election. Those are the districts that are most likely to determine which party has control of the US House. Democrats clearly have the advantage going into the election, with Republicans needing to defend 16 of those seats as opposed to just five in districts now held by Democrats.
The Second Congressional District, which has been held since 2023 by former Las Cruces City Council member Gabe Vasquez, is one of seven Democratic districts listed as lean Democratic.
Republicans held the seat for 38 of the 42 years following the death of Harold Runnels. Democrats in the New Mexico Senate tipped the scales with redistricting following the 2020 Census. The new map broke up the Republican stronghold in the southeast corner of the state known as Little Texas, where longtime representative and now director of the Bureau of Land Management Steve Pearce made his fortune servicing the oil industry.
District 1, which had covered the northern part of the state, now drops down into Roswell, Clovis and Portales. District 2 still has Carlsbad and Hobbs, but now stretches up into Albuquerque.
And so, while the rest of the nation has been engaged in a gerrymandering war started by Texas at the request of the president and then spreading from there, we could only watch. Our three seats had already been secured. Maybe.
Vasquez defeated incumbent Yvette Herrell in a close race, with just 50.3 percent of the vote in 2022. His margin of victory against Harrell was larger in 2024 despite the fact that Donald Trump was on top of the ticket and won the district.
This will be the first time since Pearce left office that Herrell won’t be the Republican candidate. She lost an even closer election in 2018 to Xochitl Torres Small before coming back in 2020 to defeat Torres Small.
Greg Cunningham, a former police officer and Marine Corps veteran, will be the Republican candidate this year. And, according to a recent story by The New Mexico Political Report, the race should be tight again.
They note that voter registration margins for Democrats have remained strong in Districts 1 and 3, but have fallen in CD2. There were 178,414 registered Democrats when Vasquez ran for the first time in 2022. There has been about a 3 percent drop in registrations since then, according to the report.
“While Democrats in CD 1 and CD 3 are sitting on comfortable leads, the cushion in CD 2 has become smaller,” the report said. “With the party base shrinking and independent voters on the rise, this race may be a toss-up rather than a sure thing.”
Or, more likely, it’s somewhere in between. Vasquez has the power of the incumbency in a district where incumbents have won 17 of the 20 races in which they were on the ballot since the new district was formed in 1983. But, two of those losses have come in the last four elections.
I’m not taking sides in this column, but I am rooting for a competitive race. The overwhelming majority of House elections are now decided in the primary. The Cook Political Report has 366 of the 435 seats listed as solidly Republican or Democrat. That can’t be healthy for our democracy.
Walter Rubel can be reached at waltrubel@gmail.com
Walt Rubel’s opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of KRWG Public Media or NMSU.