Pearce aims to defy poll that has him 10 points behind
Surrounded by a scrum of reporters, Steve Pearce had a quick response handy when asked what would surprise them on election night. “Me winning,” the Republican congressman quipped with smile.
Surprise, surprise? After more than a year of campaigning, doggedly crisscrossing New Mexico from Melrose to Lordsburg to Nageezi to Jal to Taos, it came down to this on the campaign’s last full day: Pearce arguing that pollsters’ math has the race for governor all wrong.
Behind in the polls in a year that was always bound to be a slog for Republicans in New Mexico, Pearce brushed off the doubters in the last day of campaigning before the final votes are cast. Rallying the party faithful here Monday, the congressman stuck to the points that he has focused on throughout his campaign — jobs, education, crime — which helped him cultivate an image as a pragmatic moderate instead of the conservative congressman he has been.
The question is whether, after eight years of an increasingly unpopular Republican governor and amid what could be described as New Mexicans’ fatigue with the current GOP president, Pearce
has convinced enough voters he would offer something besides more of the same.
Perhaps underdog is the perfect role for Pearce. It allowed him, even on the final day of campaigning, to cast the election as a simple choice between the scion of a prominent New Mexico family who served in the administration of Gov. Bill Richardson — the Democrat who has been a bête noire for Republicans this season — and a congressman from the southern end of the state who is no political novice and is now a millionaire but can at least claim relatively modest roots.
“If we want the state to move forward, I’m the person to do it,” he said late last week. “If you want to retreat back to the Richardson years, you got a clear choice on that. Do we want to move forward into the future or do we want to move backward into the cronyism, the nepotism?”
A poll published Sunday by the Albuquerque Journal showed Pearce trailing Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham by 10 points. In what may be a killing blow, the survey showed her lead growing in particular among independent voters and women.
This poll was not an outlier, either. Earlier in the week, a survey by Emerson College showed Pearce trailing by 9 points.
Analysts from the Cook Political Report to the nonpartisan newsletter Inside Elections to Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia rate the race as leaning Democratic.
But Pearce argued that with more than 430,796 people having participated in early voting — a record — it is impossible to tell what is really happening.
“We think the turnout just favors us tremendously,” Pearce said.
To be sure, turnout rates are about as high among Republicans as among Democrats. But there are many more Democrats in the state.
Nonetheless, Pearce has always been counting on crossover voters, just as he counted on them to win his congressional district in Southern New Mexico year after year.
Northern New Mexico will surprise, argued Michael Hendricks, the Republican nominee for attorney general, contending Democrats there could be more receptive to Pearce’s more socially conservative stances on gun control and abortion, for example.
But if that is happening, it is not reflected in the polls.
And so, addressing supporters crowded into a campaign office, Pearce hit the basics once more. He touted his proposal to expand apprenticeship programs. He knocked Lujan Grisham over the high rate of crime in Albuquerque, where the district she represents in Congress lies.
President Donald Trump? Gov. Susana Martinez? Pearce was not worried about their potential to drag down his campaign, certainly not as the race neared its end. As had been his habit all along, he reduced the big picture into a small, personal, easily digestible pitch — the kind he hopes defies the polls.
“People want jobs here, and they want their education fixed here,” he told reporters.
Later in the day, Pearce ended up at a veterans hall at Isleta Pueblo, awarding medals to two men who fought in Vietnam — Cruz Felipe Bustillos and Larry G. Armstrong — and another who fought in Korea, Jose Urban Reinaldo.
A veteran himself, Pearce seemed in his element, cracking jokes and pinning medals.
Watching it all, Chet Pino said he had voted early and backs Pearce.
“He stands for what I stand for,” Pino said, mentioning the military and border as issues where he believes Pearce’s views align with his own.
As for the polls, well, Pino said he does not put too much stock in those.
“I have high hopes for tomorrow,” he added.
For Pearce, it will take hope. And a big surprise.