Surprise: Absentee votes give Dem lead
Torres Small pulls ahead by nearly 3,000 votes over GOP’s Herrell
Make it three for three. Democrat Xochitl Torres Small declared victory Wednesday in her campaign for New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District, flipping the last Republican seat in the state’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives and signaling the sheer breadth of the blue wave that has swept the Land of Enchantment this year.
The race in the southern end of New Mexico ended up on election night as a dead heat between Republican state Rep. Yvette Herrell of Alamogordo and Torres Small, a water lawyer from Las Cruces, with Herrell leading at times by just a couple of thousand votes out of nearly 200,000 cast.
The result seemed to hinge on about 8,000 absentee ballots, some of which election officials in Doña Ana County continued tallying well into Wednesday afternoon.
As the state’s political world watched anxiously into the evening, officials announced the absentee ballots overwhelmingly favored Torres Small, pulling her ahead by nearly 3,000 votes.
Herrell did not concede, however. In a statement, her campaign said it was awaiting the tally of provisional ballots.
From the Four Corners to Chaparral, Albuquerque’s west side to the city’s Northeast Heights, Republicans washed out in legislative races this week, putting Democrats on track to cinch a 46-24 seat majority in the New Mexico House of Representatives.
That is a pickup of eight seats. And it’s the biggest margin in the state House since 1996. The Obama wave of 2008 saw Democrats control 45 seats.
The state saw exceptionally high turnout for a midterm election, with at least 682,833 people casting ballots, or 54 percent of registered voters, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
The result was not only a bust for Republicans in statewide races but the loss of one seat after another in the state House of Representatives.
Tuesday’s vote also was a major victory to a new crop of Democratic women in the House. Of the 46 Democrats elected to the House, 23 will be women.
Albuquerque was home to the lion’s share of battleground districts.
In the northwest Albuquerque district held for six years by GOP Rep. Monica Youngblood, Democrats were handed a gift when Youngblood was arrested, and later convicted, on a drunken-driving charge. She ended up losing to retired minister Karen Bash by about 16 percentage points. Bash won all 14 precincts in the district.
But the blue wave swept farther across New Mexico’s largest city.
On Albuquerque’s traditionally Republican north side, longtime City Councilor Brad Winter lost to Democrat Day Hochman Vigil in the race to succeed outgoing Republican Rep. Sarah Maestas Barnes.
Democrat Melanie Stansbury unseated six-term Republican Rep. Jimmie Hall. Before this year, Hall never had a serious re-election challenge.
On the city’s west side, Joy Garratt unseated Republican Rep. David Adkins in a district that Democrats had long eyed.
And in an election night surprise in a race that neither side was talking up before Tuesday night, Democrat William Pratt won the Albuquerque seat held by Republican Larry Larrañaga, who died last month. Pratt won by 174 votes, according to unofficial returns.
House Speaker Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe, in a late-Tuesday interview, credited Tuesday’s success to “incredible candidates running incredible campaigns,” who concentrated on going door to door to personally appeal to voters.
Egolf said many of the winning candidates had been working on their races for nearly two years.
The Democrats, Egolf said, “campaigned on positive issues” as opposed to personal attacks. In at least one case, though, an unaffiliated political action committee did the dirty work.
Bash was relatively quiet about Youngblood’s DWI, while a Democratic PAC, Patriot Majority, sent a devastating mailer featuring a photo from a police body camera video on the night of her arrest in May and pointing out details of the arrest.
Albuquerque isn’t the only place in which Democrats picked up seats.
In the Four Corners area, Democrat Anthony Allison unseated three-term Republican Rep. Sharon Clahchischilliage.And in a Southern New Mexico district that spans from Alamogordo to Chaparral, Democrat Willie Madrid ousted Republican Rep. Ricky Little. That race was a rematch from 2016, when Little edged Madrid by 137 votes.
Republicans were poised Wednesday to pick up one seat. Unofficial results showed Democratic Rep. George Dodge trailing political newcomer Martin Zamora by about 30 votes in a district that spans from Santa Rosa to Vaughn and Clovis.
“It’s as diverse as it is big,” Zamora said of the district in a recent interview. It went for Trump, covers part of Clovis but also includes some reliably Democratic areas, such as Guadalupe County.
That race could lead to an automatic recount paid for by the state, as could the race between Republican Rep. Jim Dines and Democrat Abbas Akhil on Albuquerque’s east side. Unofficial results showed Abbas ahead by 79 votes.
Egolf pledged he and the newly fortified Democratic caucus will seek to work with House Republicans “to seek durable solutions” for problems facing the state. He said for the two years he’s been speaker, he’s made a habit of speaking at least once a week with Republican House leaders to see what they needed for their constituents.
“That’s not going to change,” he said. “We love our House Republican colleagues.”
The New Mexican’s Steve Terrell contributed to this report.