In new maps, Dems may have drawn selves into tough spot
For 10 years, new 3rd Congressional District could be more competitive than the majority party expected
Alexis Martinez Johnson captured 41 percent of the vote in last year’s race for New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District — not too shabby for a Republican newcomer trying to win in a Democratic stronghold.
New lines on a congressional redistricting map Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law Friday could make the seat even more competitive for Republicans for the next 10 years.
The reconfigured district still encompasses Northern New Mexico, including the liberal city of Santa Fe, but now it stretches into redder-than-red portions of the southeastern part of the state, which political observers say could give Republicans a shot at winning the seat.
“I can only say with certainty that the current congresswoman, [Teresa] Leger Fernández, would have great difficultly with any Republican candidate in Roswell, Hobbs, Artesia and Clovis,” said Martinez Johnson, who is “testing the waters” for a second run in 2022.
Republicans say they can thank Democrats for putting the 3rd District in play.
The Democrat-led Legislature championed the new political boundaries in what is widely believed to be an attempt to win the Republican-leaning 2nd Congressional District, which encompasses the southern part of the state.
It may have been a big risk — particularly in a district that has sent just one Republican, Bill Redmond in 1997, to Washington.
Lonna Atkeson, a former political science professor at the University of New Mexico, tweeted Friday that the 2nd and 3rd districts “could be more competitive than meets the eye” in light of changing voting behaviors among Hispanics, who constitute a majority of the state’s population.
“We’ve definitely been seeing changes in how Hispanics vote in the state between 2016 and 2020,
and they voted more Republican in 2020 than they did in 2016,” Atkeson said in a telephone interview. “We’re seeing that nationwide, so it is absolutely theoretically possible that there is potentially down the road more competition in some of those regions because of these sort of demographic changes that are going on in terms of voting behavior.”
In other words, historically safe Democratic districts could be up for grabs.
State lawmakers might have created new political boundaries with the idea that “the past is the future,” Atkeson said.
“If we’re looking forward in time, I think [the congressional districts] could be definitely more competitive because of the changing preferences of the groups underlying those districts,” she said.
In a statewide survey Atkeson conducted, 60 percent of Hispanics or Latinos who described their origin as Spanish voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. In 2020, the number dropped to 50 percent for Joe Biden, Atkeson said.
“Even in New Mexico, there was this move towards [Republican Donald] Trump by Hispanics,” she said. “Hispanics still overwhelmingly voted Democratic, but just the drop is pretty impressive.”
David Adkins, a former state representative who is now a partner at Rival Strategy Group, a New Mexico-based political consulting firm serving Republicans, said Democrats could end up losing the 3rd Congressional District under the new map.
“Obsessed with grabbing full control of our federal delegation, New Mexico Democrats let political greed get the best of them during the special session and have now put the Third Congressional District in play for Republicans,” Adkins wrote in an email.
Adkins noted the district is now rated “highly competitive” by the political tracker FiveThirtyEight.
“The finalized map makes it easier for Democrats to capture the 2nd District, which is currently held by Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell,” the website states. “The tradeoff, however, is that the 3rd District becomes more competitive, endangering the reelection prospects of Democratic Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández.”
Nathaniel Rakich of FiveThirtyEight called the map “an audacious Democratic
gerrymander” that redistributes Democratic voters from the 1st and 3rd congressional districts — but more so from the 3rd — to make the 2nd Congressional District “slightly” Democratic-leaning, too.
“It’s designed to maximize the [number] of Dems in the NM delegation, but could backfire into a 2-1 Republican map,” Rakich tweeted.
Former Gov. Bill Richardson, who held the 3rd Congressional District seat from 1982-96, said he believes Democrats, who control both chambers in the Legislature, as well as the Governor’s Office, wanted to create three districts that lean Democratic.
“But here’s what I think the result is,” Richardson, a Democrat who also served as secretary of energy in the Clinton administration, said Saturday. “I think the 3rd District is now a little bit more competitive. I’m looking at the lines. It’s gone from a blowout Democratic district” to one that will now lean heavily Democratic.
Still, Richardson believes Leger Fernández will be able to hold onto her seat, saying she had a good first term.
A sense of wariness
Asked whether Democrats had taken a risk in refashioning the 3rd, Leger Fernández said in a statement she was excited to represent the diverse district and serve the new communities now in it.
“New Mexicans in the new parts of [the district] are hungry to have representation that delivers healthcare, infrastructure, and lowers costs for working families — that’s what I have done, and what I will continue to do,” she said.
Pressed to answer the question, Leger Fernández said in a follow-up statement she plans to run an “energized campaign” focused on her previously mentioned priorities, which she said she has been delivering in her first term in Congress.
A spokeswoman for the Democratic Party of New Mexico did not return multiple messages seeking comment.
Adkins indicated he doesn’t believe Leger Fernández, with only $266,000 cash on hand in her campaign account, is ready for a competitive race.
“Leger Fernández was clearly kept in the dark about this new map, leading to a comical situation where her brother testified against their own party’s map during the legislative session,” he wrote.
The congresswoman’s brother, Martín Leger, told a legislative committee Thursday the new map “destroys” so-called communities of interest in the district.
“I mean, having to go from Gallup all the way to Roswell to hear what the concerns are, it’s really not a good way to have a representative represent the constituents,” said Leger, who is the San Miguel County Democratic Party chairman. “Also, the constituencies from the oil patch to the acequias are not communities of interest.”
Paula Garcia, executive director of the New Mexico Acequia Association, said the group was concerned about what she called a “significant deviation” from a so-called people’s map advanced by the independent, nonpartisan Citizen Redistricting Committee.
“The one that was adopted by CRC was still a big change for CD3 that would be a hard thing to adapt to, but all it had was Hobbs,” she said. “The one that the Senate introduced had Hobbs, Roswell and Artesia. That’s a big difference in terms of the makeup of the district, in terms of the voters and the area that it covered.”
Garcia said the map eventually adopted by the Legislature and signed into law by the governor included “a lot more of southeastern New Mexico” in the 3rd Congressional District “than anyone expected.” The acequia association’s concern is the district could be heavily influenced by the oil and gas industry.
“What we said specifically in our concerns was that the acequia communities of interest from Northern New Mexico were going to be sandwiched between the San Juan Basin in the northwest and the Permian Basin in the southeast,” she said. “It changes the nature of the district, the character of the district.”
While the association is nonpartisan, Garcia said the new boundaries will have political implications.
“For acequias, we’re very interested in natural resource policy and water and clean water … for traditional uses, not for extractive industry,” she said. “We’re just concerned about what’s going to happen to our political representation, and we’ve been well represented in the past by elected officials that have either come from acequia communities or have a close relationship to acequia communities, but it’s hard to tell what will happen in the future.”
Martinez Johnson, who this year ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Santa Fe, a city dominated by Democrats, said she hasn’t decided whether she’ll make another run for the seat.
“Right now, I am not a candidate,” she said. “But someone like myself who was born in Roosevelt County, who grew up in Chaves County and Roswell, particularly, those are my stomping grounds. In addition to that, my family, we live here in Santa Fe. … So for me, these new lines are something that represents the life I have lived thus far.”
Steve Pearce, a former congressman who is now chairman of the Republican Party of New Mexico, said Democrats are taking a big risk by thinking they can overcome a highly motivated cadre of Republicans in southeastern New Mexico.
“They think they’re doing a slick political move, and the people are going to suffer,” he said, adding it was “very distressing” to watch the redrawing of political boundaries at the Capitol in Santa Fe during the special legislative session.
Rural, urban and beyond
Former Santa Fe City Councilor Karen Heldmeyer, a statistician who chaired an independent redistricting committee for the city in 2015, said keeping what she called communities of concern together should be a top priority in redistricting.
“It looks like the Democrats in this case have made a decision to not necessarily do that [but] to have urban and rural in every district, to have Democrat and Republican in every district, and we’ll see how that works out,” she said.
Richardson said he agreed with the approach lawmakers had taken.
“Right now, the biggest problem in American politics and American governance is the urban-rural divide, enormous differences between cities and rural areas,” he said. “I think for the time now, it makes sense to merge districts in New Mexico, urban and rural, and all three seem to have that. … I hope more congressional districts do that because it’s important for rural representatives and city representatives in Congress to work together.”
Democrats represented all three of New Mexico’s U.S. House districts when Xochitl Torres Small won an open seat in the 2nd in 2018.
Pearce, then the incumbent congressman who is now the Republican Party chairman for the state, ran unsuccessfully for governor.
“The southern district was generally Republican,” Richardson said. “The aberration was when a Democrat [Torres Small] won that district for two years and then lost it right after.”
Sen. Joe Cervantes, a Las Cruces Democrat who was the lead sponsor of the bill creating the new congressional map, has criticized the idea that any district belonged to one party.
“For 20 years, I’ve worked to erase the chosen boundaries, which historically assigned southern NM to the Republicans in exchange for the north assigned to Democrats,” Cervantes tweeted Friday. “This plan rejects that past thinking, mixes urban and rural areas, and will bring us together as a state.”
Could it also put a Republican in the 3rd?
No one can say for sure, but what is certain is the district has changed.
Richardson said he traveled to Hobbs for a memorial service last week and noticed something different.
“I had won Lea County as governor — not big, but I had won it because I visited there a lot. … But I’ll tell you, those 200 people that were there, if I were running again, they wouldn’t vote for me, I don’t think,” he said. “Although they were very polite and gracious … I can sense the change.”
The people at the service, Richardson said, viewed him as a progressive.
In a city like Hobbs, which is fueled in large part by the oil and gas industry, “progressive” is a dirty word.
Adkins predicts the GOP will take advantage of the new political boundaries and put up a strong candidate in the 3rd.
“And given the political environment shaping up for the midterms,” Adkins wrote, “[Republicans] are in position to not only keep the second district but also take the third thanks to the Democrats’ redistricting overreach.”