Dispatch NM: Speculation follows Udall’s announcement
Tom Udall’s announcement that he won’t seek another term as U.S. Senator really brought out the politics in New Mexico.
Already, two Democrats have announced they’ll seek to replace Udall, and there’s plenty of speculation about others interested in vying for the crown jewel of statewide office. Let’s consider only a few.
First to announce was U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján, who has come a long way in the 10 years he’s been the House. I remember being wholly unimpressed that first time he ran in 2008, when his father, the late New Mexico Speaker of the House Ben Luján, and then-gov. Bill Richardson muscled him through for his first 3rd District election. At that time, he struck me as more of a front man for the Democratic machinery than a qualified candidate for the job, but he handily won — and, over the years, became far more refined, a much abler politician. He’s now Assistant Speaker, the fourth highest-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House, so a promotion to the Senate now appears within his grasp, if he can convince New Mexicans he’s right for the job.
His home base is in north-central New Mexico, where he and his family name are both familiar and respected. Down south, however, he’ll have to visit lot of small town coffee shop stops to become familiar enough to win their votes.
He gets three big breaks in the announcements that Attorney General Hector Balderas and U.S. Reps. Xochitl Torres Small and Deb Haaland won’t run for the Senate seat.
Balderas, who has run before for the Senate (losing to Martin Heinrich in 2012) and would have been a strong contender for Udall’s seat, given his charisma as well as his record as State Auditor and AG. Torres Small and Haaland, on the other hand, have just been elected to their first terms in the House and would have faced a backlash if they had abandoned their new seats for a shot at the Senate.
Still, Luján faces a formidable Democratic challenger in Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, whose has also announced a bid for the Senate seat. Her base is in Albuquerque, but she has support around the state too. As Secretary of State, she’s proven herself to be a progressive Democrat, advocating big changes that still haven’t come to fruition—namely, open primaries and ranked choice elections—but at this moment in which woman are stepping up to run for a plethora of offices, the timing could be right for her, even in Luján’s northern stronghold.
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, as of this writing Susana Martinez has not announced anything, but I’ll be a little surprised if she does run. She left office with low approval ratings and, besides, I’m not so sure she even likes politics anymore. But there’s still plenty of time for her to prove me wrong.
As for Steve Pearce, the former 2nd Congressional District representative who now chairs the state GOP, he’s a three-time loser in statewide races, but when did that ever stop anybody? From Abraham Lincoln forward, history is replete with losers who eventually won. We’ll see if he has the fire in his belly for another long-shot candidacy.
Still, even the biggest Republican names in New Mexico will have a hard time beating whoever the Democratic nominee turns out to be, especially with Donald Trump at the top of the national ticket. He barely garnered 40 percent of New Mexico’s statewide vote in 2016 and I’ll bet he will do even worse next year. Of course, we have no idea at this point who the Democrats will pick as their presidential nominee, but regardless, the antiTrump vote will be out in full force.
But I’m getting too far ahead in my prognostications; there are simply too variables to predict anything that far out. For one thing, we must see where we are on immigration by the time the election rolls around. Trump is determined to make the crisis at our southern border an even bigger deal in his re-election campaign—even if he has to make things worse by throwing money at a wall rather than humanitarian relief—and that will have a direct impact New Mexico. Our economic and cultural ties to Mexico and Central America run deep.
A lot can happen between now and November 2020, but even in New Mexico the campaign season is off and running. Welcome to the era of neverending elections.
Tom Mcdonald is founder of the New Mexico Community News Exchange, which distributes this column statewide. He also owns and operates The Communicator in Santa Rosa. He can be reached at tmcdonald.srnm@gmail.com.