Third Congressional District Profiled In Our Final Installment of Exclusive Previews From Almanac of American Politics; District A Bit Less Dem But Still Heart Of El Norte

Today we have our final installment of the Almanac of American Politics review of the state's

three congressional districts from the forthcoming 2024 edition which details all 435 districts, their members, all governors, campaign finance and much more. 

Our partnership with the Almanac to present the exclusive previews comes with an added benefit for our readers--15 percent off the latest edition. Just use the code NMPOLITICS15 at checkout to take advantage of this special offer for your copy of the 'bible" of American politics.

Our final installment today has all you need to know about the newly redrawn New Mexico Third congressional District. 

Teresa Leger Fernandez was elected in 2020 to an open seat in northern New Mexico, running on a long record of service on local and national levels, with a well-organized campaign and support from key interest groups. Her victory created what was the largest state all-women delegation in the House. She replaced Democrat Ben Ray Lujan, who won the Senate seat of retiring Sen. Tom Udall. Born and raised in Las Vegas, New Mexico, Leger Fernandez got her bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a law degree from Stanford. She returned to her home state to work on affordable housing and community development, as well as advocacy for local tribes. With her “social impact” law firm in Santa Fe, she also represented minority businesses, including with litigation. She was a White House fellow for President Bill Clinton and vice chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation during the Obama administration.

In her first political campaign, she invoked the theme “Protect What You Love.” Contending that families, communities, democracy and the planet were under attack, she added, “when you care deeply about something, you need to act on it.” She supported the Green New Deal, including the phase-out of coal-fired power plants in part of her district. 

Rep. Leger Fernandez

In its editorial endorsement of Leger Fernandez, the Santa Fe New Mexican wrote that she “excels at fighting and winning battles” and “brought high achievement at every level of her life.” 

The other leading Democratic contenders were first-term state Rep. Joseph Sanchez and Valerie Plame, a former CIA operations officer and book author. Plame, who cited her familiarity with the Los Alamos National Laboratory when she moved to the district after leaving the CIA, had been well-known in Washington. Amid extensive controversy, her covert status was revealed after she and her husband, a U.S. diplomat, publicly criticized the George W. Bush administration for its handling of the war in Iraq. “I want to take that searing life experience and put it to good use for my community,” Plame told the Huffington Post. With her national fundraising base, Plame’s $2.2 million made her the biggest spender in the primary.

Leger Fernandez spent $1.4 million in the primary. She was endorsed by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and EMILY’s List, which supports Democratic women who support abortion rights. The political action committees of those two groups spent another $800,000 on her behalf. Rep. Tony Cardenas of California said the Hispanic Caucus backed Leger Fernandez because minority candidates from low-income areas often struggle financially against candidates with national support whom he called “opportunists.” 

 Leger Fernandez won the primary with 43 percent of the vote to 25 percent for Plame and 12 percent for Sanchez. She took 13 of the 16 counties in the sprawling district, including each of the eight largest except for rural Rio Arriba County, which was the base for Sanchez. In November, she had no problem with her 59%-41% victory over Republican Alexis Johnson, an environmental engineer for oil companies. 

 In the House, Leger Fernandez got seats on the Natural Resources and Education and Labor committees, plus the leadership-centered House Administration Committee. In December 2022, Congress completed action on her bill to make it illegal to export Native American cultural items and other artifacts that were illegally obtained. Leger Fernandez took an interest in home-state energy issues, while filing a proposal to clean up abandoned oil and gas wells. With California Rep. Ted Lieu, she filed a bill to create a Federal Writers Project, modeled on a Depression-era program, to assist writers who suffered financially from the pandemic. 

In her reelection bid, Leger Fernandez had a rematch in the redrawn district that had become less Democratic. She won, 58%-42%. Her 40,000-vote lead in Santa Fe County, which cast one-fourth of the total vote, exceeded her nearly 38,000 vote lead districtwide. In its endorsement of her reelection, the Santa Fe New Mexican described Leger Fernandez as “a problem solver [who] loves getting down in the weeds” of policy. 

3rd District Santa Fe: 

“The dancing ground of the sun” is what the Pueblo Indians called the land of northern New Mexico, where the long vistas, dotted with low-lying scrub, are painted in pastel hues in the cold light and clear air. For 100 years, artists have been coming here, attracted by the scenery and by a unique civilization that is part Indian, part Anglo, part Spanish, and a little Mexican. The Indians were here first and built adobe pueblos, including some of the world’s earliest apartment buildings. The Spanish conquistadors and priests brought the Catholic religion, the baroque architectural accents, and the Spanish language. The Palace of the Governors, built in Santa Fe in 1610, is now a museum on Santa Fe’s Plaza and is the nation’s oldest extant public building. 

Along the back roads in Rio Arriba and Taos counties, one can find a religion that mixes Catholicism with adaptations of Indian festivals, buildings not that much different from the old pueblos, and a standard of living reminiscent of the Indian past. Concentrated in and around the Navajo reservation in the west (and outside of Santa Fe), many of the district’s Indians live in abject poverty. It’s quite a contrast with the ski lodges in the Taos Valley, the high-security research facilities of Los Alamos, which has the second-highest median income of any city in the nation (behind Washington D.C.) and has among the most Ph.D.s per capita, thanks to the National Laboratory, and the affluent lifestyles of modern-day Santa Fe. 

The 3rd District of New Mexico contains most of the state’s historic Spanish-speaking and Indian regions. This district runs from the High Plains along the Texas border, past the haunting Sangre de Cristo Mountains, through the vast ridges and isolated buttes in the center, to the windy and dusty desert-like plateau in the west. Santa Fe, which has the most museums of any city in the nation except New York, remains the lively and dominant center. The local economy has remained strong, with a “gray” growth as the number of residents 65 and older has come close to surpassing those 18 and younger. Continuing wildfires in the mountains led the Federal Emergency Management to pay $2.5 billion to compensate the victims of botched prescribed burns extending back to 2000. 

In the 2022 redistricting, the 3rd lost to the 1st District Rio Rancho, which had been the most populous city in the 3rd. Its rural southeast corner scooped up the area from Clovis to Hobbs; which had been part of the 2nd District. The changes decreased Joe Biden’s win from 58%-40% to 54%-44%.

We hoped you enjoyed the series as we prep for the first defense of the new congressional districts in 2024. Again, for your 15 percent discount to the Almanac just enter the code NMPOLITICS15 at checkout. 

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(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2023