Old Man Gloom

For Dems overdosing on election anxiety and angst, how about this: the Santa Fe Kiwanis Club makes more history and has a special burning of Zozobra to cast off their election gloom. Does January 20, 2025 for the "Second Burning" sound about right? Or January 6? (Free admission for any Republican with an up-to date driver's license.)

Santa Fe is an appropriate site for Democrats to mourn the national results. The county gave Harris her biggest win among the state's 33 counties with 73 percent of their vote. 

Her worst county was Lea in SE oil country where Trump won with 80 percent.  

Yvette Herrell's unsuccessful run  this year against Dem Rep. Gabe Vasquez was her fourth time as the GOP nominee for the southern congressional seat. She has only won once. Was '24 her final outing? It could be for her but the GOP could keep up the fight. 

The race was only a nail-biter in the sense that the late returns heavily favoring Vasquez in Bernalillo and Dona Ana counties did not come in until late in the evening, keeping the race close. 

But at the end he won by double-digits in the raw vote beating Herrell in unofficial returns 136,733 to 126,400 or 10,333 votes. 

That's a victory of  52.0 to 48.0 percent and a far cry from '22 when Herrell closed the gap to 1,350 votes. 

These results reveal the "lean Democratic" nature of the new district. However, the race seems close enough that Republicans might take another shot in 2026, an off-year election when turnout will drop and presumably give the GOP a better chance.

BERNCO AND DONA

This year the Dem leaning precincts in Bernalillo and Dona Ana made up 57 percent of the 263,000 votes cast in the sprawling district and and Vasquez prevailed in both. 

In Bernalillo county, the Westside and South Valley precincts went for him 59.4 to 40.6 percent. Vasquez received 40,321 votes to Herrell's 27,591, a 15,730 vote pick up. 

In Dona Ana he won 57.6 to 42.4 percent or 47,458 to 35,002, a pick-up of 12,456. 

Herrell trimmed those numbers in more rural areas but came up over 10,000 short. 

This corner and others said before the election that if the Dems won the district again this year, the Republicans might give up in the future.

But for that happen Vasquez probably would have needed to match the true Dem lean of the district which is six percent in his favor. 

By finishing well but not decisively he left the door open for possibly another rigorous challenge in two years.

INSIDE THE RESULTS

With the dust settled on Election '24, we  call on one of our Senior Alligators (of the Dem variety) for down-the-middle analysis of where state politics stands:

The Democratic Party here and nationally is no longer the party of working people. They lost that moniker through their own negligence.

Here in New Mexico the day goes to Sen. Heinrich and Rep. Vasquez.

Republican Yvette Herrell, running against Vasquez, didn’t have a distinguishing message and didn’t have the mojo of the past. As Trump would say, she was “low energy.” 

Heinrich was smart to run up the score on Domenici (he won by 9.8 percent) and is looking more like a front-runner for Governor. 

Assuming he becomes Ranking Member on the Senate Energy Committee, he will have a national voice in combating Trump on energy and environmental policy—that will help him with fund-raising and building a stronger profile. 

(Sec. of Interior) Deb Haaland is still a force will be out of a job soon. Does she have the energy to run or has Heinrich effectively bullied her out of the Governor’s race?

People would be mistaken to think that there will be some resurgence of Republicans in this state. They provided another lackluster performance. So the Dems have every opportunity to step up and re-fashion their party. 

Will they lean into their tendency to go left and continue an anti-Trump rampage or will they start talking about the issues that matter to people like jobs and crime? In NM will they finally make wholesale changes to education and health care? 

MLG can put in a heroic last two years on these issues or she can just give up and fade into the ether.

We would add to that interesting analysis that BernCo District Attorney Sam Bregman is now another possible Dem Guv hopeful. 

Also, now that Haaland will be out as cabinet secretary in January, does she announce a Guv candidacy soon after to try to keep Heinrich out? A close supporter of Haaland declares, "everywhere Deb goes New Mexicans are asking her to run."

TRUMP NATIVE VOTE

There has been much talk--and deservedly so--over Trump's strong showing among Hispanic voters here and across the nation. But there was another worrisome development for the Dems with Native American voters including those in New Mexico's McKinley County;

The Trump campaign’s low-key efforts to court Native American voters appeared to have paid dividends. Across the map, in traditionally Democratic, predominantly Native American counties, Trump made noticeable inroads. The two Montana counties that saw the sharpest shifts to the right were Glacier and Blaine counties, both of which have Native American majorities. Robeson County in North Carolina, home to the Lumbee tribe, saw a 9-point shift to the right — the biggest red shift of any county in the state.

New Mexico’s McKinley County saw an even bigger movement toward Trump. Harris still won comfortably, but the county, which is 81 percent Native American and home to members of several different tribes, shifted 14 points to the right.

In McKinley where voters usually give the Dem presidential nominee well over 60 percent of their votes this year Harris carried the county by only 51.8 to Trump's 45.9 percent.

Dems can argue that the Republicans could not find a way to tap into that discontent in the senate and legislative races but they have to fret that Trump is showing a possible path for them.

HISPANIC SURGE

An out of touch Democratic party or sexism and misogyny. or both? More on the Trump Hispanic surge:

In 2020, Latino men went for President Biden over Trump by a 23 point margin, 59 percent to 36 percent. Four years later, they flipped, voting for Trump over Harris by a 12 point margin, 55 percent to 43 percent.

The gigantic swing among those voters contrasted with a more modest swing among Latina women, whose 69 percent backing for Biden in 2020 ticked down to 60 percent backing Harris.

Explanations vary for exactly why the shift occurred among Latino men. Pro-Trump voices contend that the president-elect’s economic message resonated with Latino voters generally, and that perceived Democratic overreach on social and cultural issues such as trans rights might have alienated Latino men in particular.

A different, harsher thesis is that sexism and racism might have been the catalysts for the fall-off in support for a female Democratic nominee of Black and Indian descent. 

Sexism and racism? Hardly: 

About 7 in 10 Hispanic voters were “very concerned” about the cost of food and groceries, slightly more than about two thirds of voters overall, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. Nearly two thirds of Hispanic voters said that they were “very concerned” about their housing costs, compared with about half of voters overall.

THE BOTTOM LINES

As usual there was a bit of uncertainty Election Night on where the balance of power in the state legislature settled and that was reflected in our first blog report early Wednesday. 

When all the votes were in Republicans picked up one seat in the state House where the Dems will still have a large majority of 44 to 26. 

There was a gain of one GOP seat in the state Senate. The party split there will now be 26 Democrats and 16 Republicans.

This is the Home of New Mexico Politics.