thomas leverett weblog

NM-2 update

Our race was very close. A normally very conservative district, the vast majority ranchers, almost flipped blue, but the Democratic candidate, Xochitl Small-Torres, ended up losing barely to Yvette Harrell, Republican, by about 1900 votes. The last I heard, there were a few thousand left to count, all in Dona Ana County, Xochitl's stronghold, but I would think it would be unlikely that they'd count a few thousand, and have them all go to her. I think it's over. And I think you could point to a number of reasons she was unable to flip it.

The first was a merciless television campaign. Harrell got the support of a wealthy national organization that funded television ads for R candidates in crucial districts, and they flooded the airwaves. People in my hometown thought Xochitl would take their guns (not true), that she would do whatever Pelosi says (not true), that she would vote against Social Security (where this came from, I still don't know). Nationally, they had figured out what people's hot buttons were, and pressed them. It was undeniable that she came from a liberal, community activist (water-rights oriented) background, and they pushed that too, as if that were some kind of liability. Most important, the Trump base was energized; they all came out to vote. They were aware of the "blue wave," well afraid of its consequences, and they were all there on election day.

I generalize these reasons, and say, it probably happened all over the country. Record turnout at the polls. Highly motivated voters on both sides. Increasingly contentious and polarized electorate. More money pumped into the propaganda machine than ever. And the Republicans, by and large, are better at that than the Dems.

Frankly, I thought that Hispanic turnout would be more than it was. We live on the border, with a huge population of Hispanics in every county, particularly in the towns, like Roswell, Alamogordo, Carlsbad, and Socorro, but also in the smaller places along the border and over by the bootheel. the eastern part of the state has seen an oil boom, in places like Artesia, Hobbs, and Jal, and those towns are very conservative, I assume because they believe Trump is good for the industry. It's not clear to me whether there was record turnout in the oil districts, or, if increased Hispanic turnout would be good for the Dems; a surprising number of Hispanics are very conservative, and abandoned the Dems a few years back. I'm still studying the results in this area.

Nationally, I have few things to be happy about. I'm glad Scott Walker is out of there. The Iowa Nazi won another term but Iowa itself shifted more to the blue. A congressman I detest in my home district of Illinois won one more time. This time the Green influence hardly mattered. An interesting local race saw the candidacy of Gary Johnson, Libertarian, not make much difference. He got maybe 20% of the vote, and one could argue that most of it came from the red side, but the reds lost by about thirty anyway, so I don't think they're too mad at him. Most of New Mexico has gone blue, and the big news in the far west is that Arizona, Nevada, and even Montana are going that direction as well. It's a new dawn, with only Utah and Texas still staunchly in the red column, and it's possible to question even Texas. Things can happen, and it might be interesting in 2020.

posted by tom @ 10:04 AM