Yvette Herrell wins the high-stakes Republican contest in New Mexico's 2nd congressional district
- On Tuesday, New Mexico held Republican primaries in all its congressional districts, including a competitive GOP primary in New Mexico's second congressional district, a swing seat.
- Former state Representative Yvette Herrell, who narrowly lost to Democratic Rep. Xochitl Torres-Small in 2018, defeated energy executive Claire Chase and businessman Chris Mathys for the GOP nomination.
The stakes:
The most high-stakes Republican election in New Mexico today is the GOP primary in New Mexico's 2nd congressional district, a crucial battleground district that Trump carried by 10 percentage points in 2016 but is now in Democratic hands.
When former GOP Rep. Steve Peace retired to run for governor in 2018, Democrat Xochitl Torres-Small narrowly beat out former state representative Yvette Herrell, a staunch Trump ally, by just under two percentage points despite Pearce carrying the district in his gubernatorial campaign.
Now, Herrell defeated energy executive and businesswoman Claire Chase and real estate broker Chris Mathys for the Republican nomination in the 2020 district, which encompasses much of the southern part of the state and has a substantial oil and gas industry presence.
This highly-watched primary took an ugly turn at points, however, with both Herrell's and Chase's camps lobbing salacious and nasty attacks at each other.
Herrell has been accused of spreading rumors insinuating that Chase was unfaithful to her first husband while he was deployed — a charge that both Chase and her ex-husband vehemently deny — and even gave copy-editing advice to a cartoonist looking to distribute a meme about the rumor, according to text messages obtained by the Associated Press.
In response, Chase called the rumors "despicable, untrue, and [a] deeply personal attack," with her campaign attacking Herrell over her record in the state legislature and a separate PAC airing an ad accusing Herrell of being at a party in California where attendees hit a piñata in the likeness of President Donald Trump.
Several well-funded Democratic-aligned organizations including EMILY's List's Women Vote! PAC also got involved in the primary by sending out mailers attacking Chase as insufficiently pro-Trump in an effort to boost Herrell, who those groups believe to be a weaker candidate than Chase.
The liberal super PAC Patriot Majority also spent $250,000 on ads similarly negatively framing Chase as a Trump-critical "lobbyist" and Herrell as a "loyalist," the Center for Responsive Politics reported.
Now, Republican strategists are worried that the mud-slinging in the primary — some of which has been come from Democratic groups — could end up hurting the GOP nominee against Torres-Small, according to the Associated Press and National Journal Hotline.