EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Republican Yvette Herrell and incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez on Tuesday officially became their parties’ candidates for New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District.
Herrell and Vasquez won their primaries unopposed. Vasquez received 29,487 votes in the Democratic primary while Herrell secured 23,096 ballots in the GOP election.
According to data from the New Mexico Secretary of State’s Office, Vasquez garnered 17,420 of his votes from just two counties: Bernalillo and Doña Ana. They include New Mexico’s most populous cities: Albuquerque and Las Cruces.
Herrell received 7,623 Republican votes in Bernalillo and Doña Ana. Her strength lies in Eddy, Otero, Sierra, Lea and Catron counties, where three times as many Republicans as Democrats cast ballots in Tuesday’s primary.
Herrell represented the 2nd Congressional District – which includes all of New Mexico’s border with Mexico – from 2021 to 2023. Vasquez unseated Herrell in the November 2022 election by less than 1 percent of the vote after the Democratic-controlled state Legislature redrew district lines.
A US Border Patrol vehicle sits next to a border wall in the El Paso Sector along the US-Mexico border between New Mexico and Chihuahua state in Sunland Park, New Mexico. (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
Still, the Cook Political Report and The Hill last month had the district as a “toss-up” in a November election. Their analysis shows control of the U.S. House of Representatives will come down to a handful of districts, including New Mexico’s 2nd District.
“I am honored to officially be the nominee in NM-02. Now the real battle begins,” Herrell tweeted Tuesday night.
Vasquez had not issued a statement or commented on the primary election in his social media accounts as of this writing.
GOP attacks Vasquez over run-ins with the law, alleged racial slur
For the past two weeks, Republican Party officials have been attacking Vasquez for alleged run-ins with law enforcement in the 2000s in El Paso and Las Cruces. Vasquez was cited in 2005 for possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia and released with a criminal summons; the cases were eventually suspended, the Washington Examiner reported.
Another case in El Paso involved traffic citations that went unpaid for years resulting in the issuing of a warrant. The one in Las Cruces involved alleged telephone harassment directed at a Black coworker, The Examiner reported. The Republican Party of New Mexico publicly accused Vasquez of using a racial slur when referring to the coworker.
The Las Cruces Bulletin reported that Vasquez’s attorney said the congressman this year paid a bond on the 22-year overdue citations for driving without a license or proof of liability insurance and disregarding a traffic control device.
Border Report last week reached out electronically to one of Vasquez’s press staff for comment about the allegations being disseminated by the state GOP but did not get a response.
NM’s 2nd District a hotspot for smuggling, migrant deaths
The reconfigured congressional district includes the deadly Sunland Park-Santa Teresa migrant-smuggling corridor. This is a place that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has identified as one of the nation’s hotspots for migrant smuggling.
The court docket in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico is routinely rife with cases involving migrant smuggling and transportation of unauthorized non-citizens for profit. Chases of vehicles that often result in crashes in El Paso originate with smugglers picking up migrants across the New Mexico state line.
Also, the Arizona-based humanitarian nonprofit No More Deaths in March published a detailed report documenting 400 migrant deaths in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection El Paso Sector – that includes all of New Mexico between 2012 and 2022.
Most of the deaths involve drownings in El Paso canals and fatalities in New Mexico resulting from falls from the border wall, Mount Cristo Rey in Sunland Park or the desert between the wall and the nearest highway.
Just last week, four migrants died of heat stroke west of the Sunland Park urban sprawl, according to CBP.
Herrell has called for more resources to federal agencies to stem the flow of illegal border crossings and combat the Mexican drug cartels that have taken over migrant smuggling.
Vasquez on Tuesday praised President Biden’s about-face on closing the border to asylum-seekers entering between ports of entry when certain triggers are met. He also called for his peers in Congress to pass immigration reform.
“This order takes an initial step to fix our longstanding broken immigration system and the challenges we face at our border,” Vasquez posted on one of his social media accounts. “But it doesn’t address the totality of our problems our immigration system faces. Now, more than ever, we need congressional action to tackle this humanitarian crisis.
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