Pearce Ekes Out Edge in New Mexico GOP Senate Primary

By Marie Horrigan, CQ Staff Wed Jun 4, 5:56 AM ET

New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce is on track to eke out a win over Heather A. Wilson, another House Republican, in the party's primary for the seat of retiring Sen. Pete V. Domenici.

Should Pearce's narrow lead in the late vote count hold up, he will have prevailed despite the late-campaign intervention by the long-popular Domenici on Wilson's behalf -- and will set up a general election race of contrasts with New Mexico's other House member, Democratic nominee Tom Udall.

After months of often combative campaigning, Pearce led Wilson by 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent with 92 percent of precincts reporting as the canvass lingered into early morning Wednesday.

Though both candidates brought strong Republican credentials into the race, Pearce pitched himself to primary voters as the more conservative choice. Club for Growth, a national political action organization best known for its opposition to taxes and government spending, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads criticizing Wilson.

Domenici, who had helped Wilson get her start in politics and appeared in the past to be prepping her to succeed him, had remained neutral after Pearce entered the primary and made it a showdown of the state's two House Republicans. But Domenici pointed to the interference by outside groups such as Club for Growth when he endorsed Wilson last Friday. "Heather Wilson is the brightest member of Congress I know, and I hope she wins," he said in a statement.

Wilson's strong base in Bernalillo County -- which includes Albuquerque and is the most populous jurisdiction in the state -- enabled her to stay neck-and-neck with Pearce. Portions of Bernalillo are in all three congressional districts but most of it is situated in Wilson's 1st District. She ended up carrying the county with 69 percent to 31 percent for Pearce, and also finished ahead in three of the other four counties in the 1st District.

But Pearce's conservative image, which played well in the state's more rural areas, enabled him to dominate his base in the strongly Republican southern 2nd District and run well among GOP voters who generally are outnumbered in Democrat Udall's northern 3rd District.

The Republican primary electorate in New Mexico, as in most states, tends to lean to the right, and Pearce bounded out to an early lead in the race in polls of GOP voters. But throughout the campaign, Wilson whittled away his advantage until a poll released Sunday indicated she was within the margin of error of catching Pearce. That poll was conducted before Domenici's endorsement, leading some state politics watchers to speculate that Wilson might be catapulted into the lead.

Republican officials can be expected to rally around Pearce if his lead holds up, as they contend they can hold this seat. They need to do so urgently in a year in which the national political landscape appears likely to produce an additional gain of Senate seats for the Democrats, who took control of the chamber with a six-seat pickup in the 2006 elections. Domenici, who was first elected in 1972, would have been favored to win a seventh term had he run again. New Mexico's typically even split between the major parties was underscored by Republican George W. Bush's very narrow loss of the state in the 2000 presidential race and his narrow win in 2004.

The GOP, even as Pearce and Wilson battled over the Senate nomination, laid the groundwork for an effort in the general election campaign to cast Udall as a liberal who is out of the state's mainstream.

But Udall and his fellow Democrats argue that it is Pearce whose conservative views are too hardline for this partisan swing state. The bruising nature of the Republican primary contest also will leave Pearce needing to do some serious intraparty outreach to Wilson's loyalists, and appears to have put him at a significant early disadvantage to Udall.

Udall led both Pearce and Wilson by 15 percentage points in recent surveys that tested potential general election matchups. The candidates will enter the general election campaign with a huge financial disparity as well. Pearce had only $247,000 left in his campaign treasury as of May 14, according to his pre-primary report to the Federal Election Commission, and almost certainly spent down more in the final three weeks before the primary. Udall, by contrast, was unopposed for the Democratic nomination and had $2.9 million still on hand by the same date.

CQ Politics rates the race Leans Democrat.

The scramble by Pearce, Wilson and Udall for the same Senate seat has created a rare situation in New Mexico, where all three House seats are open for this year's elections. The hottest contest is certain to be in the 1st, a battleground district where Wilson survived one of the closest contests of 2006. A Republican hold in Pearce's 2nd appears likely, though Democrats say they intend to make a strong longshot bid there. A continued Democratic lock on Udall's 3rd appears more of a sure thing.

- 1st District. Former Albuquerque City Councilman Martin T. Heinrich won the Democratic nomination in the 1st District over three other candidates. He received 44 percent of the vote to defeat former New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca D. Vigil-Giron, who took 25 percent of the vote, and former state Health Secretary Michelle Lujan Grisham, who had 23 percent, as lawyer Robert L. Pidcock rounded out the field with 8 percent.

Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White, who was heavily favored to win the GOP primary, was true to form, easily defeating state Sen. Joe Cararro. White won with 82 percent of the primary vote to 18 percent for Carraro.

CQ Politics rates the race as No Clear Favorite. The 1st, which Wilson has represented since 1999, is a classic swing district. Democrats lead Republicans in voter registration there by 47 percent to 34 percent, but the 19 percent of voters not registered with either party can turn the vote in the GOP's favor.

Heinrich and White were the two best-funded candidates heading into the primary. Heinrich reported raising $734,000 and had $206,000 on hand by May 14, while White raised $601,000 and had $383,000 on hand by the same date.

- 2nd District. Restaurant chain owner Ed Tinsley won the 2nd District Republican primary with 31 percent of the vote, beating out four other candidates in the contest for Pearce's seat. He was trailed by retired banker Aubrey Dunn and former Hobbs Mayor Monty Newman, both with 22 percent; businessman Greg Sowards with 15 percent; and real estate agent C. Earl Greer with 9 percent.

The 2nd District favors Republicans, and gave 58 percent of the vote to Bush in 2004. CQ Politics rates the race Republican Favored.

But the potential fundraising clout of Democratic nominee Harry Teague, an oilman and former Lea County commissioner, cannot be overlooked. Teague, who won his primary with 57 percent of the vote to 43 percent for Dona Ana County Commissioner Bill McCamley. spent $1.1 million as of May 14 -- nearly twice as much money as any other candidate -- while McCamley ran a largely grass-roots campaign.

Teague loaned his campaign $685,000 and may dip into his personal funds again for the November election. Republican Tinsley, though, also has shown a willingness to self-finance his campaign.

- 3rd District. The contest for northern New Mexico's 3rd District proved that money isn't everything in politics. New Mexico Public Regulation Commission Chairman Ben Ray Lujan won the Democratic primary -- and the status of strong favorite for the general election in this Democratic-leaning district -- with 40 percent of the vote. He defeated developer Don Wiviott, whose $1.1 million investment of personal money in the race won him only 26 percent of the vote.

Lujan had strong political ties around the state. His father, Ben Lujan, is speaker of the state House, and Lujan picked up the endorsement of popular Gov. Bill Richardson and Lt. Gov. Diane Denish in the days before the primary.

The fight for Democratic nomination was pitched in part because the 3rd is a near sure bet for Democrats. CQ Politics rates the race Safe Democrat. Voter registration favors Democrats 55 percent to 29 percent, with 16 percent not registered with either party. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry received 54 percent of the vote in the 2004 election, and Udall has won each of his past four terms with more than 60 percent of the vote.

Four other Democrats petitioned to get on the primary ballot, but they all received less than 20 percent of the vote. Former state Indian Affairs Secretary Benny J. Shendo Jr. garnered 16 percent of the vote; Santa Fe County Commissioner Harry B. Montoya got 12 percent; and former state Assistant Attorney General Jon Adams and lawyer Rudy Martin each received 3 percent of the vote.

Rio Rancho contractor Dan East won the Republican primary with 55 percent of the vote over former Domenici aide Marco Gonzales. East is significantly underfunded compared to Lujan. As of May 14, Lujan had $168,000 on hand while East had $15,000 on hand.