Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
If you get your news from New Mexico commercial TV, you would think there are two U.S. congressional races in the state, not including the one in the Third Congressional District that includes Quay County, Clovis and Portales.
In our district, we have heard a lot of noise in the races for U.S. Senate race and for the U.S. House in the Second Congressional District but relatively little about the race in our own district.
We have plenty of attack ads from both parties in our U.S. Senate race between Democrat Ben Ray Lujan and Republican Mark Ronchetti.
Lujan, who has been our Third Congressional District representative since 2009, has a record to run on. Ronchetti, whose credentials are strong in weather forecasting but not government or politics, does not.
Lujan's record, however, has allowed him also to run pro-Lujan ads along with the anti-Ronchetti ads that proliferate on New Mexico television. Ronchetti has been able so far only to run against Lujan.
It's not surprising that Lujan leads Ronchetti by 10 percentage points, 51% to 41%, in polling reported by Five Thirty Eight, which compiles polling results from many sources.
I would even venture that Ronchetti is a sacrificial lamb being groomed for future efforts. He seems to be a quick learner and he will emerge from the race with outstanding name recognition. At age 46, he has lots of time to become a force for New Mexico's Republicans.
Our Third District race covers an area that sweeps a wide band of northern New Mexico from Farmington to Clayton, and includes Santa Fe, Espanola, Los Alamos and Las Vegas. In the east it stretches south to take in Tucumcari, Clovis and Portales, but not Santa Rosa, which is part of the intensely contested Second Congressional District.
While Republicans dominate our corner of eastern New Mexico, all those northern cities have kept Lujan in his House seat through five races.
Our district will for the first time be represented by a woman. Currently, Democrat Teresa Leger Fernandez may lead her Republican challenger Alexis Johnson by 15 percentage points, 50% to 35%. Five Thirty Eight has not updated polling in this race since September.
Without television stations, noise in our district has been minimal, but you can see a debate between Leger Fernandez and Johnson on YouTube.com or on KOAT television's website.
Johnson, who was born in Portales, has excellent credentials. She has parlayed her environmental engineering degree from New Mexico Tech into a career of engineering and consulting in both the oil-and-gas and nuclear energy businesses. She worked in nuclear energy for Exelon, a nationwide power generating and electric utility company that operates 14 nuclear power plants nationwide.
Fernandez has sterling credentials - an undergraduate degree from Yale University, followed by a law degree from Stanford University after graduating from West Las Vegas High School. She has since conducted a career of business ownership and high-level public service on behalf of the poor and minorities.
We have excellent choices in our quiet race for the Third District House seat, and we should keep in mind that quiet does not mean insignificant.
Steve Hansen writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at: