Republican Wins In Key House Race In New Mexico
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AllPolitics, June 24) -- Republican Heather Wilson won a closely contested special congressional election on Tuesday night that is considered an important warm-up for the November House elections.
The vote was extremely close. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Wilson had 52,144 votes, or 45 percent, while Maloof had 45,897 votes, or 39 percent. Green Party candidate Robert Anderson had 17,339 votes, or 15 percent.
Maloof was challenging Wilson in New Mexico's 1st Congressional District, which encompasses Albuquerque and its suburbs, in an election made necessary by the death from skin cancer last March of Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Schiff.
The race was an expensive one. The two main parties spending as much as $4 million an negative television advertising. It is the last major test before the midterm elections in November, when all 435 House seats will be on the line.
Greens play the role of spoiler
Democrats outspent Republicans largely because of Maloof, who lent his own campaign upward of $1.5 million of his own money. Wilson, however, almost ran out of money and had to be bailed out by the national Republican Party. Maloof enjoyed recent visits of support from Democratic heavy-hitters like Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Republicans usually do better in special elections, where turnout is typically low, and have not lost a Republican-held seat in a special election in seven years.
Maloof is a state senator and member of a prominent New Mexico family that amassed a fortune in casinos, professional sports teams and beer distributorships. Wilson, a former Air Force officer and state agency administrator, has attacked Maloof as a spoiled rich boy who is naive, inexperienced and dishonest.
Democrats had feared a surge of support for the Green Party candidate Anderson among voters turned-off by the mean-spirited nature of the campaign, could hand the election to Wilson.
The Green Party polled 17 percent in a special election in New Mexico's 5th district in May 1997 -- a seat previously held by Democrat Bill Richardson who resigned to join the Clinton administration -- and the Republican captured the seat by 43 percent to 40 percent.
The candidates offered voters a sharp contrast on issues. Maloof supports an increase in the minimum wage; Wilson opposes it. She opposes public financing of abortions, including late-term and partial-birth abortions. Wilson backs a pilot program of taxpayer vouchers that enable poor children to attend private schools. Maloof opposes school vouchers.
Republicans have controlled the district since the late 1960s, but President Clinton carried it in the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections.
Maloof and Wilson will face each other again in November, as they had already been nominated to run for a full two-year term.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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