Democrats Lose NM-01 in Nail-Biter: Maybe Hillary Can Pay for the Recount?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Democratic challenger Patricia Madrid conceded the race for New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District to incumbent Republican Heather Wilson today, even though the final margin of 875 votes is less than one-half of one percent of the total number of votes cast.

In many other states, such a small vote differential would automatically trigger a state-funded recount—but not in relatively poor New Mexico (the state’s coffers are filled —or not filled—by taxes from the third-lowest per capita income in the nation). A recount is expected to cost between $250,000 and $300,000, but the Democrats don’t have the money. Madrid notes that a single-vote swing in each precinct would reverse the outcome.

With such a small differential and State Democratic Party Chairman John Wertheim accusing state Republicans of “systematic vote suppression” (Democrats had to file suit against Republicans calling non-republican voters with misleading information) the 2006 race for NM’s 1st looks to have gone the way of Florida’s 13th District and other places in the nation where misleading and harassing phone calls paid for by the GOP—one of the “dirtier, yet mostly legal, tricks in a political operative’s bag of last-minute campaign tools“—may have tipped the balance in some very tight Congressional races.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate