NM-Senate: GOP All But Concedes Race to Tom Udall
Last week I wrote about the US Senate race in Colorado featuring Democratic congressman Mark Udall – now is the time to feature his cousin, fellow congressman and fellow senatorial candidate, Tom Udall of New Mexico. Udall received some great news in the past week when the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee canceled all their ad buys in New Mexico. Given their prior commitment to refuse spending money in races they couldn’t win, they seem to have taken all steps in conceding the race, short of actually pulling their candidate. In this now-uncontested race, Udall faces current GOP Congressman from New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional district, Steve Pearce. As with all of the senatorial and congressional races that I’ll be highlighting this fall, the Senate race in New Mexico has significant implications for environmental policy. Now that the GOP has all but bailed on Pearce, we can even be a bit more certain about what those implications will be.
Udall and Pearce are competing for the Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Pete Domenici, who has been wildly popular in New Mexico’s political scene. The Republican Senator has served thirty-five years in the Senate and won resounding reelection victories, time after time. More importantly for our purposes, however, Domenici has become one of environmental advocates’ worst enemies in the Senate. Both the League of Conservation Voters and Republicans for Environmental Protection have singled out Domenici for his fairly egregious efforts to impede a sound energy and environmental policy – especially in regards to oil drilling in ANWR and the Gulf of Mexico. Domenici’s retirement leaves the possibility for an environmental champion like Udall to replace one of the environment’s greatest enemies in the US Senate.
Udall has already been endorsed by the League of Conservation Voters, and has consistently scored over 90% on the LCV’s annual scorecard. He is also the founder of the Congressional Peak Oil Caucus – so transitioning from a big oil Senator like Domenici to Udall would be a grand victory, not just for Democrats seeking the magic 60 seats, but for anyone invested in protecting our nation’s natural environment and achieving energy independence without increasing our production and consumption of fossil fuels. Despite the NRSCC’s deferral on spending money in New Mexico, it is equally important to note that Pearce has his own history of standing against increased environmental protection. To further support the fairly uncontested nature of this race, the average margin has never dipped below 10 points in Udall’s favor. Udall has even topped the 60% mark in three polls, so he appears to be sitting in the proverbial driver’s seat. As far as Democrats looking to pick up seats this November, Udall may be one of the safest bets the party has in these battleground races.
Related Posts:
- CO-Senate: Udall Damages Pro-Environmental Credentials
- League of Conservation Voters Names Two More Candidates to “Dirty Dozen” List of Eco-Haters
- Can the Democrats Win in the West
Photo Credit: barbwire55 via flickr under a Creative Commons License
According to most independent scientific studies, global oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 14%.
This is equivalent to a 33% drop in 7 years. No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always exceed production levels; thus oil depletion will continue steadily until all recoverable oil is extracted.
Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment.
Surviving Peak Oil: We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from “outside,” and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.
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You might want to update this. The latest poll shows Pearce cutting Udall’s lead once again, so now there is only a 7 point difference between the two. The fact that the NRSC isn’t helping them with funds and yet they are still climbing ahead in the polls is to be noted.
Wade-
thanks for that info. that poll must have just been released (or updated on Pollster) in the last day. Even though the previous poll at the margin at 8, the trend line was still significantly in favor of Udall.
the fact that Pearce is getting back into the race is probably attributed to the Chamber of Commerce endorsement and ads being run in his favor.
The averages still have Udall up by 10 points though. No cause for alarm yet. but you’re right, that Rasmussen poll does mix things up a bit.