The Republican primary race for Senate District 42 in far southeastern New Mexico is turning into one of the nastiest and most competitive this season, giving birth to a hard-hitting website, attack ads and a complaint against a nonprofit that touted one of the candidate’s conservative credentials.
Rep. Larry Scott, R-Hobbs, who is running for the seat against appointed incumbent Sen. Steven McCutcheon II, R-Carlsbad, said the temperature of the race is likely to get turned up before it gets turned down.
“He’s running hard,” Scott said Monday. “We’re gonna run hard, too, and he’s apparently gonna say whatever he feels he needs to to win, and I’m gonna run on a 10-year record and let the voters decide.”
McCutcheon, who was appointed to fill a vacancy created by the resignation of longtime lawmaker Gay Kernan last year, said he hopes his opponent does, in fact, run on his 10-year record. He contends Scott campaigns as a conservative but votes like a liberal.
“They’re the ones that have picked the fight and tried to bully all the way through, and they just weren’t ready for somebody who was going to punch as hard as we are,” he said, referring to Scott’s campaign team. “They should’ve vetted his record before they started running so hard.”
McCutcheon, who launched a website that accuses Scott of, among other things, selling voters in the district out for “sanctuary cities” and voting for “free healthcare for illegals,” said Scott and his backers have tried to link McCutcheon to Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham because she appointed him to the seat.
“The voters are surely intelligent enough to understand that he was trying for the same appointment, and in a signed document that he sent to [the county commissions in the district], he called himself a moderate to somehow, you know, suck up to our left-leaning governor and try and get the appointment himself,” McCutcheon said.
In his application letter, Scott wrote he had “developed a consistent record of moderate/conservative policy positions, including those on energy, fiscal responsibility, taxes and social issues” during his tenure in the Legislature.
Scott acknowledged he’s not ultra conservative.
“There are a few issues where I would lean a little bit to the left of some of my most conservative colleagues,” he said. “But for the most part, you throw me in there, I’m gonna come down on the right side.”
He noted he has consistently ranked among the most conservative members of the state House of Representatives in the Rio Grande Foundation’s so-called Freedom Index system.
The Rio Grande Foundation, an Albuquerque-based free-market think tank with nonprofit status, was thrust into the race after the McCutcheon campaign cited its podcast, called Tipping Point NM, on the website — sanctuaryscott.com — branding Scott a liberal.
Paul Gessing, the foundation’s president, described the website as “very aggressive” and said it cited the nonprofit think tank to attack Scott.
Paul Gessing
“Basically, I wrote an op-ed ... saying that by our metrics, Representative Scott is a conservative,” he said.
Although Gessing wrote the foundation is nonpartisan and doesn’t endorse candidates of either party, some viewed the op-ed as an indirect endorsement of Scott.
The op-ed, published in the Hobbs News-Sun, triggered a complaint against the nonprofit.
In an email, Department of Justice spokeswoman Ashley Sterling wrote, “Our office does not directly enforce the Internal Revenue Code and we will be forwarding the complaint to the appropriate agency.”
George did not return a message seeking comment.
Gessing said he wrote a follow-up letter to the editor at the “behest” of McCutcheon’s campaign consultant reiterating the foundation doesn’t endorse candidates and also that McCutcheon ranked as the fourth-most conservative member of the Senate during this year’s 30-day session, McCutcheon’s first. But Gessing said he doesn’t think he did anything wrong.
“We’ve got everything sourced on the website so that people can go look for themselves,” he said. “We just want to give the information and present it and have them go make their own decision.”
Gessing said he doesn’t see a big difference between the two candidates ideologically.
“But I felt it was unfair to essentially trash one of the most conservative members in the entire Legislature and say that he’s some kind of liberal,” Gessing said. “I thought that was not accurate.”
Asked whether he wished he would have included McCutcheon’s conservative ranking in the initial op-ed, Gessing said he’s not sure it would’ve made much difference.
“It’s going to be a food fight until the primary in June, so I’m not sure that I would have gotten any less grief,” he said.
In addition to being a fiercely competitive race, Scott predicts it will be among the most costly of the June primary.
“I think we’ll probably end up perhaps the most expensive [state] Senate race that southeast New Mexico has ever experienced,” said Scott, who reported more than $200,000 in contributions in the most recent campaign finance reporting period, twice as much as McCutcheon’s $100,000 fundraising haul.
The Senate district the pair is vying to represent is among the most conservative in the state. It includes Eddy, Lea and Chaves counties, all Republican territory.
No Democrats are running for the seat, which makes the June primary a high-stakes, winner-takes-all race.
