A Three Way Race in New Mexico

Martin Heinrich vs. Mick Rich vs. Gary Johnson

In the 2018 New Mexico Senate race, there are three candidates: the usual Democrat and Republican, accompanied by a Libertarian candidate. The incumbent, Martin Heinrich, is a Democrat, and the Republican is Mick Rich. The Libertarian candidate was the Governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003 as a Republican. The Libertarian party promotes civil liberties and shrinking the scope of the Federal Government. Although it had a Republican (in name) governor until 2003, New Mexico is a solidly blue state in senatorial, gubernatorial, and Presidential elections. According to speeches and debates, there are two main issues in this race: Healthcare and Immigration.

The concerns of healthcare in New Mexico are twofold: insurance costs and prescription drug costs. The incumbent Senator supports the Affordable Care Act, and says “we stabilize the system” in order to bring prescription drug costs down, using the inclusive we to ensure the audience’s concerns will be taken into account. The Republican, Mick Rich, targets the Affordable Care Act, saying it wasn’t affordable at all. Gary Johnson has an entirely different solution, vying for a free market approach to healthcare, which would cause prices to drop. Despite Gary Johnson’s confidence in his statements, it is unlikely that they would resonate with the audience due to its extreme nature. Due to New Mexico’s status as a blue state, they would likely approve of the Affordable Care Act, and as such support the incumbent Martin Heinrich.

Immigration is a key issue in New Mexico since it is a border state. Martin Heinrich believes that the border should be made more secure, but emphasizes the way to do this is technology and “smart investments in our border”, not more wall. Mick Rich has a more extreme position: saying “if you are a citizen of the United States … you cannot stay here”, supporting the border wall and deportation. Gary Johnson takes quite a different approach: instead of making the wall more secure we make it easier to come in in legally: “let’s not build a wall let’s fix our immigration system”. This way immigrants have less of an incentive to try to cross illegally so we get all of the benefits of immigration while minimizing the drawbacks. I think that in this case New Mexicans would likely side with Heinrich because they feel the effects of immigration and have been taught over time that the only way to reduce immigration is to increase border security.

While this race seems to be quite obviously a safe Democrat win with Martin Heinrich serving another term, it is interesting because it involves a third party candidate who has actually gained significant traction. Although the Libertarian Party may be going with to extreme of an approach for this time in New Mexico, it adds to their legitimacy as a party which could possibly disrupt the two-party system in the United States. In order to successfully do so, Gary Johnson needs to learn to use the more encouraging and inviting rhetoric of Martin Heinrich, otherwise he and the Libertarian Party will always be considered a fringe party who has nothing more than spoiler candidates.

Edit 2018–11–07:

Martin Heinrich won the Senate race with 52.6% of the vote, followed by Mick Rich with 33.1% and Gary Johnson with 14.3%.