John Block

On Wednesday, it was revealed that Congresswoman Yvette Herrell (R-CD-2), who narrowly lost reelection to far-left Democrat Gabe Vasquez, had filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for the 2024 election.

Vasquez’s campaign wrote about the news, “Gabe is preparing to serve New Mexico’s working families in Washington this January, but in the meantime, we need to rebuild our campaign’s funds to prepare for the rematch ahead.”

The campaign claimed Herrell is a “far-right extremist” in an email, despite the Congresswoman not being extremist in the slightest. Vasquez used this type of rhetoric on the campaign trail to attempt to discredit Herrell.

Herrell hinted at another run in a November 17 email, writing:

No doubt, we are heartbroken for New Mexico, especially knowing we lost this seat by LESS THAN 1% in a district that was intentionally re-drawn to take me out of office by a much greater margin. In fact, we had amazing gains in every Democrat county – including Dona Ana County where we took 43% of the vote – which was a five point gain from just two years ago! 

I can assure you, it wasn’t for a lack of effort by our amazing campaign team. We knocked over 100,000 doors, made over 75,000 calls and made countless trips throughout the District. Unfortunately, the slim margin did not trigger an automatic re-count of the vote total, and our team could not identify any irregularities that would have warranted requesting one. 

After reviewing the outcomes, we can see by our data that voter turn out, by both parties, was lower than anticipated, but sadly, lower in some of the large Republican counties that could possibly have tipped the scale. 

It has been my greatest honor serving the people of New Mexico in the capacity as their US Representative in Congress. We were able to deliver solid results for our state – even while serving in the Minority. Our Constituent Services team closed over 2000 cases with a 98% success rate! I could not be more proud of how our team made a difference.

We know our work in Washington was not completed, and hundreds of people from all over the District and colleagues in Washington have asked me to stay in the fight…all options will be on the table – so stay tuned.

Again, thank you for your support, prayers and kindness, and thank you for believing in me the way I believed in myself!

The report from Herrell’s campaign was filed on November 22, 2022, right before the Thanksgiving holiday break.

Herrell won the election in 2020 against Democrat incumbent Rep. Xochitl Torres Small. She lost reelection to Vasquez in the November 2022 election by around a mere 1,000 votes after far-left Democrats in the state legislature gerrymandered New Mexico’s three congressional districts to favor Democrats.

The gerrymandered maps are currently in litigation and could be overturned, returning the Second District from favoring Democrats by four points to the previous map, which had the Second District favoring Republicans by 14 percentage points.

On Wednesday afternoon, Democrat Gabe Vasquez declared victory in New Mexico’s Second Congressional District race against incumbent Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell, who has held the seat since 2021. 

Rep. Herrell wrote the following in a concession statement: 

While we are disappointed by the final results, I am incredibly proud of our team and the work we did serving our district, and I am grateful for the steadfast support of so many who helped us along the way. I’d also like to congratulate Gabe Vasquez on his victory.

Two years ago, the Democrats in Santa Fe announced they would gerrymander our district to ensure they would totally control our state’s federal delegation. Unfortunately, they did just that, ignoring the will of the people in the process by splitting up communities of interest and concentrating power in urban areas at the expense of rural New Mexico voices. While this was enough to give them a victory by less than 1% in this election, I am confident in our party’s ability to retake this seat next cycle as Joe Biden’s agenda continues to damage our great nation. Stay tuned!

Vasquez, who was hand-picked by Democrat Sen. Martin Heinrich, who lives in Maryland, to run for the seat, only won due to Democrats’ aggressive partisan gerrymandering of New Mexico’s congressional map, which is currently pending in court. The map totally disregarded communities of interest and cut major chunks of the formerly conservative district into others, leaving three Democrat-dominated districts.

During the redistricting process, Democrat groups paid activists to show up at Citizens Redistricting Committee meetings and spew leftist propaganda to push for gerrymandered maps. The Democrat-controlled Legislature ultimately chucked out all the work of the supposed “nonpartisan” committee and instead just rammed through extreme partisan maps for political gain.

If the case is won by the Republican Party, it would switch the district back to the compact, non-gerrymandered previous maps, which had one central Albuquerque District and the northern and southern districts, the north leaning Democrat, while the south leaning Republican. 

The move was pushed by Democrat soon-to-be former New Mexico House Speaker, who was accused of using his power to ram through nakedly partisan maps via a dark money group, the Center for Civic Policy. 

As of Tuesday night, Vasquez and Herrell both were tied at 50 percent, with the Democrat narrowly leading by 1,277 votes.

The loss in the Second District comes as national Democrats, including U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, dunked tons of cash into the race to help Vasquez cross the finish. Polls in the race consistently showed a nearly tied contest.

Vasquez is a rabid opponent of the police, who backed “deconstructing” and defunding police departments. He supports full-term abortion, the Green New Deal, and a whole swath of other extremist left-wing policies.