Rep. Xochitl Torres Small represents New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District in Congress, and for much of her tenure, she has revealed little to the people of the District, with carefully selected words crafted to give an answer, yet not say much. A lot of the time, she repeats the phrase “let’s work together” about a broad issue, while not going into specifics, which makes her sound reasonable — while she goes back to Washington, D.C. and votes 94% of the time with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and 90% of the time with socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
But a newly discovered video of Torres Small in 2007 reveals another side of Xochitl that many New Mexicans may not know — that she was (or possibly still is) a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), or better known as the Mormon faith. According to Pew Research, Xochitl Torres Small’s religion is listed as Lutheran — not Mormon.
The video shows a 22-year-old Xochitl asking a question to then-Republican presidential candidate Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney ahead of a November 28, 2007 debate hosted by CNN. The format of the GOP primary debate was one of the first times CNN had “user-generated video” driving debate questions. Here is what Torres Small asked Romney:
“I’m Xochitl Torres and I’m from New Mexico. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or Mormon, I see serving my own community and communities abroad as a main tenet of my faith and a personal value. So far, we’ve only heard Senator McCain and Governor Huckabee talking about AmeriCorps on a regular basis. Mitt Romney: where do you stand on this issue and do you plan to expand AmeriCorps?
It is unclear what attraction Torres Small had to AmeriCorps in 2007, but Torres Small became an “honorary AmeriCorps NCCC member” in September 2019 when she visited Fort Stanton state monument in Lincoln, New Mexico. It is also unclear why Torres Small was asking Republicans about the AmeriCorps issue, instead of Democrats, who also had a large field of primary candidates.
As for Rep. Torres Small’s Mormon faith, she has not been very public about it. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints does not list her among the ten LDS members (including her former boss, Sen. Tom Udall) in a 2019 article, saying there are only ten LDS members currently serving — the fewest number in a decade. Currently, there are eight Republican LDS members and two (now possibly three) Democrat members of Congress.
She is what ever she needs to be for what ever situation at the time she needs to be.
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