GOP Nabs New Mexico House Seat

The Republican Party quashed a strong effort by Democrats to capture a crucial seat in the House of Representatives, winning a special congressional election in New Mexico.

GOP candidate Heather Wilson defeated Democrat Phil Maloof in a victory that is considered an important warm-up for next fall's battle for control of the House.

With all precincts reporting (but around 5,000 absentee ballots still outstanding), Wilson won 45 percent of the vote, more than 6,000 votes ahead of Maloof with 39 percent in New Mexico's 1st congressional district, which encompasses Albuquerque and its suburbs. The election was made necessary by the death from cancer last March of Republican Rep. Steve Schiff.

Green Party candidate Bob Anderson scored a strong 15 percent, as voters expressed their dissatisfaction with the negative campaigns of the two main parties. Anderson spent only $3,500 and ran no television ads. Libertarian candidate Bruce Bush polled around 1 percent.

"This is the first time in the history of the United States that a woman [military] veteran has been elected to Congress," Wilson, who was in the Air Force, told cheering supporters.

The two main parties poured as much as $4 million into the race, knowing that every seat is vital in a situation where the Republicans control the House of Representatives by only 21 seats.

Top national leaders, including first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democrats and former Republican vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp, came to the district to energize their supporters.

This is the last major test before the Nov. 3 mid-term elections when all 435 House seats are on the line, and both parties were looking for a boost going into the fall.

Republicans have controlled the district since the late 1960s, but President Clinton carried it in the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections.

For once, Democrats outspent their opponents in the race. Maloof, a state senator and member of a prominent New Mexico family that has amassed a fortune in casinos, professional sports teams, and beer distributorships, was able to loan his own campaign upward of $1.5 million while Wilson almost ran out of money and had to be bailed out by the national Republican Party.

Republicans usually do better in special elections where turnout is typically low and have not lost a Republican-held seat in a special election in seven years.

All three candidates said they would run again in November.

In other elections Tuesday:

• Tax lawyer Delbert Hosemann outpaced banker Phil Davis in a Republican runoff for Mississippi's 4th congressional district and will face Democrat Ronnie Shows in November.
• In South Carolina's highly conservative 4th congressional district, marketing executive James Warren DeMint won the right to represent the Republicans and will square off against state Sen. Glenn Reese of Spartanburg in November.

  DeMint, the more moderate of the two candidates, beat state Sen. Mike Fair, who was backed by the Christian Coalition and hired its former director, Ralph Reed, as a consultant on his campaign.

• Another GOP victory cropped up early in Utah's ninth district race. Candidate Jesse Kemp was declared the winner after Robert O. Miles withdrew from the election.