Under the hot desert sun less than 40 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border last week, Representative Gabe Vasquez, Democrat of New Mexico, lashed out against Republicans who talk about abortion as a “states’ rights” issue, charging that their real agenda is to place severe limits on women’s access to health care.
“That is now the de facto position of folks who want to limit women’s reproductive health care,” Mr. Vasquez told about 50 people at a groundbreaking for a new, $10 million state-funded reproductive health clinic. “We’ve seen the consequences of what this means for women.”
It is a message that Mr. Vasquez, a first-term congressman in a highly competitive House district, has turned to time and again as he fights to keep his seat amid a challenge from former Representative Yvette Herrell, the Republican he defeated two years ago.
He has worked to use Ms. Herrell’s anti-abortion rights voting record and previous remarks on the issue against her, including a 2020 video clip in which she said during a Republican candidate forum: “I wish we could have eliminated all abortion in this state.”
Ms. Herrell, unlike some Republicans who have airbrushed or downright misrepresented their past records on the issue, says she is proud of her stance on abortion, including her backing for legislation that would grant legal personhood to fertilized eggs, effectively criminalizing the termination of a pregnancy and potentially aspects of in vitro fertilization treatment.
She argues that the real issues in the race are illegal immigration and the rise of “migrant crime,” despite data showing that there is no such trend, according to official F.B.I. and Border Patrol statistics as well as academic studies. She and Republican-allied PACs have tried to portray Mr. Vasquez as an extreme liberal whose opposition to Republican-backed measures to crack down on immigration constitute a failure to secure the border.
“Every state now is a border state, every community is a border community, and so there’s real fear of who’s in our nation and what their intentions are,” Ms. Herrell said in an interview at a sports bar across town from where Mr. Vasquez made his pitch on abortion rights.
Their contest, which will help determine which party wins control of the closely divided House, is a tale of two competing election-year narratives that Republicans and Democrats around the country are falling back on to try to gain the upper hand.
The race for the largely rural Second Congressional District, which stretches from Arizona to Texas and spans 180 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, is considered one of the most competitive in the country. Ms. Herrell is facing unfavorable terrain that skews Democratic and an opponent who has twice as much cash on hand as she does. A recent poll from Emerson College found Mr. Vasquez leading Ms. Herrell by nine percentage points — 50 percent to 41 percent — with 9 percent still undecided. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the contest as a “toss-up.”
Mr. Vasquez, who is trying to become the first Democrat in more than a half-century to win a second term in the district, has tried to blunt Ms. Herrell’s immigration attacks by condemning Republican inaction on the border in Congress and highlighting the bipartisan border safety bills he has proposed. Mr. Vasquez avoids incendiary language and treads carefully when discussing the topic, likely to avoid alienating immigrant families as well as industries in his district that rely heavily on migrant labor.
Mr. Vasquez has introduced bills that would increase penalties on cartels and human traffickers, as well as overhaul the visa system for migrant agricultural workers. He also backed the Senate’s bipartisan border deal, and often points out that Republicans killed the deal at the behest of former President Donald J. Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris has said if she wins in November, she would resurrect the bill and sign it as one of her first priorities.
“To protect our border, I brought Republicans and Democrats together to add 20,000 border agents, new technology and to fight the cartels,” Mr. Vasquez says in his latest television advertisement, which focuses solely on border security. “And as the son of immigrants, I’ll make sure those who play by the rules always have a chance at their American dream.”
But he has seized every opportunity to emphasize the issue of abortion, charging that Ms. Herrell’s true goal is a national abortion ban.
“You have to be able to trust the person that’s going to be legislating, and I don’t think New Mexicans trust her position on abortion,” Mr. Vasquez said in an interview.
Ms. Herrell has said that states should regulate abortion, echoing Mr. Trump’s stated position that it does not belong as a federal issue. She stated in a May opinion article that she supports exceptions for abortion in cases of rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother — carve-outs that she had not previously espoused publicly — and that she would oppose a national abortion ban.
For now, it’s not clear whether voters are focused on either of the topics Mr. Vasquez and Ms. Herrell have chosen to highlight. In recent interviews with nearly three dozen people in the district — a mix of Democrats, Republicans, independents and those who were unregistered or did not plan to vote — most said that abortion should be accessible and that the country’s immigration system and border needed fixing, but only a handful listed either issue as their top priority.
At a fund-raiser for Ms. Herrell in Las Cruces, Marina Atma Butler said that she had always voted for Democrats, but that this year she would support Ms. Herrell because the former congresswoman’s office had been more responsive on veterans’ issues — her top priority — than Mr. Vasquez’s. She added that Democrats had politicized the issue of abortion and should not be advertising New Mexico as a haven for women in states that have enacted restrictions.
Outside an art fair at the Plaza de Las Cruces, Guadalupe Gaytam, 54, said reproductive health care and access to abortion were important to her but did not outweigh her concerns about affordability and the economy. She has had to come out of retirement to help afford Ozempic for her husband, an agent for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who is prediabetic.
Ms. Gaytam also named security at the border, which lies about 20 miles south of her home in Anthony, New Mexico, as a “critical” issue and said that while she had voted for Democrats in the past, she was leaning toward Mr. Trump in the presidential race.
“Right now, I’m looking for economic and border safety and helping us go back to the way we used to be,” Ms. Gaytam said.
But closer to home, she said she saw no reason to vote out her own congressman.
“He’s done pretty good for right now,” Ms. Gaytam said of Mr. Vasquez. “So I’ll keep him around.”
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