ShareThisBy RACHEL GORDON
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Daniel Murphy, a retired factory worker who lives in the mountain suburbs east of this Southwestern city, embodies the political psyche of New Mexicans: independent, party loyalty be damned.
Murphy is a registered Republican, but he plans to cast his vote in November for Patricia "Patsy" Madrid, the Democratic challenger to four-term GOP House member Heather Wilson.
"We made a mistake going into Iraq, and now I think it's time to fix that mistake," said Murphy, 69. "Wilson is too close to President Bush, and it's time for a change."
The battle in New Mexico's 1st Congressional District is part of the partisan storm building over the nation as polls show Democrats have their best shot in a decade of winning back Congress, due largely to growing disenchantment with the war in Iraq, an unpopular president and a series of ethics scandals that have jarred the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill.
Madrid has made criticism of the Iraq war and a call for a timetable to bring American troops home the centerpiece of her campaign, and she hopes it will be strong enough to overcome the power of incumbency. Wilson, an Air Force vet who serves on the House intelligence committee, has stood firmly behind the president's stay-the-course war policy.
Since elected in 1998, Wilson has benefited from the streak of political independence in New Mexico, a battleground state. Political analysts view New Mexico as a bellwether, and its voters have been remarkably close to mirroring the mood of the nation's electorate in presidential elections.
Wilson, 45, a former White House national security staffer, represents a district centered in Albuquerque, the state's largest city with about a half-million residents. It is a district in which Democrats outnumber Republicans, 46 percent to 35 percent, and where candidates deemed moderate usually prevail. Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry beat Bush in the last two presidential elections, but the Republican Wilson has won with crossover support from Democratic voters.
This year may be different.
Madrid, 60, New Mexico's attorney general, has been working hard to nationalize the race and muting one of Wilson's strongest assets _ delivering big on constituent services.
The strategy appears to be working, as polls show Wilson in her toughest race since taking office, with the war high on the minds of district voters.
"This election isn't a referendum on Wilson as much as it is on the Republicans nationally," said Brian Sanderoff, president of Research and Polling Inc., a New Mexico firm that has conducted polls on the race for the Albuquerque Journal newspaper. "Her message is the same as two years ago, as four years ago; it's just the environment has changed."
Sanderoff's latest poll has put Wilson and Madrid in a dead heat with few undecided voters. The poll found that Wilson's support among Democrats has slipped, with the war a driving factor, and she is losing ground with Hispanics, another key constituency. If elected, Madrid would be New Mexico's first Latina member of the House.
Democrats need to pick up 15 new seats in the Nov. 7 election to take the House majority, making the Wilson-Madrid contest one of the most visible in the country. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the campaign one of 25 national "toss-up" races.
Both sides _ aided by funding and strategic advice from the national parties _ have come out swinging with a bombardment of negative television ads.
Madrid, employing a tactic used by other Democrats in competitive races, has cast Wilson as a politician in lockstep with the Republican leadership in Washington. Wilson accepted campaign contributions from former House GOP leader Tom DeLay's political action committee, but returned the money she received for this race after he was indicted in his home state of Texas on a money-laundering charge.
Wilson also donated to charity the campaign contributions she received from former Rep. Mark Foley, the Florida Republican forced to quit late last month for sending sexually suggestive e-mails to teenage House pages. Madrid has tried to further tie Wilson to the Foley scandal by pointing out that she served on the House's page oversight board during the period that Foley sent the messages. Wilson said she had no prior knowledge of Foley's activities before they became public.
(E-mail Rachel Gordon at rgordon(at)sfchronicle.com.)
