The lone yard sign for the Congressional District 2 race in Lea County Precinct 53 is in the front yard of Marcos Carranza Benitez, a Democrat and oilfield worker. This small precinct in Southeast Hobbs has voted for the eventual winner of the CD2 race, one of the nation’s closest congressional elections, every year since 2014. (Photo by Patrick Lohmann / Source New Mexico)
HOBBS, N.M. – Wanda Bell keeps a stack of old yearbooks from Booker T. Washington School, flipping through them every so often to remember her decades as a school employee and the distinguished alumni who once walked its halls.
In the back pages of most of her yearbooks, past the smiling faces of hundreds of students, are unique artifacts of this neighborhood’s political history: Paid ads from candidates for New Mexico’s Second Congressional District. That’s one of the nation’s closest House races and key to Democrats’ hopes of retaking the chamber this November.
“They know here’s where the votes are,” Bell said, laughing, as she flipped through a 2002 yearbook featuring an ad from the late John Arthur Smith, the longtime New Mexico Democrat who was running for CD2 that year.
The yearbook was a special edition to welcome alumni for the 50-year reunion for the Class of 1952. Hobbs schools were still segregated back then and would be until 1957.
Bell’s home on East Humble Street and Booker T. Washington School are both in Precinct 53 in Southeast Hobbs, a working-class and diverse neighborhood where many work in the oilfields. In addition to being one of the state’s few historically Black neighborhoods, the precinct also has a strange relationship with the Second Congressional District writ large:
In each of the past five elections, it has voted for the eventual CD2 winner, even though the seat has flipped between Democrat and Republican four times in the last decade. When redistricting excised the rural part of the precinct in 2021, what was left of Precinct 53 voted for Democrat Gabe Vasquez, who won the seat race by the tiniest of margins.
There are 548 precincts that have remained in CD2 since redistricting a few years ago, according to a Source New Mexico analysis. Lea County’s Precinct 53 is one of only three so-called “bellwether” precincts, which have voted for the district winner in each of the last five elections.
The winners of the last five elections for the congressional seat were Republican Steve Pearce in 2014, who was re-elected in 2016, followed by Democrat Xochitl Torres Small in 2018, Republican Yvette Herrell in 2020, and ending with Vasquez in 2022.
In 2014, the earliest year for which precinct-level data is readily available, Precinct 53 voted for Pearce, then Pearce again, then Torres Small, then Herrell in 2020 and Vasquez in 2022.
Exactly the same.
Herrell and Vasquez are again vying for the seat this November. Vasquez won by 1,350 votes last time.
Will Precinct 53 get it right again?
More than a dozen people, including voters, religious leaders and local politicians, spoke to Source New Mexico recently about what could be occurring that’s allowed voters there to keep their finger on the pulse of a sprawling congressional district stretching from southeast to northwest New Mexico.
They offered various reasons. It could be that the precinct is made up of highly engaged voters with open minds. Or the boom-bust cycle of oil and gas has made the precinct grow and shrink with new voters over the past decade. But all of them acknowledged they had no real idea.
“They just pick winners, man,” said Jonathan Sena, a Republican Lea County commissioner and pastor who grew up in the precinct.
Also unclear is how closely candidates in one of the nation’s tightest races are looking at precincts like Precinct 53. Voters said they hadn’t been inundated with mailers this cycle. A drive through the precinct on a recent Sunday showed only one sign – for Vasquez – in the yards of homes in the neighborhood.
Vasquez’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Herrell, on a recent visit to Sena’s church a block from the precinct boundary, said she was unaware that this slice of Hobbs was unique.
Several voters in Precinct 53 who spoke to Source New Mexico brought up said they felt ignored by the rest of the state or used as political props.
As the state continues to reap the benefits of the Hobbs-area oil boom, the city of 40,000 was recently cleaved in two by redistricting, with the northern half of the city folded into Congressional District 3 near Precinct 53’s north boundary.
Redistricting also cut out the rural area in Precinct 53 outside the Hobbs city limits, excising 33 square miles of the precinct and removing 300 registered voters. The precinct’s political makeup went from 36% Democrat and 29% Republican in January 2021 to 41% Democrat and 22% Republican in January 2022.
As a result, the roughly even mix of the two major political parties that contributed to Precinct 53’s bellwether status is gone, and the precinct is more likely to vote for a Democrat again this cycle.
So, along with so much else at stake this election and in CD2, Herrell winning could also end the winning streak of a precinct now just slightly over a square mile in area.
Wanda Bell
Sitting on her patio on a recent Monday, Bell, 68, reflected on her childhood in a segregated oil town, pointing down and up the street toward restaurants, hotels and homes that no longer exist.
She never saw the inside of Georgie’s restaurant – “a real nice, white restaurant” – even though her uncle worked in the kitchen, she said. Her grandmother used to clean rooms at a stately hotel in downtown Hobbs, owned by a wealthy white woman, but she and her sisters were barred from entering.
One Christmas, word came down that the hotel owner had a special gift for her employees’ families. Bell and sisters gathered excitedly outside the front door to the lobby, she recalls, which is as close as they were allowed to get.
“We couldn’t go in. So we were at the door waiting for it to come,” she said. “We thought we were really fixing to get a big Christmas gift, you know? Something real nice.”
The gift was a small packet with a handful of unseasoned pecans. “I never forgot that. I never did,” she said. “We were so mad, me and my sisters. We was like, ‘We can’t believe she gave us a bag of pecans for Christmas.’ Who does that?”
That was around the time Hobbs was forced to integrate its schools, thanks to a 1954 Supreme Court decision. Hobbs was the last city in New Mexico to fully integrate, following a three-year fight between the local school board and a group of segregationists.The group was led by a prominent Baptist preacher who sought support among white oil workers to keep schools separate by race, repeating his motto that “God willed segregation” and warning of riots if the school board had its way. Hobbs schools wouldn’t fully integrate until 1957.
Between the late 1920s and the 1950s, Black students in Tatum, Eunice and Lovington were bused to Booker T. Washington School in Hobbs, even though they lived a few blocks from the public schools in their towns, according to a history compiled by researcher Jean Dalton for the state’s Historic Preservation Division and published in 2021. The bused-in students arrived to find a school that had far fewer resources than the white schools elsewhere in Hobbs, according to Dalton’s research
Back then, a burgeoning group of Black activists were fighting for an end to segregation and infrastructure improvements in what is now Precinct 53 and was then known as “the Flats” or “Harlem Heights.” Several organized into a statewide group, the New Mexico Colored Democrat Committee, and called on Black voters to switch affiliation from Republican to Democrat.
In the Hobbs Daily Sun in 1938, according to Dalton’s research, the leader of the committee called on Black voters to change affiliations:
“We defied all the privations that came against us, yet we stood steadfast, waiting for the 40 acres and the mule,” the leader wrote. “Why should not the colored brother draw his sword Excalibur and fight side-by-side with the soldiers who are already in the trenches for a happy and a glorious victory, by voting a straight Democratic ticket.”
Bell said she intends to vote for Vasquez this election and Democrats up and down the ticket, which is what her grandmother did, too. She said she’s concerned about crime in Hobbs and has been saddened to see so many generations of her neighbors leave the city to find better opportunities elsewhere.
Still, she believes she and her neighbors are best served by Vasquez and other Democrats.
“I don’t hold anything against a Republican. It’s just that I feel like Democrats try to really focus in on helping people,” she said. “If you sit down at a table with a Democrat and they’re running for a position, if they win, then you can see changes.”
Marcos Carranza Benitez
Marcos Carranza Benitez lives half a mile east from Bell. He’s a retired oil worker and Mexican immigrant. He became a U.S. citizen in the last few months. A “Gabe” sign sits in his front yard.
Benitez, 67, got the yard sign in August when Vasquez, for a campaign event, held a carne asada cookout at a nearby Hobbs park. He even welcomed Vasquez into his home of 18 years, he said, where they discussed his fears for his sons who are in the same industry, among other things.
“I’m an old man,” he said. “But I got sons. I got grandsons. And they’re going to need some other opportunities.”
In an interview in his home recently, he handed a reporter a Spanish-language version of a study published this year by the University of New Mexico on attitudes and fears among oilfield workers. Benitez participated in the focus groups, he said.
The study, commissioned by advocacy group Somos Un Pueblo Unido, reported that Latinos make up 46% of the state’s oil and gas workforce, which is estimated to be in the tens of thousands. The workers described dangerous working conditions and long hours, relying on overtime from 12-hour shifts to make ends meet.
Benitez joined other workers in calling for affordable, accessible training for workers like his sons to transition from oil and gas. Part of the reason is they fear the collapse of the oil industry in the next decade, which would turn Hobbs into a “ghost town,” Benitez said, without an alternative industry.
Over the last 10 years, as Precinct 53 and the rest of CD2 has flipped back and forth from Republican to Democrat, he’s seen oil prices rise and fall. When oil prices dip, he sees the effects on his neighbors immediately, including those who go back to Mexico.
“Everybody goes. Everybody sells their cars, sells their houses. They have no money for the payments,” he said.
Benitez said he’ll vote for Vasquez because the congressman recognizes the importance of immigrant workers like him, those who work hard. They work so hard for the state’s benefit but need a path to stable and good-paying work. Vasquez sees that, he said.
“Now they know in the White House that we stay here. We live here,” he said. “We are in this point of the map.”
Two pastors
There are six churches in the 1.1-square-mile Precinct 53 and several others just outside it. On a recent Sunday, congregations at two of them heard pastors say their sins would be forgiven if they accepted Jesus into their hearts. One pastor is a Democrat, the other a Republican.
King’s Gate Church Pastor Matt Sena and his brother, associate pastor Jonathan Sena, both Republicans, grew up in Precinct 53 next door to Winford Gipson, pastor of Little Zion Baptist Church. Gipson is a Democrat, but he said he’s voted for Republicans in the past.
At Little Zion on a recent afternoon, he held up a sheet of paper with his sermon printed on it, then flipped it over to demonstrate a slate wiped clean. “It’s as if you have done nothing wrong,” he said. “Can you imagine that?”
In an interview in his office, he said his neighbors in Precinct 53 are open-minded and care more about a candidate’s character than the political party attached to their name.
At King’s Gate Church, Pastor Matt Sena told those gathered to rejoice in the fact that they are “former” sinners. He wrapped up the sermon and offered the stage to his brother, Jonathan.
Jonathan called on the audience to leave the “four walls of the church” and make a difference in their communities. Then he turned their attention to Herrell, the Republican CD2 candidate, who was sitting in the front row.
“This woman here sitting in the front row that joined us this morning…she’s one of the most real, godly people I have ever met in my life. She actually cares about people, she loves people, wants to serve them, and she’s made a big impact on my church and our community.”
Herrell smiled and waved to the people behind her.
“Make sure you talk to her, go shake her hand after church,” Sena continued. “She’s going to be on your ballot on election day. So you remember, if you’re in that district, it’s kind of switched up a little bit, she’s an extraordinary woman, Yvette Herrell.”
As the sermon wrapped up, Herrell lingered for selfies with voters before leaving for another event. In a brief interview with Source New Mexico outside the church, she said her message to voters across the vast district was the same, regardless of whether they’re in precincts that have only voted for one party the last five elections or flipped back and forth like nearby Precinct 53.
“We’re just praying hard and working hard, but I think voters, in general, recognize the importance of this election,” she said. “Everything kind of goes to the same priorities: the border, the economy, crime and education.”
“It all drifts back that way, regardless of party, or precinct, even,” she said.
Do bellwethers matter?
Three of 548 precincts that have stayed in Congressional District 2 have a surprising history in one of the nation’s closest elections.
Even though the seat has flipped back and forth from Democrat and Republican four times in the last decade, precincts in Valencia, Socorro and Lea County have voted with the eventual CD2 winner in each of the past five elections.
Michael Rocca, a political science professor at the University of New Mexico, said it might be tempting for candidates or others to look closely at bellwethers, hoping to divine some truth about what really matters to voters or predict who will win a close race.
But, according to research on bellwether counties in presidential elections from all the way back in the 1970s, he said, doing so is a waste of time.
“It’s just luck,” he said. “There’s nothing about these districts or precincts or states that are predictive.”
Being a bellwether simply means two things, he said. First is just the random chance that a political district would line up with the winner repeatedly. And the second, “more important thing,” he said, is that a bellwether wouldn’t exist unless a race was very competitive.
After all, he said, a solidly Democrat or Republican district would have numerous precincts that voted repeatedly in line with the eventual winner of their seat. “The only reason that we consider these to be a bellwether or interesting at all is if the underlying precinct or district or whatever is, is competitive, because then you’ve got some flipping, right?” he said.
Also unlikely, he said, is that voters in Lea County’s Precinct 53 are more open-minded than other voters. They’re responding to the same issues, negative political ads and other concerns as voters across the district.
“The people living in the precinct have no idea. So all they’re doing is that they’re responding to the same stimuli, the same context that every single other voter is or non-voter is responding to,” he said. “The voter doesn’t understand that they live in a different type of precinct than anybody else.”
The fact that bellwethers aren’t “crystal balls,” as Rocca said, was affirmed as part of former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. Numerous courts have ruled that Trump, in fact, lost the election, despite circumstantial evidence his campaign circulated regarding bellwether counties.
In a 12-page document Trump’s team produced in June 2022, his team noted that Trump won 18 of 19 bellwether counties that had voted alongside the winner of the race in every election since at least 1980.
One of those counties is Valencia County, which, until 2020, voted for the presidential election winner every election since 1952.