Tight races in congressional districts in the rural West

Two very tight congressional races in the American Southwest include large swaths of rural territory.  

The first of these races, New Mexico's 2d, has been called for the Democrat Gabe Vasquez.  It stretches from the Albuquerque suburbs west to Arizona, including a bit of Indian Country, then south to the Mexican border and West Texas/El Paso.  Here are the results, showing Vasquez won by about 1,300 votes:  

His support was strongest in Indian Country but also good in Las Cruces and the surrounding area, Las Cruces being the state's third largest city. 

Here's a New York Times story from several weeks ago mentioning Vasquez and his race in relation to "American dream" rhetoric.  Though that story suggested that it is primarily Republicans who invoke the American dream, the story observed that Vasquez also does so.  Here's the salient bit: 

Gabe Vasquez, a Democrat who is facing Ms. Herrell in New Mexico in the fall, has also embraced the phrase. He tells supporters that his late grandfather — Javier Bañuelos, who taught himself to fix broken televisions with an old manual and eventually opened his own repair shop — made it possible for him to run for Congress. The American dream is not about buying a house, but ensuring that the economic ladder “is there for everybody and that everyone can climb with you,” he said.

Another close race is Colorado's 3d.  Here's how that one is looking right now, with Boebert leading by 1,100 votes:

NPR did a segment this morning suggesting an automatic recount in the Boebert-Frisch race because the initial results are expected to put the candidates within half a percentage of each other, as they are now.  Here is the Colorado Sun's coverage.  

Another close race with swaths of rural territory is Washington's 3rd, in the southwest corner of the state, part of it exurban Portland, Oregon-Vancouver, Washington.  Here's the current state of play there now, where Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is leading by about 6,000 votes.  That seat was previously held by a moderate Republican, Jamie Herrera-Beutler, who voted to impeach Trump, setting up the battle between Gluesenkamp Perez and Joe Kent.  That race was featured in a New York Times story by Michelle Goldberg in late September.  

Another exurban district with an exceedingly tight races was Colorado's 8th, which lies along the front range and stretches from Greeley south to Thornton and east of Colorado's 2d, which includes Fort Collins and Boulder.  The Democrat, Yadira Caraveo won there, defeating Barbara Kirkmeyer by about 1,600 votes.  

Kirkmeyer also used American dream rhetoric in her campaign, albeit with a different connotation than Vasquez's: 

Kirkmeyer ...embraces the American dream as the theme of her personal story. Ms. Kirkmeyer grew up on a dairy farm, the sixth of seven children in a family that often struggled. She paid her way through college by raising and selling a herd of eight milk cows, yearlings and heifer calves.

The American dream, Ms. Kirkmeyer said, was not only about economic opportunity but freedom, connecting the words with Republican opposition to Covid-related mask mandates. “I don’t see the mandates as part of the American dream,” she said. “People felt that was an infringement on their rights and personal dreams.”

Caraveo is a Latina pediatrician, and the district she will now serve is 39% Latino/a.  Caraveo carried Adams County (where she lives in Thornton)the part of the district closest to Denver, while Kirkmeyer carried Weld County, which includes Greeley and environs (and was also a center in the movement for northern Colorado's succession about a decade ago). 

Postscript:  Here's Politico's coverage of the Gluesenkamp Perez win over Joe Kent in Washington's 3d.