“The district was once competitive,”
Was it?
I think it’s too far a leap now.
Still it’s nice to see a rat who thought he had a job for life go down. Sadly though he’ll get a new cushy job as a lobbyist. I think Charlie Stenholm went with the horse meat lobby. I wonder what Reyes will choose.
The GOP has only won the 16th just one time, and that was in 1962 when Ed Foreman upset incumbent J.T. Rutherford by a margin of 54-46% (at the time, Foreman was only 1 of 2 GOP House members, the other being Bruce Alger of Dallas — and 50 years later, both Alger and Foreman are still alive). Both Foreman & Alger got swept out in 1964 because of the LBJ landslide. Foreman lost to Richard White, 56-44%. Foreman would, of course, move across the state line to Eastern NM and 4 years later win a House seat there (the only person in the modern era to have successfully accomplished that — although he would lose reelection in 1970).
Only 1 GOP challenger received more than 40% of the vote against White (in 1976) until his retirement in 1982. Democrat Ronald Coleman would succeed White, and he did face a few competitive races (1982, 1984, 1992 & 1994). His closest race was actually not in 1994 (which would be his last) but in 1992 when he barely beat Chip Taberski by a margin of 52-48% (less than 5,000 votes), due in part to his involvement in the “check kiting” scandal (673 bounced checks, the 9th worst offender). He would beat a Latino Republican, Bobby Ortiz, 57-43% in 1994 (in a low turnout race).
Unfortunately, once Reyes succeeded Coleman upon his retirement in 1996, the GOP wrote off the district (indeed, Reyes first won it that year with 71%). At first, Reyes “seemed” like he might be a moderate, perhaps even semi-Conservative member, but that went out the window. The strongest performing candidate since was his 2010 challenger, Tim Besco, who got 37% (a Libertarian got 5%).
Reyes becomes the first incumbent to lose renomination in the district since J.T. Rutherford narrowly defeated Ken Regan in 1954 (and in those days with no viable GOP, that was the only way to take down an incumbent).