“Gabe Vasquez has proven himself to be the bipartisan and solutions-oriented leader New Mexicans were looking for when they kicked Yvette Herrell out of office. From delivering for veterans and working to lower costs, to bringing resources back to New Mexico to keep communities safe from drugs and crime and to secure the border, Vasquez is committed to addressing the concerns of everyday New Mexicans. Voters already rejected Yvette Herrell’s dangerous agenda in 2022 and they’ll do so again this November,” said DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene.
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To: Interested Parties
From: Lauryn Fanguen
Date: June 4, 2024
Subject: The Case Against Yvette Herrell
Gabe Vasquez is the son of a Mexican immigrant whose life is the embodiment of the American Dream. Raised by a single mother, Gabe worked his way through college, built a successful small business, and served on the Las Cruces City Council before running for Congress.
In Congress, Vasquez has worked across party lines to deliver results for New Mexico families. This includes protecting oil jobs, lowering costs, standing up to the drug industry for price-gouging life-saving medicine, securing the border, supporting veterans and military families, protecting abortion rights, and keeping communities safe by supporting law enforcement.
Yvette Herrell is a far-right MAGA extremist who time and again has proven she is grossly out of touch with New Mexicans and only in politics to serve herself. She wants to ban abortion and supports criminalizing doctors for providing abortion care and women for receiving care. Herrell’s radical views and dangerous agenda are emblematic of the extreme, divisive politics that New Mexicans have rejected before. While in Congress, Herrell spewedracist conspiracy theories, met with anti-immigrant hate groups, and voted for policies that hurt New Mexican families, such as voting against funding the police and opposing the cap on the price of life-saving insulin. Her unpopular record cost her the election in 2022 and will once again doom her campaign this fall.
First On Yvette Herrell’s Agenda: Eliminating All Abortions
It’s not hyperbole to say that Yvette Herrell wants to ban all abortions. Herrell gleefully said so herself in a resurfaced bombshell video bragging about her anti-abortion bonafides. There’s nowhere for her to hide and no way to spin her radical views. “I wish we could have eliminated all abortion in the state,” Herrell said. “I wish we could have gotten even that to go through. But we couldn’t.”
This aligns with her long-standing anti-abortion record. Herrell has said that she was “proud” to have co-sponsored legislation calling for felony charges for abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. She compared abortion to eugenics and signed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and Casey. Herrell co-sponsored a national abortion ban that could ban access to IVF nationwide and even voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. When the State of Texas implemented a near-total abortion ban that placed bounties on people who help women get abortions and put a greater strain on New Mexico’s own health care clinics, Yvette Herrell celebrated the horrific policy.
You’d think someone with a blatantly extreme record like Yvette Herrell wouldn’t try to fool voters, but Herrell’s deception knows no bounds. She was caught scrubbing all mentions of her record and rhetoric on abortion from her campaign website – a desperate and calculated move to hide her record from her pro-choice district. Unfortunately for Yvette, New Mexico voters already know the truth.
Herrell is Lining Her Own Pockets While Leaving Working Families Behind
Yvette Herrell is looking out for one person: herself. When Herrell was told by the city of Alamogordo that her liquid waste company that wanted to discharge up to 7,800 gallons of septage per day in Otero County would likely contaminate groundwater, she refused to back down. After the city formally protested the discharge permit, Herrell simply requested the discharge happen in another area, with no care for how her waste would affect groundwater and a community elsewhere.
Herrell’s real estate company got nearly half a million dollars from contracts with two state agencies, a fact that Herrell neglected to disclose despite state law mandating that lawmakers report such contracts. The Albuquerque Journal called her actions “egregious” and “disingenuous.” As a state legislator, Yvette also helped secure nearly half a million dollars in state funding to a museum run by her mother.
While Herrell was eager to ensure her and her allies were taken care of, she backed numerous policies that would be disastrous for New Mexico families. Herrell supported the Republican Balanced Budget Amendment that threatened to gut Social Security benefits for nearly 155,000 New Mexicans in the Second Congressional District. She supported the Trump Tax Scam that Republicans wanted to pay for through cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Herrell also wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, threatening to rip health care coverage away from more than 300,000 New Mexicans with pre-existing conditions. She even voted against capping the price of insulin copays for seniors at $35 a month. It’s clear that Herrell has always prioritized herself and her own bottom line – not the well being of New Mexicans. Her self-serving agenda, coupled with her harmful policies that hurt New Mexican families, is disqualifying.
Herrell is a Trump-Loving, MAGA Enthusiast
Yvette Herrell is in desperate need of new role models. Only the most fervent supporters of convicted felon Donald Trump would call him their “personal hero” as she did. Herrell also gleefully accepted Trump’s endorsement, calling it “an honor.” It’s no wonder that she enthusiastically proclaimed that an endorsement from now-convicted January 6th insurrectionist Couy Griffin, founder of Cowboys for Trump, is “one of the endorsements [she was] most proud of.” Herrell voted against certifying the 2020 election results and doubled down by votingagainst an independent commission to investigate the deadly insurrection. Unashamed of her election denialism, Herrell even accepted campaign contributions from a fake elector.
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING
HuffPost: GOP Congressional Hopeful Wished Her State Had ‘Eliminated All Abortion’ In 2020 [HuffPost, 04/15/24]
HuffPost: New Mexico Republican Leaves Anti-Abortion Past Off Campaign Website [HuffPost, 03/11/24]
Las Cruces Sun News: Herrell votes against creation of bipartisan commission to investigate Jan. 6 Capitol riot [Las Cruces Sun News, 05/21/21]
Las Cruces Bulletin: Vasquez works on bipartisan bill to help ranchers [Las Cruces Bulletin, 11/30/23]
Las Cruces Sun News: Congressman Gabe Vasquez proposes legislation to address border security, immigration [Las Cruces Sun News, 11/01/23]
Albuquerque Journal: South Valley Economic Development Center celebrates expansion funding [Albuquerque Journal, 03/29/24]
PATH TO VICTORY
New Mexico’s Second Congressional District is diverse in both culture and geography. The district is more than 50% Hispanic and spans across the cities of Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Alamogordo, Carlsbad, and Silver City. In a two way vote, President Biden won this district in 2020 with 53.0% of the vote. Senator Heinrich, who is up for re-election, won this district in a two way vote with 61.8% in 2018.
The threat of a national abortion ban and its impact isn’t hypothetical for New Mexicans – they need only look to their neighbors and see the reality of the GOP’s anti-abortion crusade. As abortion bans dominate the news cycles in Texas and Arizona and women in those states are forced to travel to get basic health care, New Mexico is a safe haven for access. Women in New Mexico do not want to lose their rights, and they understand the gravity of Herrell’s dangerous agenda because it surrounds them. This makes abortion a particularly pertinent issue in this race.
The contrast between Gabe Vasquez and Yvette Herrell is clear. When Herrell was in Congress, she failed to listen to and show up for New Mexicans. Herrell prioritized MAGA extremists at every turn and ultimately lost her re-election bid because of it. Vasquez went to Congress and immediately worked to address the issues keeping New Mexico families up at night. While Herrell is sticking to her failed, unpopular, far-right agenda that includes banning abortion and cutting Social Security, Vasquez wants to protect abortion rights, lower costs, secure the border, and reduce crime. When faced with this very clear choice, there’s no question that New Mexicans will re-elect Gabe Vasquez.
