Another close race in New Mexico last night wound up subtracting one more seat from Nancy Pelosi’s majority in the House. In New Mexico-02, Democratic Congresswoman Xochitl Torres Small was already in a tight battle with Republican challenger Yvette Herrell, a rematch of the contest Torres Small barely won in 2018. But in the closing days of the race, the subject of fracking, fossil fuels and energy industry jobs reared its head. Torres Small had previously gone on the record saying we needed to back off from our dependency on oil and gas and should reduce subsidies to those industries, but Joe Biden’s comments about eliminating them entirely brought the issue into sharper focus. Exit polling indicates that this was an issue on many people’s minds and Herrell had stressed her commitment to protecting those jobs. When the smoke cleared, Herrell found herself heading for a seat in the House of Representatives. (Free Beacon)

New Mexico Republican Yvette Herrell ousted Rep. Xochitl Torres Small (D., N.M.) in a race defined by the Democratic Party’s attacks on fossil fuels.

Herrell, a former member of the New Mexico House of Representatives, defeated Torres Small after championing the region’s energy economy on the campaign trail. The Associated Press called the race early Wednesday morning.

Torres Small went to great lengths to distance herself from Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s stance on fracking and her own past activism against the oil industry. She publicly repudiated the Democratic nominee in the closing days of the race for voicing opposition to federal oil and fossil fuel subsidies.

Congresswoman Torres Small probably had people on her staff who know how to read a poll and tipped her off that things were starting to go pear-shaped last month. She was marched out to make a public statement saying she “disagreed with Vice President Biden,” adding that she would “continue to stand up to” her party when they are out of touch with conditions on the ground in New Mexico. It was probably the right thing to do, but it doesn’t seem like the voters bought it.

This seat was one more example of something that the Democrats have to be absolutely fuming about today. After being told by the liberal media for months that they were on their way to a blue wave sweeping over the nation, the Democrats actually lost seats in the House and it looks like they completely failed to take the majority in the Senate. If they manage to lose the race for the White House yet again (still to be determined) they will have pulled off a reverse hat trick.

I realize we’re in the middle of a pandemic and murder hornets and everything else, but it really does appear that energy issues played a significant role in the 2020 elections, at least in some places. I would attribute at least part of the stronger-than-anticipated performance by Donald Trump in Pennsylvania and, perhaps to a lesser degree, in Ohio, to Biden’s fumbles on the energy question. And the nuclear energy issue was in play in Utah and Idaho recently as well. It’s hard enough for many people to keep their jobs with all of the shutdowns and restrictions being mandated. Promising to eliminate even more well-paying jobs wasn’t a smart strategy.

Do you know the one place where there’s a major energy issue that’s being completely ignored by the voters? California. These are the (primarily) liberal Democrats who keep putting people in power who insist on solar and wind as the way to go. Then they encounter rolling blackouts on a regular basis after the sun goes down, even when there aren’t wildfires consuming the state, and they wonder why. Yep… it’s a real mystery and no doubt about it. What they also probably fail to realize is that every time they run out of juice, they have to import more from neighboring states. That not only costs more, but it’s primarily energy being created via fossil fuels, so they’re still contributing to the “problem” of burning natural gas. It’s such a genius plan that they must all be patting themselves on the back.