At Least 27 Dem House Members Have GOP Challengers

While I'm waiting to see which candidates who didn't make the cut-off at the pre-primaries file petitions today, I'll pass along this press release from the state Republican Party.

Seems the GOP, which frequently fails to field a significant number of legislative candidates, is going to try to make a race of it this year. (Last week I wrote that in Santa Fe, Reps. Lucky Varela and Brian Egolf have primary opponents -- Bob Walsh and Brigette Ford Russell respectively.

But there's more:

Last Tuesday, Republicans filed as challengers in 27 seats currently occupied by Democrat incumbents in New Mexico’s House of Representatives. This is the largest number of seats the party has targeted in a decade. In contrast, Democrats filed as challengers in only 8 seats currently held by Republicans. Further, in one seat which was abandoned by a Republican who is running for governor, (Rep. Janice Arnold Jones of Albuquerque ) no Democrat filed as a candidate leaving the sole Republican who did file as the automatic winner without an election contest.

While the Democrats are challenging only 8 Republican House members, Democrats challengers have filed to run against 10 Democrat incumbents.

One of those, of course, is House Speaker Ben Lujan, who is facing Carl Trujillo in the primary.