Pearce wins GOP nomination

I thought I’d use my time-zone advantage to get the news out for LP at NM FBIHOP: it looks like Rep. Steve Pearce defeated Rep. Heather Wilson for the GOP Senate nomination. He’ll go on to face Rep. Tom Udall in the November general election.

The Associated Press called the race at 2 a.m., though the Secretary of State’s Web site still only lists results for 31 of 33 counties on its Web site. According to KOB’s Web site, with 99% of precincts reporting, Pearce won by more than 3,000 (which, for New Mexico, seems like a huge margin).

November is still a long ways off, and a lot of things can change, but as LP indicated recently, polling puts Udall far in front of Pearce. The former oilman (like Obama) will probably get a bump for securing his party’s nomination in the coming weeks, but Pearce has a huge lead to overcome to make November competitive.

And as an aside, I just want to echo a comment LP made earlier tonight: Ron Paul netted more than 15,000 votes in the primary against Sen. John McCain. That’s 14-percent of the vote: wow.