Incumbent U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich, a Democrat, and Republican challenger Nella Domenici met for their first debate on Monday.
KOAT-TV broadcast the debate, which was moderated by KOAT reporter Doug Fernandez.
Topics covered included the economy, the fentanyl crisis, women’s reproductive health and gun violence.
Heinrich touted the Biden-Harris Administration’s Inflations Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act for lowering inflation in the U.S. following the COVID-19 economic recession when talking about the economy.
“We had broken supply chains that, as a result of Covid, really made inflation a worldwide phenomenon, and the difference between the United States and other countries is that we’ve been able to manage inflation back down much more quickly than other countries around the world,” Heinrich said. “Couple of years ago, in 2021, inflation was sitting above 9 percent; today it’s at 2 percent and change, that’s close to our historical averages. But it’s important to realize that the pain, just because inflation has come down, is still there for New Mexico families.”
Domenici said that the percentages do not matter because prices are not currently reflected.
“So a combination of excessive federal spending and lack of commitment to leverage the natural resources we have here and keep energy prices down was really a twofer, and that has caused extreme inflation,” Domenici said. “And the fact that inflation right now is 2 percent is almost irrelevant, because all of you know, when you go to the grocery store, many of those food products are up… it’s a compounding effect that grows over time and keeps going up and up, and it could take significant amount of time to bring those prices back down.”
According to a Harvard Business School working paper, “The (price) change is attributable to decreases in marginal costs that are not passed through to consumers in the form of lower prices.”
This means that although costs to retailers have gone down, those lowered costs are not reflected in the price tags on store shelves.
Fentanyl, firearms and the border
The candidates fielded several questions related to the U.S.-Mexico border, including smuggling.
The ongoing drug crisis which seems to fluctuate from one highly addictive drug to the next which each worse than the previous illicit drug du jour.
Fentanyl is the current crisis drug.
Domenici said she recently went on a ride along with a sergeant with Albuquerque Police Department in the International District in southeast Albuquerque.
“I asked three policemen who had been working in Albuquerque (for) 10, nine and six years, what’s the biggest problem in our state? What’s contributing to crime and what’s contributing to low well being?,” Domenici said. “And they all said it’s fentanyl.”
Domenici was shocked when they told her that an average fentanyl capsule costs 30 cents or 35 cents.
“It’s basically free. Tell me what you can buy in America for 30 or 35 cents? And for six a day, you can really be stoned. So that’s a cup of coffee at Dunkin Donuts, because Martin Heinrich and his peers have left our border wide open for years and years that fentanyl has been pouring through it, and that is contributing massively to our drug problem,” Domenici said.
Related: Heinrich and Vasquez visit border, talk about new bill to stop fentanyl
Heinrich responded that when he served as the city councilor representing Albuquerque’s sixth district, which includes the International District, from 2004-2008 that methamphetamine was the problem drug of the time..
“It took us years to get on top of that horrible drug outbreak, but we did it, and we did it by working with local law enforcement the same way that I do now,” Heinrich said. “I (introduced) legislation called the FEND Off Fentanyl Act, and this legislation allows law enforcement and prosecutors to go after the bank accounts of the narco traffickers and the cartels who are moving this stuff across the border. I also helped appropriate $400 billion so that we can catch fentanyl at the border.”
Heinrich said that Border Patrol agents need scanning technology to catch drug and firearm trafficking at ports of entry.
Then he called Domenici’s job at Bridgewater into question and its alleged investment in China.
“When I was at Bridgewater, I was the Chief Financial Officer, I had absolutely nothing to do with any stock and investment decision at all for any company anywhere in the world,” Domenici said. “Martin Heinrich is trying to exaggerate, distort and distract from his own failures.”
Domenici then alleged that Heinrich had only begun working on the fentanyl crisis within the last year.
“I’ve been working for years on fentanyl, just like I worked on meth when I was a city councilor, and it is working hand in glove with law enforcement that is going to get a handle on this,” Heinrich said. “That’s why I appropriated forensic equipment to be able to go into the hands of local sheriff’s departments, local police departments, even the Attorney General’s office, so that we can solve more crimes.”
Related:Heinrich lauds two years of Bipartisan Safer Communities Act
New Mexico had the third highest firearm death rate as of 2022. The candidates were asked about what they thought was driving it.
Heinrich began by talking about growing up with firearms and how he had some good times with forearms growing up but his children are going through regular active shooter drills.
“I’ve had to live through my kids going through active shooter drills, ad nauseam or not being able to pick up my kids from school here at APS, because they’re under lockdown, we need to do something about that,” Heinrich said.
Heinrich was among those who introduced the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act which was the first federal gun law passed in 30 years, he said.
He wrote parts of the bill barring straw purchases and banning firearm trafficking across the border.
Straw purchases are when someone buys a firearm for someone else who otherwise could not legally get one.
Domenici said that after talking to two women in Chaparral, who “expressed to me their serious, fearful concern that their high school sons were going to school every day with kids who had guns, not only guns, cartel guns.”
The two women showed pictures of what appeared to Domenici to have “the label of cartels written on them,” she said.
“We need to get back to the border and make sure our border is tightly controlled and secure,” Domenici said. “Those borders are not only letting in fentanyl, not only letting in criminals, but they’re letting guns flow through.”
Abortion
Both candidates said they were against a nationwide abortion ban. Heinrich said that he felt women should make their own medical choices and Domenici saying she wanted to stop unintended pregnancies through birth control as a means of reducing abortions.
“One in every three unintended pregnancies results in an abortion,” Domenici said. “I want to make sure that as a country, we focus on birth control aggressively, that we respect and educate women and make sure they know their choices, that they have their choices, that they’re affordable and accessible. And it’s that focus on unintended pregnancies which will reduce the number of abortions that I want to spend my time and energy on, and this will empower women more than anything else we could do for them.”
Related: How abortion care has changed since Dobbs
She also supported the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, saying it puts the decision to allow abortion in the hands of the states.
Heinrich called the Dobbs decision’s aftermath “chaos” because it ripped “away fundamental rights and freedoms from millions of women all across this country.”
“I don’t think there’s any moment when women take that lightly, and I don’t think there’s any moment when a politician is going to make a better decision than the woman who has to make that decision herself,” Heinrich said.
Heinrich alleged that if Domenici was elected, that “the practical impact of electing her to the United States Senate, if she is elected to the Senate from New Mexico, Republicans will hold the majority and the first vote that she will take is a vote for Senate Majority Leader. And every one of those candidates vying to be Republican Majority Leader have committed publicly and forcefully to a national abortion ban.”
Domenici took offense to that comment calling it “the most sexist comment you could ever hear from a United States Senator. I’m a very successful, educated professional woman, and I will not be told by any Senator in Washington what to vote on or how to vote on it, and for Martin Heinrich to think that I’m a weak woman who will take orders from a man and not stick to my own values, that’s a sexist, insulting, demeaning remark.”
Heinrich responded in his rebuttal that he wished “we could see that independence when it really mattered, when Donald Trump destroyed the deal we had in place to reform the asylum system and solve our challenges at the border.”
The candidates also discussed climate change, the oil and gas industry, education and bipartisanship.
This was the only televised debate between the two candidates.
Another debate is scheduled between Heinrich and Domenici on Oct. 27 at Congregation Albert Brotherhood, 3800 Louisiana Boulevard NE in Albuquerque. There will be a deli brunch at 9:30 a.m. prior to the debate. The deli brunch costs $20 and both require reservations by Oct. 24 which can be made here.