A full-fledged frontal assault, largely unanswered, gave Congresswoman Heather Wilson a clear victory Sunday over Dem challenger Richard Romero in their only televised debate of the campaign. My expert insiders, both Dems and R's, say the victory was decisive enough that Romero, while not out of it, will need an extraordinary development to pull the upset.

"Wilson appeared nervous and ripe for the taking at the beginning of the contest, but after a few minutes she settled down and began hammering Romero and did not let up. He did not come back at her with anything near the intensity he needed. She also caught him in unanswered factual errors and showed her mastery of the subjects at hand," said one insider Dem who watched the action live on KOB-TV

The low point of the hour long debate for Romero, and there were several, came when he asked Wilson whether she would pledge to never support privatizing Social Security. She gave a one word answer: "Yes." Romero was dumbfounded and failed to point out that Wilson had taken the opposite position in a newspaper interview a couple of years ago. Instead, he was left mumbling how he was glad she was seeing the light. The audience chuckled.

The 43 year old Wilson was relentless in going after Romero over his state senate attendance record. Her charge that "he didn't show up for work" was heard time and again. Several of my Dem insiders said they jumped from their couches to yell back at her. But the man who needed to did not. Time and again she asserted her independence as she fought Romero's charge that she voted 90% of the time with the GOP. She did so effectively and he did not hold her feet to the fire, failing to give specific votes she had cast with the R's that hurt the district.

WHAT WASN'T SAID

"Richard had a golden opportunity to up end her. But she showed why she has been elected several times. She knows her stuff. If you are going to beat her, you better know yours," declared another of my insider debate watchers.

But it was not so much what the 60 year old Romero said as what he did not say, my analysts agreed. "He never hung Iraq and Bush's unpopularity around her neck. She is absolutely vulnerable on the war and he gave her a pass," said another depressed Dem.

Wilson showed shome chutzpah, which also went unchallenged, when she said with a sly smile that she has been so independent that some Dems on Capitol Hill have asked her to join their party! What Dems are those?? Romero never asked.

The debate itself was not a widely-watched event, but it was clear that Heather is deeply involved in her campaign, hitting the books and wants the job badly. That will now ripple through the community. Richard wants the job too. But, as I have written before, they are not handing out seats to the United States Congress. You've got to fight for it. Sunday it was Wilson who fought the hardest, carried the day and perhaps the election.

GARY OUT OF GAS?

The GOP Alligators (there's just a few of them) are gloating that southern NM Dem Congressional hopeful Gary King has run out of gas. "He's down to $37,000 in he bank," says our gleeful Gator. He notes that incumbent R Steve Pearce has 800,000 greenbacks stowed and that Gary seems to have fallen off of the tube. King weighed the possibility of running against Heather in ABQ, but decided to make the Pearce challenge, something he may now be thinking about.

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(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2004
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