Speaker Pelosi & Rep. Torres Small

Things are getting complicated for southern Dem Congresswoman Xochitl Torres Small and Dem insiders confess they're worried.

From DC to Deming Torres Small, positioned as a moderate Democrat, is under fire. In DC Torres Small appears to be running afoul of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who Torres Small voted for. The Speaker is calling on her "moderate" caucus members to bite the bullet and stop playing footsie with the R's. And that includes Xochitl:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) took a hard line at the caucus meeting, saying that being a member of Congress sometimes requires taking tough votes. “This is not a day at the beach. This is the Congress of the United States,” Pelosi said, according to two sources. Pelosi also said vulnerable Democrats who had the “courage” to vote against the Republican motions to recommit would become a higher priority for the party leadership and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Freshman Rep. Xochitl Torres Small (D-N.M.), who voted for the GOP motion on Wednesday, grew visibly emotional when speaking and pointedly said courage looks different to different people, according to two sources in the room.

Torres Small is in a deeply conservative district with the notable exception of liberal Dona Ana County that put her over the top in her defeat last year of Yvette Herrell, giving the D's the seat for only the second time in decades.

But it's her fellow Dems that Torres Small has to worry about in the early going--and not only Speaker Pelosi but also new Dem Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. She is taking a hard line with southern conservatives opposing her positions on gun control, immigration and abortion. Her rough and tumble response to those critics has egged on 29 of the state's 33 county sheriffs who are getting major attention by opposing a package of gun control bills and even threatening not to enforce certain them, if passed at the legislature.

Herrell is watching and pouncing like a hungry hawk as she campaigns to win the GOP nomination in 2020 and have a rematch with Torres Small. Here she is firing both barrels at libs in DC and Santa Fe:

We have seen the overreach of the Roundhouse Radicals in Santa Fe - now Nancy Pelosi is attempting the same in Washington. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham called our heroic Sheriffs “rogue” and said that she will continue the fight for gun control despite the "pity party" she claims the Sheriffs are throwing. Well Governor, let me say this. We, the people of New Mexico, will continue to fight as well. We will not back down from your radical overreach into our lives.

The landscape has definitely shifted. The afterglow of the Torres Small victory has become cloudy, with Dems predicting their liberal wing is going to give them more trouble down south in 2020. 

Some of them want MLG to cool her engines when pressing liberal positions on the hot button issues, arguing she is going to win those issues anyway. Don't excite the natives, they warn, or it could keep Herrell and company turning MLG into baggage for Torres Small and ultimately turn the seat back to the R's.