{"id":212186,"date":"2016-11-08T23:27:05","date_gmt":"2016-11-09T06:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=212186"},"modified":"2016-11-09T00:28:54","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T07:28:54","slug":"republican-nakamura-keeps-n-m-supreme-court-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/11\/republican-nakamura-keeps-n-m-supreme-court-seat\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican Nakamura keeps N.M. Supreme Court seat"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Mexico Supreme Court Justice Judith Nakamura has retained the seat she was appointed to last year by Gov. Susana Martinez.<\/p>\n

As of 11:10 p.m., Nakamura, a Republican, was\u00a0about 31,000 votes ahead of Democratic challenger Michael Vigil, who’s currently the chief judge on the New Mexico\u00a0Court of Appeals. NMPolitics.net has decided to call the race.<\/p>\n

\"Judith

Courtesy photo<\/p>

Judith Nakamura<\/p><\/div>\n

Nakamura\u2019s campaign did not immediately respond to NMPolitics.net\u2019s request for comment, but Vigil’s campaign appeared ready to concede.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose numbers are going to be hard to make up for,” said Vigil spokesman Brian Morris. “The judge has gone home to watch the election on TV.”<\/p>\n

Nakamura is\u00a0the first Republican to win an election for\u00a0the state Supreme Court since 1980, when William Riordan, an Albuquerque attorney, defeated Justice Edwin Felter, a Democrat who had been appointed to a vacancy in 1979 by then-Gov. Bruce King.<\/p>\n

Until 1988, judges ran in partisan elections as other candidates for public office do, but governors filled vacant positions on the court and they retained their seats indefinitely.<\/p>\n

Voters adopted a constitutional amendment in 1988 to create\u00a0the current system of merit selection for judges. That means a governor’s appointee must run in a partisan race\u00a0in the next general election. If if successful, that judge will\u00a0appear on the ballot without an opponent — to be retained or not — thereafter.<\/p>\n

Martinez\u2019s last\u00a0appointee to the state Supreme Court, Republican Paul Kennedy of Albuquerque, lost in the 2012 general election to Democrat Barbara Vigil (no relation to Michael).<\/p>\n

Nakamura is the only Republican on the N.M. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judith Nakamura is the first Republican to win an election for the state Supreme Court since 1980.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2959,"featured_media":212191,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[708,161],"class_list":["post-212186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-2016-election","tag-judiciary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2959"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}