State Rep.-elect Andrea Reeb, R-Clovis, will return to the state House after winning reelection Nov. 3 to the seat she resigned in October.
She announced her resignation Oct. 15 from the seat Reeb held since 2023, after U.S. District Judge Kea Riggs ruled that Reeb violated the New Mexico Constitution by serving in the Legislature while working as a special prosecutor.
She represented House District 64, which includes parts of Chaves, Curry and Roosevelt counties. Despite her resignation from the post, Reeb remained on the ballot for reelection as the state’s Aug. 25 deadline to withdraw from the race had passed.
Before stepping down, Reeb worked as a special prosecutor on a contractual basis for district attorneys’ offices in the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th judicial districts.
When she resumes her role as lawmaker, Reeb will work for private law firm Payne, Powell, Truitt, Chandler Law Group, a Lubbock-based firm with an office in Clovis.
She was unopposed in her bid for reelection. A Thursday news release from House Republicans said Reeb will be seated when the 60-day legislative session opens in January.
“The people of District 64 asked me to serve, and I’m going to. I’m ready to get back to work for them,” Reeb said in the release.
The seat remains vacant until Reeb assumes the post in January.
The ruling that led to Reeb’s resignation was the result of a lawsuit brought against her and other prosecutors by actor Alec Baldwin.
Reeb was one of the prosecutors in the involuntary manslaughter case brought against Baldwin over the fatal 2021 shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during filming of “Rust” in Santa Fe County. A judge dismissed the charges in July 2024.
She was appointed in 2022 to prosecute Baldwin, and resigned from the case in March 2023, about two months after she was sworn in to the House.
Reeb told the Roswell Tribune in a phone interview Thursday that she did nothing wrong in her special prosecutor work. She said she relied on an April 2023 informal opinion from the State Ethics Commission and a 2024 opinion from Attorney General Raúl Torrez in concluding she could hold both roles.
Nonetheless, Reeb said she stepped down from her House seat to protect the cases she was working on.
“My priority at that time was making sure that the cases didn’t have any hiccups and they could be given back to the original prosecutor’s office if necessary, or, you know, whatever I needed to do,” Reeb said.
Before she is seated, Reeb will continue as a special prosecutor so she can resolve the cases she has worked on or transfer them to other attorneys.
Reeb said she had been considering a return to the Legislature for weeks.
“I really wasn’t sure which way I was going to go, and then I just started getting all this positive feedback from co-legislators, my community,” she said.
Many of those supporters, Reeb said, cited her work on public safety proposals and her status as the only Republican attorney on the House Judiciary Committee as reasons for her to rejoin the Legislature.
That work included bills to overhaul the state’s pretrial detention system, enhance penalties for felons in possession of firearms and reform the state’s juvenile code.
