Businesswoman Nella Domenici announced Tuesday night that she would seek the Republican nomination to take on Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich, reportedly as a recruit of the NRSC, according to Politico. The story also says that Domenici, who is the daughter of the late Sen. Pete Domenici, will self-fund $500,000 to launch her effort in this Democratic-leaning state.
Domenici is a former chief financial officer of Bridgewater Associates, the hedge fund giant that another NRSC favorite, Pennsylvania's Dave McCormick, used to run. And like McCormick and so many other NRSC picks, Domenici also has questionable ties to the state she wants to represent in the upper chamber.
When Domenici mulled a campaign for New Mexico's other Senate seat in 2019, longtime political reporter Joe Monahan wrote at the time that she "has had a long career in elite financial circles on the East Coast" rather than in her birth state. He added that an unreleased survey "asked respondents if the fact that she is a multi-millionaire who owns three houses—including one on New York's posh Fifth Avenue and another in Santa Fe—would cause them to view her differently."
Monahan remains unimpressed with Domenici's connections to the Land of Enchantment now that she's launched her bid. "Domenici's involvement in the state is thin," he wrote Wednesday, "consisting of stints on various boards, despite her statement that she has been a 'warrior' for those most in need."
Domenici joins former Bernalillo County Sheriff Manny Gonzales in the June 4 GOP nomination contest, and Monahan notes that the family name didn't fare well the last time it was on a primary ballot. The new candidate's brother, Pete Domenici Jr., ran for governor in 2010—about a year-and-a-half after their father left the Senate—only to take a distant fourth against the eventual winner, Susana Martinez.
Nella Domenici is also the half-sister of Nevada Republican Adam Laxalt, who aired a commercial during his unsuccessful 2022 Senate campaign saying, "[A]s a kid, I didn't know who my father was." The elder Domenici, who was once nicknamed "Saint Pete," waited until after he left office to reveal that he had been unfaithful to his wife in 1978 and fathered a child with Michelle Laxalt, the daughter of Senate colleague Paul Laxalt.
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