NM-01: The Heat Is On

This is a pretty exciting election year for voters in the Land of Enchantment (or the "Land of the Enchanted", as Bush once called it).  We have races in all three of our congressional districts, plus a Senate race.  Last week, mcjoan updated us on the Senate race;  the fine folks at New Mexico FBIHOP have a great summary of all three Congressional races here.

A couple of days ago, CQ Politics turned the spotlight on NM-01 (click the map to enlarge) -- a small district whose complicated race was triggered by Sen. Pete Domenici's retirement:

New Mexico faces an unusual total turnover of its U.S. House delegation, with all three members — Democrat Tom Udall and Republicans Heather A. Wilson and Steve Pearce — running for the Senate seat left open by retiring Republican Pete V. Domenici . And while each of the three districts is staging an open house for open-seat candidates, the most intense scramble may be occurring in the Albuquerque-based 1st, a partisan battleground district of long standing.

The state’s preliminary candidate filing deadline passed Tuesday, and seven major-party candidates — five Democrats and two Republicans — are in the race to succeed Republican Wilson, who won a hard-fought and narrow re-election victory in 2006 over Democrat Patricia Madrid, then New Mexico’s attorney general.

In 2004, the district voted Kerry over Bush by 3 percent.  CQ has rated the district as "no clear favorite", but that will most likely change soon:

One recent officeholder, former New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron, announced Feb. 2 she would run for the Democratic nomination, emphasizing her background as an 11th generation New Mexican. Other well-known figures seeking the nomination are former Albuquerque Councilman Martin Heinrich and former state Health Secretary Michelle Lujan Grisham.

Vigil-Giron and Lujan Grisham both are Hispanic. Christine Sierra, a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, said this could boost them in a district in which Hispanics make up well more than two-fifths of the population. But they could split the Hispanic vote, which also will be pursued by Heinrich, the best-known among the non-Hispanic white candidates. Heinrich entered the race in April, before Domenici announced his retirement plans and incumbent Wilson shifted her sights to the Senate race.

The other two candidates are Robert Pidcock and Jessica Wolfe, who was an aide to Bill Richardson.  Heinrich is easily the front-runner;  he's been in the race longer, and has raised some serious money:

Year-end reports indicate Heinrich led the Democratic pack in fundraising, aided in part by his early start. By Dec. 31, Heinrich raised $465,000 and had $277,000 left on hand. Lujan Grisham, the other Democrat who filed a campaign finance report, had raised $116,000 and had $96,000 on hand. The other candidates will be required to file their initial reports, for the first quarter of 2008, by April 15.

He has out-raised all of his opponents, both Democratic and Republican.

The two Republicans in the race are Bernalillo County sheriff Darren White, and state Senator Joe Carraro, who touts his experience, saying that White should "run for the Legislature" before setting his sights on D.C..

White was chairman of Bush's campaign in New Mexico in 2004, and chaired Guiliani's NM campaign as well.  He's doing his best to get the hell away from his history as a Bush acolyte, saying he's wingnut-lite "independent".  He's even changed his campaign rhetoric from "our troops must return in victory [from Iraq]" (video) to not saying anything about "victory" at all.

The NM primary is on 3 June.  Whether you're a Democratic or Republican voter, you're going to wish the choice was as simple as "red or green".