BLUE AMERICA WELCOMES MARTIN HEINRICH, OUR FIRST CANDIDATE FROM NEW MEXICO

I had hoped to introduce Martin Heinrich as our newest Blue America candidate last Saturday but, fortunately, he was busy winning the New Mexico Democratic Pre-Primary convention. Among the five hopefuls running for the seat (NM-01) being abandoned by corrupt Bush rubber stamp Heather Wilson, Martin got 56.4% of the vote. His closest competitor wound up with 11.2%.

Martin will be facing off against a Bush surrogate, Darren White, the 2004 Campaign Chairman for Bush-Cheney in Bernalillo County (basically, Albuquerque). White is a lockstep and eager rubber stamp for the entire array of Bush's toxic and disastrous agenda. And he has some problems of his own too boot-- like running a sheriff's department that was notorious for racial profiling. But even if Martin wasn't facing an especially bad opponent, he would still be one of the most outstanding potential leaders we could hope to elect to Congress in November.

He was a member of the Albuquerque City Council for 4 years and his colleagues elected him to the presidency of that body. That's because he gets an "A" in works and plays well with others and because they knew him as someone who likes to get real things accomplished for real people. Governor Bill Richardson appointed him to head the Office of the Natural Resources Trustee for similar reasons.

At 36, Martin is filled with positive energy and a can-do spirit. He has a unique perspective, for a politician, on the world. After getting a mechanical engineering degree in college, he decided to devote himself to energy issues. "I started working on it in the early 90s when some fellow engineering students and I got together and designed and built a solar car and raced it across the United States. Ever since then I've realized that there's this sense in this country that energy independence is pie in the sky and we just need more oil, more gas, more domestic drilling, more foreign supply... and it's this self fulfilling prophesy that has nothing to do with the technological challenge of changing how we deal with energy. It's the reason why we've fallen behind Denmark and Germany and Japan so dramatically. In my own home is we get our electricity primarily from photovoltaics-- and we buy the rest from wind generation. I've been involved with that long enough to know that we really can completely change how this country deals with energy." Yes, we can; we just need new leaders who embrace science and progress, leaders like Martin.

He's known in Albuquerque as a down to earth guy who is interested in results. He was one of the leaders of the successful fight to raise the city's minimum wage to $7.50 making Albuquerque the fourth city in the country to have a minimum wage that is higher than the state and federal level, something he's very proud of. It harkens back to his childhood memories of his parents' situation.

I grew up in a blue collar household. My dad was an IBW lineman during the week; on the weekends we all worked to keep the ranch afloat. My mom was a garment worker and then she worked for one of the only non-union auto supply plants in the Midwest and that experience is part of the reason why I've been such a strong labor advocate. I really saw first hand, because of my mom's job, what it means to have no contract, no collective bargaining, no access to a union. I saw how completely different my parents were treated by their employers. That appreciation led me to fight for a minimum wage bill when I was on the City Council.

When I asked Martin what he's hearing about from the voters in Albuquerque most frequently, it was no surprise: the economy and Iraq. "And they're not unrelated. People see Iraq and the economy as very connected now. And they see the opportunity cost of all the money that we're spending in Iraq versus what that could mean to a faltering economy here in the U.S." I asked him if folks are buying into the Bush-McCain propaganda barrage that their surge is a glorious success.

Even the folks who say violence is down, are asking if that means we need to stay there for 100 years. Most of the people I meet in the district say 'absolutely not. It's time to start bringing our men and women home to their families.' Even though there may be reductions in violence, people want to see an end to it. Whether or not the surge is working depends on which goal posts you measure by. If you measure by the goal posts that the administration created for itself, its absolutely not working. It was supposed to give breathing room to the political side so they could pull the disparate ethnic communities together and unify an approach to government and those goal posts certainly haven't been met.

Last month Martin did a guest post at DWT about FISA and retroactive immunity. I asked him a few days ago on the phone if the issues he raises in that discussion are gaining any traction in the district or if they're too abstract and too far removed from people's day to day lives. "Here in the West," he told me, "people have a healthy distrust of government. More and more conservatives, independents, Republicans who see the potential for the overreach of government to be on the other foot. What happens when it's a Democrat in the Oval Office ignoring the Constitution? What I tell a lot of my more conservative friends, especially the ones who are passionate defenders of the Second Amendment, is that if Darren White's not going to protect your 4th Amendment rights what makes you think he's going to protect your 2nd Amendment rights? That gets people thinking-- in a hurry. It's an issue that has the potential to really resonate with people here. There's a healthy distrust of Big Brother; that issue doesn't tend to be so much a Democrat vs. Republican issue. (I just noticed he even talks about the importance of this issue in his campaign ad.)

Martin's going to be with us at Firedoglake for two hours, starting at noon, Mountain Time-- 11AM in L.A. and 2PM in Nueva York. Please feel free to ask him whatever you'd like about his campaign and his qualifications. And please consider joining me in giving his campaign a boost at the Blue America ActBlue page.