BLUE AMERICA WELCOMES BACK MARTIN HEINRICH-- MAKING BUSH THE FUNDRAISER EVEN MORE TOXIC FOR THE RIGHT WING

Martin with Senator Jeff Bingaman

We first met Martin Heinrich over at FDL in March right after he routed the competition at the New Mexico pre-primary convention. We decided to ask Martin to come back today for two reasons. (He'll be joining us for a 2 hour live blog session at Firedoglake at noon Mountain Time.) First of all, he's one of the few Democrats running proactively against warrantless wiretaps and retroactive immunity and it looks like the Bush/Steny Hoyer FISA bill is rearing its ugly head again. While shady GOP front groups have tried to use the security ploy against Democrats, Martin has turned the tables on them and run a model campaign that has them on the run.

Instead of fudging the issue the way many Blue Dogs and other cowering Vichy Dems do, Martin goes right after it. When White questioned Martin's patriotism, Martin slammed right back at him and sent him reeling: "I stand with the American people who say fear mongering is not acceptable. Not acceptable from George Bush, not acceptable from Karl Rove and not acceptable from Darren White. I agree with Bill Richardson that we can keep our country safe without resorting to unconstitutional, warrantless wiretaps. I support a strong FISA that authorizes our intelligence community to intercept the communications of foreign terrorists, not American citizens minding their own business."

The second reason we invited him today is for quasi-selfish reasons. We want to blunt Bush's effectiveness as a Republican fundraiser. At a time when most rational Republicans are wary of being seen as too close to him, Bush is traveling to Albuquerque a week from Tuesday (May 27) to raise money from wealthy New Mexico Republicans for Darren White, Martin's extreme right wing, somewhat loopy opponent. And according to Jonathan Martin at the Politico, Bush will travel around to far right hot beds and raise money for McCain without McCain having to be there. We were very successful in countering Bush's attempt to raise funds for Dave Reichert, the rubber stamp running against Darcy Burner. White is asking for $5,000 to get a photo taken with Chimpy. White was the 2004 Bernalillo County Campaign Chair for the Bush-Cheney campaign so they want to repay him. It would be great to rain on their parade-- and make Bush more toxic for his own party at the same time.

A few days ago White's primary opponent, raised a very touchy question for the self-professed "law and order" candidate. While he was vice president of the New Mexico Police Association his high-handed, dictatorial and incompetent manner of doing business caused 89% of the members to vote "no confidence" in his leadership.

Please consider donating to Martin's campaign today at our Blue America ActBlue page. This is a district (PVI: D +2) we should be able to take back from the Republicans-- and use it to help New Mexico come in for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton and for Tom Udall's race to win the senate seat. Please take a look at a brand new video that Martin's campaign released this morning: