Heinrich Exceeds Fundraising Goal, Garners National Praise

Democratic Congressional candidate Martin Heinrich, who's running to replace Repub incumbent Heather Wilson in NM-01, announced that his campaign raised about $181,000 in the quarter that ended on June 30th. That's $31,000 more than the goal of $150,000 set by his campaign when he entered the race in April. Donations came from about 700 individuals in only nine weeks of fundraising. According to the campaign, about 71% of donations came from within New Mexico's first Congressional District, and about 88% from within the state.

As reported in a previous post, Heinrich's campaign was one of the top 20 online fundraisers at ActBlue, the Democratic netroots website. Donations to his campaign this quarter on ActBlue totaled more than $35,000, $800 of which was donated via Democracy for New Mexico's netroots page on the site.

According to an Albuquerque Tribune article:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says it is impressed with Martin Heinrich's quick start in raising money ... That's a good showing, a committee spokesman said. "We think he's a strong candidate," said Fernando Cuevas, Western regional press secretary for the DCCC.

An Albuquerque Journal article quotes Heinrich's reaction to the news:

"I am really humbled at the amount of support we've gotten in a short period of time," said Heinrich ... "We exceeded our goal for the quarter fairly substantially. I was trying to hit $150,000— and obviously we went past that ... I think this will be another top-tier race ..."

In a press release, Heinrich continued:

“The outpouring of grassroots energy I have witnessed since entering this race demonstrates to me that voters are ready for new leadership. As I have spoken with voters across this district, they have told me that they’re sick and tired of the failed policies of George Bush and Heather Wilson, and they’re ready to put our country back on the right track.”

To gain some perspective, recall that at this time two years ago, no Democratic candidate had yet announced a run for the NM-01 seat. The eventual Democratic contender, former Attorney General Patricia Madrid, didn't start raising money for the race until Octobe 2005.

Rep. Heather Wilson has until July 15th to report her fundraising totals for the second quarter to the Federal Election Commission. Her campaign raised more than $274,000 in the first quarter of 2007.

As of July 5th, the NM-01 race has another Dem contender in the form of attorney Jon Adams. has the details.

Note: Martin Heinrich will be the featured guest at our next DFA-Democracy for New Mexico Meetup set for Thursday, August 2nd, at 7:00 PM, at the Social Hall of the First Unitarian Church at Carlisle and Comanche in Albuquerque. He'll be speaking to the group about his campaign and taking questions and comments. To join the DFA-DFNM Meetup group and get on our email list, click here. We've been meeting since 2003, when the Meetup originated as Dean for America.

To check out our previous posts on the NM-01 race, visit our archive.