Democracy for New Mexico

NM-01: Booman Tribune Questions Martin Heinrich

Martin Heinrich speaking at South Valley event

It's already obvious that the 2008 U.S. House and Senate races in New Mexico will be getting intense scrutiny from all quarters, locally and across the nation, in the traditional media (such that it is) and on the blogs. New Mexico's voters will have a critical role to play in deciding whether the progressive Democratic agenda can move forward in Congress -- and get help from a Democratically held White House. We have a chance to turn New Mexico Blue in a big, big way, in all three Congressional Districts and in a Senate race for a second Dem-held seat. Not to mention the seats we can pick up in the NM Legislature and other locally elected offices. Despite the continuing horrors of Bush and his minions, It's a hopeful and exciting time to be a progressive Democrat, isn't it?

I linked to an interview with Dem Senate Candidate Tom Udall conducted by MyDD in an earlier post today. And now I just ran across an indepth interview with Martin Heinrich, who's running for the Democratic nomination in New Mexico's First Congressional District, conducted as part of the Booman Tribune's Open Seat Initiative. Their Initiative provides an opportunity for candidates in open House and Senate races who are seeking the support of the Progressive Netroots to answer a standardized set of questions. The questions are very specific and designed to put the candidates on record as to their positions on critical issues like "FISA, torture, the Bankruptcy Bill, the Military Commissions Act, and other issues where Bad Democrats have let us down," as Booman explains.

I encourage you to read all of Heinrich's responses to the questionnaire, as I think his answers are quite compelling, complete and satisfying in terms of showing where he stands on the Bad Democrat - Good Democrat scale on many important issues. What comes up over and over again when we discuss Democrats with our friends, families and colleagues? That we need Dems with backbone who aren't afraid to speak out clearly and coherently about what they believe in, on behalf of the people. In my opinion, Heinrich has done just that on the Booman questionnaire, but go judge for yourselves. Excerpts:

BOOMAN TRIBUNE: If elected, would you join one of the congressional caucuses (New Democrat, Blue Dog, Progressive)? Why, or why not?

HEINRICH: I haven't yet decided which caucuses I will join. However, I can say without a doubt that I will not join the New Democrat or Blue Dog caucuses. I believe that we need more and better Democrats in Congress. We need strong leaders who are willing to stand up, speak out and fight for our values. We don't need more Republicans in Democratic clothing. In Congress, I'll be a strong voice for our values - and, I'll continue to use the internet to engage in a conversation with my constituents and the American people.

BOOMAN TRIBUNE: The Protect America Act of 2007 had a six-month sunset, and it is now being marked up in the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees. The Intelligence Committee recommended providing the telecommunications corporations immunity from responsibility for prior cooperation in illegal warrantless surveillance. Presidential candidate, Sen. Chris Dodd has against immunity, and has promised to on any bill that provides for it.

"While the President may think that it's right to offer immunity to those who break the law and violate the right to privacy of thousands of law-abiding Americans, I want to assure him it is not a value we have in common and I hope the same can be said of my fellow Democrats in the Senate.

"For too long we have failed to respect the rule of law and failed to protect our fundamental civil liberties. I will do what I can to see to it that no telecommunications giant that was complicit in this Administration's assault on the Constitution is given a get-out-of-jail-free card."

Do you agree with Senator Dodd's position?

HEINRICH: Yes. I oppose amnesty for telcos who violate our civil rights and who violate the law. I believe that sets another dangerous precedent. All people must be treated equally under the law - regardless of one's wealth or influence. I teach my children that when you do something wrong - you get punished for it. And, just as petty criminals get punished for committing crimes, so too should the Scooter Libby's and the telcos of the world who commit crimes.

Go read the rest at Booman Tribune.

Click to donate to the Heinrich campaign via our DFNM Netroots page at ActBlue. To read our previous coverage of the 2008 Congressional race in NM-01, visit our  archive.

Today's Must Read: MyDD Interviews Rep. Tom Udall

Jonathan Singer at the national blog MyDD has posted an excellent interview he conducted this weekend with Rep. Tom Udall. Udall formally kicked off his campaign for U.S. Senate in New Mexico last week during a 9-city tour of the state. Singer provides both a text transcript and an mp3 of his talk with Udall, which includes discussion of Udall's votes against the Iraq invasion and the Patriot Act, his reasons for running, his recent vote on the Los Alamos National Labs budget, how he intends to run his campaign and his positions on issues like health care and renewable energy that will be the core of his platform. You really should go read and/or listen to the whole thing, but here are a couple excerpts:

On Negative Campaigning:
Singer: Now this is a complete non sequitur, but we're seeing so far in the race - even before you got in the race - a negative campaign in the Democratic primary. A lot of primaries you don't see negative campaigning at all. But when you do see it, it tends to be towards the end of the campaign. Were you surprised by the mudslinging even before you made a decision to get in the race?

Udall: I believe that the American people and New Mexicans don't like nasty campaigns. And we've had some of my opponents get very nasty and say that they're going to run nasty campaigns. And my response has been I think you're going to see a very bad reaction from New Mexicans to this kind of campaigning. People don't like mudslinging. They don't like that. They don't like the feeling about it. They don't like the failure to have any positive vision.

What I'm going to try to offer is a positive vision for communities in New Mexico, talk about the things that we can really do working together. I've viewed my job in the House of Representatives as being empowering communities to fulfill their dreams and working with those communities on specific issues to see that they get things done. That's what people want out of public servants.

There are others out there that want to demean the whole process and demean the system. I find that a very sad commentary on our political life nowadays and I wish we could focus more on the positive. And in fact the best advice my father gave me was just to be positive and work hard, and the best will work out for you. And he just told me that recently.

Running for a Statewide Race:
Singer: Moving forward, of course you don't want to look too far ahead, but as someone who has run and won two successful statewide bids for Attorney General within New Mexico, how does that prepare you for the campaigning statewide? A lot of people think that maybe moving from the House to the Senate is more difficult, but you have statewide election experience. What did that teach you?

Udall: I served two terms as the state Attorney General. In my job I chose to travel widely in New Mexico. We had a state plane available to us, and so we would have some of my division directors... I would always make it known several weeks before we were traveling so that others in the office could do work in a variety of communities in New Mexico. And we'd take off very early in the morning and come back pretty late at night and get a lot of work done.

One thing I learned is that it's a big state. There's a lot of diversity. Even in a fairly fast plane it takes you an hour from the center of the state, the state capital of Santa Fe, it takes you an hour in almost any direction to get out to the far reaches of the state. In order to represent the state you have to travel a lot. It may be by train, it may be by car. But all of these communities are wonderful communities that are engaged in a variety of ways with the federal government in some cases. There are three military bases in New Mexico, two national laboratories. We have a diversity of other kinds of industry and businesses, many small businesses. We don't have many large Fortune 500 type of companies. We do have Intel, and Intel has been a major player in my Congressional district, and we have some wonderful people working there.

So what you end up learning is you learn the whole state, you understand the state, you understand what the needs are. And that helped me, in my eight years as Attorney General, understand what people want, and I'm going to step up to the plate and try to help them fulfill their dreams and empower them to work hard to fulfill their dreams.

If you're as enthusiastic about Rep. Udall's run as I am, head over to the Netroots for Tom Udall page at ActBlue and make a campaign contribution right now. You can also visit Udall's campaign website, which will be revamped soon, at https://www.udallforusall.com/.

To read our previous coverage of the 2008 Senate Race in New Mexico, visit our archive. If you haven't yet seen our video clips from Rep. Udall's formal announcement event at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque last Thursday, click here and here.

Thanks

You may celebrate Thanksgiving in the traditional way, replace the turkey with veggie vegan something, protest the holiday's origins or just plain ignore it and watch football or travel down to the Bosque del Apache to see the cranes instead. Any way you roast it, I hope you'll enjoy another experience of Arlo Guthrie's T-Day song, Alice's Restaurant, as you mark the day in your own way.

Here's a video of Arlo from 2005 performing the entire song in concert. When was the last time you heard the 18-minute plus saga about what happened to young Arlo and his hippie friends in Stockbridge, MA on a Thanksgiving long, long ago? The video above is the film's original trailer from 1969, when many of us were suffering through an earlier quagmire war -- but with way fewer gray hairs on our heads, during an eran when Thanksgiving herb meant something other than parsley, sage, rosemary or thyme.

Fore more to ponder, here's the 2007 version of 21 Reasons to Give Thanks by the Think Progress Report:

21 Reasons To Give Thanks

• We're thankful for our country's troops.
• We're thankful the minimum wage has been increased for the first time in a decade.
• We're thankful MC Rove has more free time to work on his dance moves.
• We're thankful Congress has "wasted time" trying to end the war in Iraq. 
• We're thankful radio stations don't play "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran."
• We're thankful for journalists like Molly Ivins, who was never afraid to "raise hell."
• We're (not) thankful for wide stances.
• We're thankful to Michael Moore, whose documentary SiCKO started a national discussion on health care reform.
• We're thankful people don't call us Buzzy, Cookie, Brownie, or Scooter.
• We're thankful we can now call Al Gore the "Oscar-winning, Emmy-winning, Nobel Prize laureate" former vice president of the United States.
• We're thankful Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales won't visit our bedside if we're sick in the hospital.
• We're thankful not all Dick Cheney's cousins think like he does.
• We're thankful to be considered one of the "ten most dangerous organizations in America."
• We're thankful that visiting the Mall of America isn't really like visiting Iraq.
• We're thankful President Bush isn't giving out any more back rubs.
• We're thankful for 12-year olds who can take down Rush Limbaugh in a fight.
• We're thankful our Halloween costumes aren't very "original."
• We're thankful no one (except the birds) gets hurt when Dick Cheney goes hunting now.
• We're thankful for "phony soldiers" who have the courage to speak out about the war in Iraq.
• We're thankful the "Commander Guy" has only 425 days left in office.
• And last but not least: We're thankful to The Progress Report readers for their tips, energy, and support.

Thanks to You
Finally, thanks to all the readers, commenters and guest bloggers from here and places far away who've driven our daily page hit stats steadily up, up, up since I started this blog back on July 15, 2004 -- some 3,386 posts, 5,617 comments and 313,890 visitors ago and counting. The posts in the early days were rather sporatic, and the visitors few. At the time, I think Joe Monahan was the only other political blogger in New Mexico. Now there are many local bloggers focusing on a variety of angles and targeting a number of niches. By all accounts readership and participation across the board is still growing rapidly.

With a presidential race picking up steam, competitive U.S. House and U.S. Senate contests already garnering national attention and legislative and local elections on the horizon, I can only imagine what the traffic stats will be for New Mexico's blogger community in the coming months. Let's hope we have some election results we can really be thankful about when election day 2008 has come and gone and our troops can finally come home. We've all suffered much too long within the Bush regime's distorted version of reality. Let's hope the worst of our national nightmare ends next November and that next Thanksgiving we can truly be in a hopeful, celebratory mood. Only we can make it happen. Peace.

ActBlue Fundraising Totals for NM Dem Congressional Candidates

As of September 30, 2007 via ActBlue online fundraising:

Don Wiviott for U.S. Senate: $60,698, including $644 from local blog effort Beat Back Bush New Mexico, most of it this past quarter.

Jim Hannan for U.S. Senate: $75

Martin Heinrich for Congress NM-01: $71,954 including $530 from local blog efforts Beat Back Bush New Mexico and $1000 from DFNM Netroots for Heinrich. About $40,000 of that was raised during this past quarter. Heinrich had raised about $181,000 from all sources through the second quarter.

Jon Adams for Congress NM-01: $4,801, all of it this past quarter.

Bill McCamley for Congress NM-02: $31,225, about $20,000 of that during the past quarter.

Al Kissling for Congress NM-02: $795

Rep. Tom Udall hasn't yet raised any money using ActBlue.

Official third quarter fundraising reports from all sources for these candidates are due by October 15, 2007 at the Federal Election Commission.

Join Live Blogging with Martin Heinrich on Kos Today at Noon

UPDATE: Here's the link to Martin's live blogging diary:
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/27/134338/983
(keep refreshing the diary when there)
*****************
Martin Heinrich, running to take on Repub Heather Wilson in the NM-01 Congressional race, will be live blogging at the national polical blog Daily Kos today starting at Noon Mountain Time. What this means is he'll launch a user diary at Kos and hang out to respond to your comments and questions entered in the thread. To participate, head over to https://www.DailyKos.com, look on the right-hand sidebar for Heinrich's diary and click on it. If you're registered at Daily Kos you can recommend the diary so it moves up in the rankings and stays on the front page. Any visitor can comment on the thread, and Martin will be there to interact with any and all participants. It's a great way to learn more about Heinrich's campaign and get your questions answered.

You should also check out Heinrich's totally revamped campaign website and blog, which was launched yesterday. Visit https://www.martinheinrich.com/ and check out all the new tools, info and resources that make it easy to hook up with the campaign and stay current on what's happening. Impressive.

You can also sign a petition at the website to end the Iraq occupation:

Heather Wilson has supported George Bush and his War in Iraq every step of the way. Martin Heinrich opposed this ill-conceived war from the beginning and, like a majority of New Mexicans, he believes that it's time for this war to come to an honorable end.

We, the undersigned, believe that Heather Wilson, George Bush and Dick Cheney have created a quagmire in Iraq. We call upon President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Congresswoman Wilson to show strong support for our troops by beginning to bring them home immediately. We appreciate deeply all the sacrifices our brave men and women make, and we call upon our elected officials to make sure that they are taken care of properly when they return home.

To read our previous posts on congressional race in NM's first district, visit our archive.

The third quarter campaign fundraising deadline is September 30th. To help Heinrich show he's got strong support in the district, donate a few bucks at the DFNM Netroots for Heinrich page at ActBlue or contribute via his new website.

Sunday Bird Blogging: Webcam Edition

Dusky conures at the FeatherCam

I find myself traveling to these avian webcam sites whenever I'm at the keyboard and need to get away from the political world for a few minutes. You, too, can escape to birdland anytime and take a gander.

The PNM burrowing owl cam provides fresh views every 60 seconds of a colony of burrowing owls who just happen to live at PNM's Reeves Generating Station in north Albuquerque. If you want something a little more colorful, visit the FeatherCam, which features a variety of views of the many types of parrots hanging out at DJ Feathers home-based aviary in Northern Virginia. FeatherCam, which refreshes every 30 seconds, beat out hundreds of thousands of webcams in the EarthCam database to be named this month's NUMBER ONE webcam. Check back often as birds go through many cycles of action and inaction during any 24 hour period. FeatherCam changes the location of their camera several times a day so different members of their flock are featured. (Click on photos for larger images.)

Macaws pose for FeatherCam

Wiviott Among Top 5 Fundraisers on Act Blue Last Week

Don Wiviott (L) speaking at YearlyKos Netroots Convention

Don Wiviott, a Dem candidate running to take on Sen. Pete Domenici for a Senate seat in New Mexico in 2008, garnered enough campaign donations on ActBlue last week to place his totals fifth among all those who received contributions via the progressive online site for the period:

	Rank	Name	District	Raised
	1	Tim Johnson	SD-SEN	$77,982.05
	2	John Edwards	President	$50,879.38
	3	Tom Harkin	IA-SEN	$21,740.00
	4	Courage Campaign	CA PAC	$13,180.71
	5	Don Wiviott	NM-Sen	$11,520.00

Source: ActBlue.com for the period September 2nd-9th, 2007.

Since he entered the race in June, Wiviott's campaign has been the beneficiary of a total of $28,434 donations across ActBlue pages, including $514 via the Beat Back Bush New Mexico page supported by New Mexico blogs Democracy for New Mexico and New Mexico FBIHOP. You can add to those totals by kicking in a few bucks right here.

Mark your calendars: Wiviott at Meetup
Don Wiviott will our special guest at the next Albuquerque DFA-DFNM Meetup to be held on Thursday, October 4th, at the Social Hall of the First Unitarian Church at Carlisle and Comanche.

He'll be speaking to the group and taking questions. To RSVP for the Meetup or join the group and get on our email list, click here. Come on down and meet the candidate who just might be our next Senator from New Mexico.

Click to read our previous posts about the New Mexico Senate race or visit our Beat Back Bush New Mexico archive to learn more about that ongoing effort.

(Click on photo for larger image. Photo credit: M.E. Broderick.)

Transcript: District 6 City Council Candidate Online Forum

The transcript is now available for yesterday's Albuquerque Journal online forum with the District 6 candidates for Albuquerque City Council. Visitors to the site were encouraged to submit questions for Kevin Smith, Blair Kaufman, Joanie Griffin and Rey Garduño (above, left to right), who then answered online. Check it out.

Albuquerque's municipal election is set for October 2, 2007. Registered voters who live in all even-numbered City Council districts will elect City Councilors. A councilor recall is also on the ballot in District 9. All voters will consider a number of municipal bond issues and ballot propositions. Mail-in (absentee) voting and in-person early voting is going on right now. See our archive of posts on the municipal election for more information on candidates, voting, issues and more.

TV Tonight: District 2 & 4 Candidates
Don't forget to tune in tonight to We The People's live TV forum with City Council candidates from Districts 2 and 4. It starts at 6:00 PM on Albuquerque Comcast community cable channel 27. You can also watch a live online stream of the show by going . Click for more info on tonight's event.

Online Chat: ABQ City Council District 6 Candidates

The Albuquerque Journal is hosting an online chat at 7:30 PM on Wednesday night, September 12th, with the four candidates running for Albuquerque City Council in District 6. Rey Garduño, Joanie Griffin, Blair Kaufman and Kevin Williams will participate in the chat, moderated by reporter Dan McKay. To access the chat, click here. You can begin submitting questions right now.

TONIGHT: Take a Stand and Demand that Domenici & Wilson Do the Same

Watch this video, listen to Iraq Vet John Bruhns (who has been blogging on AMERICAblog this month) -- and do what he says. Today, there will be over 700 "Take a Stand" events around the country. You can find one . Take a Stand. In Albuquerque: UNM Continuing Education Auditorium, 1634 University Blvd. NE, 7 PM. If you can't make it, check in at AMERICAblog tonight for the live blogging on Take a Stand efforts. You might even get some right here.