The congressman from the 1st District is Democrat Martin Heinrich (HYN-rihk), first elected in 2008. Heinrich was born in Fallon, Nev., earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Missouri and moved to New Mexico in 1995. He founded a political consulting business and served as executive director of the Cottonwood Gulch Foundation, which runs adventure programs in the Southwest. In 2003, he was elected to the Albuquerque City Council. His signature issue was increasing New Mexico’s minimum wage in 2006; Heinrich worked with the city’s business leaders and community activists to produce compromise legislation mandating a gradual increase. He also lobbied for federal protection of the Ojito Wilderness. Read More

The congressman from the 1st District is Democrat Martin Heinrich (HYN-rihk), first elected in 2008. Heinrich was born in Fallon, Nev., earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Missouri and moved to New Mexico in 1995. He founded a political consulting business and served as executive director of the Cottonwood Gulch Foundation, which runs adventure programs in the Southwest. In 2003, he was elected to the Albuquerque City Council. His signature issue was increasing New Mexico’s minimum wage in 2006; Heinrich worked with the city’s business leaders and community activists to produce compromise legislation mandating a gradual increase. He also lobbied for federal protection of the Ojito Wilderness.

Encouraged by Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, Heinrich announced that he would challenge GOP Rep. Heather Wilson in 2008. National Democrats backed Heinrich’s candidacy, and he defeated three other hopefuls in the June 3 primary, including former New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron. In October 2007, Wilson announced her intention to relinquish the seat to run for the Senate. Republicans fielded a strong replacement candidate in Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White, who had had a long career in New Mexico politics, including two terms as sheriff. Early polls showed he had better name recognition than Heinrich.

But Heinrich made steady gains. He tied White to the unpopular incumbent president by reminding voters that White had served as President George W. Bush’s Bernalillo County re-election chairman in 2004. White in turn questioned Heinrich’s business practices, saying he had been paid by nonprofit groups for advocacy work without first registering as a lobbyist. Heinrich maintained that the law had not required him to register as a lobbyist when he was a political consultant for the Coalition for New Mexico Wilderness from 2002 to 2005. The campaign took an especially negative turn in the final weeks. Heinrich’s campaign ran an ad featuring a group of New Mexico state police officers’ wives, who in 1996 accused White of policies they claimed compromised their husbands’ safety. White’s campaign hit back with an ad in which the mother of a slain Bernalillo County sheriff’s deputy referred to Heinrich as “despicable.”

Late polls showed a close race. But Heinrich defeated White 56% to 44%, carrying three of the district’s five counties. He crushed White by 33,786 votes in populous Bernalillo County, which Wilson had lost by a mere 1,250 votes in 2006. Heinrich out-raised White and was helped by the Democratic wave in 2008.

Before arriving in Washington, Heinrich already generated some inside-the-industry buzz. A poll conducted by the website Politics1.com named the handsome Heinrich the “Hottest Man in Politics,” ahead of such well-known political heartthrobs as Sen. John Thune of South Dakota. In the House, he is generally a reliable Democratic vote, but a bit more centrist on economic issues. He opposed the December 2010 tax cut deal between Obama and congressional Republicans, saying that the wealthiest Americans did not deserve to be included.

On the Natural Resources Committee, he focused on legislation to make the country energy independent. He supported the House-passed energy bill in June 2009 and added an amendment aimed at making it easier for federal agencies to contract with local clean energy sources. He also amended a spending plan for Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories enabling them to allocate more money internally to research projects of their own choosing. A year later, he got a provision into the fiscal 2011 defense authorization bill creating a pilot program connecting military bases and the labs to develop energy systems that could be used more widely. On other local issues, he worked to stop the retirement of the New Mexico Air National Guard’s 150th Fighter Wing, eventually getting it to merge in 2010 with the 58th Special Operations Wing at Kirtland Air Force Base.

Republicans sought to portray the 2008 election as an aberration in their quest to reclaim the seat two years later. The GOP nominee was Jon Barela, a well-connected former president of the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce and former state Republican Party vice chairman. Barela pledged fiscal conservatism to counter Democrats’ “unchecked, reckless spending,” and said that as a Hispanic, he would have the ability to connect with a broad cross-segment of the population. He got help from the National Republican Congressional Committee, which bought $300,000 of advertising time in October.

Heinrich accused Barela of seeking to privatize Social Security, a charge Barela denied, and defended his support of the economic stimulus and health care overhaul laws. Polls showed a tight race, but Heinrich managed to pull out a 52%-48% re-election win. He lost rural Torrance and Valencia counties as well as the portion of southern Santa Fe County in the district, but came out ahead, 53%-47%, in far more populous Bernalillo County. Heinrich announced in April 2011 his intention to run for the Senate seat of retiring Democrat Jeff Bingaman.