It's Official: Heather Had the Most Impressive 1st Quarter Fundraising

I'm back at work and ready to dive into New Mexico politics.

I was just looking at the U.S. Senate race campaign finance figures.

Heinrich

It seems Democratic contender Martin Heinrich has raised nearly four times as much money as his primary opponent Hector Balderas in the first three months of 2012, according to reports filed recently with the Federal Election Commission.

But both Democrats were outpaced by likely Republican Senate nominee Heather Wilson, who last week reported raising nearly $760,000 in the first quarter of this year.

Balderas

Balderas, who is state auditor, raised almost $127,000 between Jan. 1 and March 31 leaving just short of $395,000 in the bank, according to his report.

Heinrich in the first quarter, raised more than $490,000 and had more than $1.55 million cash-on-hand at the end of last month, his campaign said last week.

Balderas’ campaign manager Caroline Buerkle said that Balderas raised more than $100,000 of his total following the pre-primary convention in early March. At that convention, Heinrich, a Congressman from Albuquerque, won the support of about 54 percent of Democratic Party leaders while Balderas got about 45 percent of the vote.

Wilson

Wilson, a former Congresswoman from Albuquerque, reported having $1.45 million cash in hand, slightly less than Heinrich.

Her only GOP primary opponent is dark horse Greg Sowards, a Las Cruces businessman who, according to the Associated Press, reported $100,000 of which was a loan from Sowards himself. Nearly all of Sowards' campaign funds come from the $1.1 Million he has loaned himself. since last year. Sowards had almost $706,000 cash on hand at the end of May.


Lt. Gov. John Sanchez had been running for the Senate seat. However, under-funded and trailing in polls, Sanchez dropped out in February and endorsed Wilson.

UPDATE 8:29 p.m. My earlier version did not have new figures for Sowards. A corrected version used information from The Associated Press for Sowards' numbers.