Calling herself the candidate with real-life experience in the issues, Bernalillo County Commissioner Michelle Lujan Grisham told an Albuquerque crowd Tuesday that she is running for Congress.
“As a widow and a caregiver and a single mother, I’m living the experience that New Mexicans are,” Lujan Grisham told the Journal after the announcement.
The lawyer, first-term commissioner and former secretary of the state Health and Human Services Department, is the third Democrat to declare she would seek her party’s nomination for the Albuquerque-based 1st Congressional District.
Former Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chávez and Sen. Eric Griego, D-Albuquerque, also are seeking the nomination.
Albuquerque City Councilor Dan Lewis and former Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones, R-Albuquerque, have both announced they will seek the Republican nomination for the seat.
Incumbent Rep. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., is giving up the seat to run for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.
Bryan Watkins, executive director of the Republican Party of New Mexico, said Lujan Grisham is just more of the same from the Democratic Party.
“Voters deserve better than a member of the Richardson administration who has a rocky track record and who will continue business as usual in Washington instead of working to create jobs and better serve constituents,” Watkins said.
Lujan Grisham said in a speech at a supporter’s home that she would fight the stance of congressional Republicans that favors spending cuts and refuses to consider tax increases for corporations and high-earning Americans.
“A band of right-wing radicals in Congress has hijacked our country and put the interests of their corporate masters ahead of the middle class, seniors and the most vulnerable among us,” Lujan Grisham said.
Lujan Grisham spent much of her career as a bureaucrat, leading the state’s Agency on Aging until it became a Cabinet position and she was appointed secretary in 2002. In 2004, she was named health and human services secretary. She said it gives her a special insight into the health care industry and the need to be careful with cuts to entitlement programs.
In those roles, and since she took her first elected office as a commissioner in January, Lujan Grisham said she has put an emphasis on transparency and accountability in government.
“I was working on accountability and transparency … not just when it was popular, today, but my entire career,” she said. “I know that I can clean up Washington.”
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