Former U.S. attorney announces run for seat
Democrat enters crowded field as 7th from party to enter race
Former U.S. Attorney Damon Martinez, an Albuquerque Democrat, is running for Congress, seeking to succeed U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Capitol Hill as she gives up the seat to run for governor.
Martinez on Monday joined a crowded primary race, which already includes six other Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans are targeting the district. The national party has listed the Albuquerque seat among several around the country it will try to flip from blue to red in 2018.
But Democrats are hoping to turn the race into a referendum on President Donald Trump, a theme Martinez seized on Monday.
President Barack Obama nominated Martinez in 2013 to serve as the top federal prosecutor in New Mexico. Martinez had served as an assistant U.S. attorney since 2001. But he resigned from the U.S. Department of Justice in March as Trump swept his predecessor’s appointees out of U.S. attorney offices around the country en masse.
“As a 10th generation New Mexican, I can’t sit back and just watch President Trump attack our New Mexico values,” Martinez said in announcing his campaign. “It was an honor to be selected by President Obama to serve as the U.S. attorney in my home state, and despite President Trump asking for my resignation, I am not done serving.”
Martinez, 51, said he has “unfinished business,” pointing to the state’s heroin and opioid epidemic as well as efforts to crack down on sexual assault and bolster security at national laboratories.
Prior to joining the federal government, Martinez worked as an assistant state attorney general and in the offices of thenCongressman Tom Udall as well as thenSen. Jeff Bingaman.
Martinez may be best known for leading the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Mexico as the Justice Department investigated a pattern of excessive use of force by the Albuquerque Police Department and reached a settlement agreement with the city government that called for reforms within the agency.
During his few years in charge of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Martinez landed at the center of plenty of other controversies, too. His office went after Rio Arriba County Sheriff Tommy Rodella on charges of violating the civil rights of a motorist during an out-of-uniform fit of road rage and prosecuted Gov. Susana Martinez’s campaign manager, Jamie Estrada, for intercepting her emails.
Raised in Albuquerque, Martinez graduated from St. Pius X High School and earned a bachelor’s degree, law degree and master
of business administration from The University of New Mexico.
Martinez serves in the U.S. Army Reserves as an adjunct professor at the Judge Advocate General’s Corps school. The father of three children, he lives in Albuquerque with his wife, Holly.
Democrats will choose a nominee for the district, which stretches from the Duke City across the Sandia Mountains, during a primary election in June 2018. Also running for the nomination are Albuquerque City Council member Pat Davis, law professor Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, lawyer Damian Lara, physicist Dennis Dinge, Edgewood town council member John Abrams and former New Mexico Democratic Party Chairwoman Debra Haaland, who would be the first Native American woman elected to Congress.
Meanwhile, state Rep. Janice Arnold Jones is the only Republican who has filed to run for the seat.
Though Democratic presidential candidates have consistently won in the district, Republicans have held the U.S. House seat as recently as 2008.