Heather Wilson

Wilson's Role In U.S. Attorneys Scandal Could Haunt Her Senate Bid

Susan Crabtree | March 7, 2011, 4:25PM

Former Congresswoman Heather Wilson (R-NM)

Now that former Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) is throwing her hat into the ring for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), expect a nasty, bitter race and plenty of ghosts turning up from Wilson's decade-long Washington career.

Wilson, a former Air Force officer and director at the National Security Council, was a rising GOP star and a standout on defense and intelligence matters post-9/11. But her Washington career ended in 2008 when she lost a GOP Senate primary to Rep. Steve Pearce, who then lost the general election to Democrat Tom Udall.

In the lead up to that primary, Wilson suffered a series of public relations blows for her role in the U.S. attorneys' scandal, improperly politicized firings of U.S. prosecutors by the Bush administration, which Democrats spent months investigating in 2007 and 2008. A lot of information about Wilson's role wasn't ever really scrutinized to the extent it could have been because she lost her first Senate bid.

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