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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NM-SEN

Dem Sen. Bingaman Announces Retirement: 'This Seems Like The Right Time'

Eric Kleefeld | February 18, 2011, 3:57PM

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) has announced he will retire and not seek reelection in 2012, opening up another Democratic Senate seat in a swing state.

Bingaman was first elected to the Senate in 1982, defeating a Republican incumbent. On Election Day in 2012, he will be 69 years old.

"It's obviously not easy to make the decision to leave the Senate," Bingaman told a press conference in Albuquerque. "There's obviously important work to be done. There's important work that still remains to be done today, and there will be important work that remains to done at the end of this Congress. But that will undoubtedly be true at the end of every future Congress, as well. I think the simple truth is there is no ideal time to leave the Senate."

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Climate Change

Schumer: Dems To Aim Low On Climate And Energy

Brian Beutler | June 7, 2010, 10:11AM

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

In the latest blow to the prospects of climate and energy legislation, the third ranking Democrat in the Senate suggested today that Dems will start small, instead of bringing a comprehensive bill to the floor.

Appearing on MSNBC this morning, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) confirmed that Majority Leader Harry Reid will move an energy-only bill next month, based on a template authored by Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, and predicted that Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will have a chance to offer their much farther-reaching climate change legislation as an amendment to the base package.

"Kerry has a proposal that has pretty broad support," Schumer said. "He's going, in my opinion, going to get a chance to offer it in the form of an amendment."

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Health Care

#HealthCareFAIL: How The Dems Botched Their Signature Legislation

Brian Beutler | January 29, 2010, 3:37PM

Clockwise from top left: Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT); MA Sen. candidate Martha Coakley (D); Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA); Former Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and President Obama

Talk about fits and starts.

A year ago Democrats committed to passing comprehensive health care legislation; six months ago, it became clear that their project wouldn't go smoothly; one month ago it was full speed ahead; and a week and a half ago it all fell apart.

Health care reform is now on life support. To mix metaphors, it's on life support and the back burner at the same time. How the Democrats' signature agenda item went from a foregone conclusion to a prospect in peril is a tale of missteps and bad luck. No single player or event brought us to where we are today. But if any of the below episodes had gone...more smoothly, this might've been a done deal.

You know how the saying goes: Success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan. And you can be sure that if health care reform fails, the people below will make like John Edwards--quick-like.

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Barbara Boxer

Kerry, Boxer Unveil Climate Bill Draft...So What's Next?

Brian Beutler | September 30, 2009, 11:57AM

Senator John Kerry (D-MA), Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA)--chairs of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Environment and Public Works Committee respectively--have unveiled a draft of a climate change bill calling for significant reductions in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in both the near and short term. The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.

Though the draft will change considerably over the coming weeks, it is the basis for the upper chamber's coming legislative push, which, if successful, will, when combined with an already-completed House climate bill, become the most significant piece of energy legislation in the nation's history.

But between now and then, it will meet the many machetes of the Senate--an institution that hasn't been too kind to previous, failed climate change bills.

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Health Care

Bingaman Becomes First Member of 'Gang of Six' to Broach Go-It Alone Plan For Dems

Brian Beutler | August 25, 2009, 3:13PM

Sen. Jeff Binagaman (D-NM)--one of the six members of the Senate Finance Committee who have been hashing out a health care reform bill for months--says that if bipartisan negotiations go nowhere, he'd support an effort to circumvent a filibuster and pass legislation without any Republicans.

"If we are unable to do it any other way, that is an option. It is a very difficult option," Bingaman told a crowd of about 200 at a town hall event in Albuquerque yesterday. He was referring to the possibility that Democrats will pass health care reform through the so-called budget reconciliation process.

The acknowledgment signals that even those members of Congress most invested in passing bipartisan health care reform are well aware that those efforts might not bear fruit.

"I don't think that that effort [at bipartisanship] is what is stymying progress," Bingaman said.

"It may well not succeed, but it has been worth the effort, and we are continuing with it."

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