Valerie Plame
From the Valerie Plame For CD3 Campaign:
SANTA FE – Valerie Plame announces the strongest fundraising haul in the Democratic primary race for the New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District, according to FEC filings.
Plame reports having raised $236,373.44 and received 3,889 individual donations. Her campaign reports that her average donation was just $60.78. Candidate filings were due today for the 2nd quarter, which covered April 1 to June 30.
Plame raised the most money for the quarter despite having announced her campaign roughly halfway through the quarter, on May 9.
“I’m a first-time candidate and not a political insider. I don’t have connections to lobbyists or a donor base I can go back to,” Plame said. “I’m proud that we raised as much as we did and that we had almost 4,000 grassroots donations.”
Other candidates also posted their numbers today. Following behind Plame, Santa Fe District Attorney Marco Serna reported raising $232,940.50, including a $2,800 contribution from PNM’s PAC, Public Service Company Of New Mexico Responsible Citizens Group. PNM is a New Mexico based utility. Lobbyist and attorney Teresa Leger Fernandez reported raising $193,121.87. Other candidates’ fundraising reports can be searched for here. Filings for all candidates in the NM CD3 race can be seen here once processed by the FEC.
Plame’s campaign was the first in the race to pledge not to take Corporate PAC money. Plame is the only frontrunner to agree to this pledge at this time, and others have even expressed plans to avoid making such a pledge (24:45).
“We’re not taking any Corporate PAC money. More and more people are doing that these days and that’s a good thing. It shows we’re progressing in the right direction by getting corporate money out of politics,” Plame said.
After living and working around the world for the CIA, Plame and her family chose to make Santa Fe their home in 2007. While at the CIA, Valerie helped prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, specifically nuclear weapons. She is now running an inclusive campaign to represent NM’s 3rd Congressional District with a platform of Progressive Democratic values.
NM-03 is being vacated by Ben Ray Luján who is running for the United States Senate. The district stretches across Northern New Mexico and includes Los Alamos, Española, Santa Fe, the New Mexico portion of the Navajo Nation, Jicarilla Apache Nation, 15 Pueblo tribes and the southern area of the Rocky Mountains.
