{"id":1872,"date":"2007-06-21T11:15:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-21T17:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2007\/06\/wealthy-developer-enters-race-against-domenici\/"},"modified":"2007-06-21T11:15:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-21T17:15:00","slug":"wealthy-developer-enters-race-against-domenici","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2007\/06\/wealthy-developer-enters-race-against-domenici\/","title":{"rendered":"Wealthy developer enters race against Domenici"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A political newcomer with a lot of money has decided to challenge U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici<\/a> next year. <\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Santa Fe developer and Democrat Don Wiviott<\/a> has been considering the race for a couple of months, but told Joe Monahan<\/a> on Wednesday that he\u2019s officially running and will start the campaign with $400,000 of his own money. He\u2019s willing to spend up to $1 million, if necessary, he told Monahan.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Wiviott joins two other Democrats who have entered the race against the state\u2019s GOP senator \u2013 Jim Hannan<\/a> of Santa Fe<\/st1:city><\/st1:place>, a former staffer to the late U.S. Rep. Mo Udall<\/a>, D-Ariz., and Leland Lehrman<\/a> of Lamy, an alternative media journalist and Web designer.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Neither has as much money as Wiviott, but both have been active \u2013 Lehrman through the online newsletter he publishes and Hannan through advertisements in newspapers in Santa Fe<\/st1:city> and Albuquerque<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> and his campaign Web site. Hannan plans to begin running newspaper advertisements in Las Cruces<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> next month.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

But Wiviott has the money and, as Monahan reported, is already putting together a campaign organization that will make him the frontrunner for the party\u2019s nomination.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Wiviott\u2019s announcement comes as Domenici\u2019s approval rating in the newest SurveyUSA poll<\/a> is 51 percent and the Washington Post<\/a> ranks his seat as the tenth most likely to change hands in 2008.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Wiviott isn\u2019t without weaknesses. In addition to being a political newcomer, at least one campaign contribution from his past raises questions he\u2019ll have to address. According to OpenSecrets.org<\/a>, he gave $2,100 in late 2005 to one of Sen. Jeff Bingaman\u2019s<\/a> 2006 GOP opponents, David Pfeffer. It was the first gift he\u2019d given to any federal candidate, according to the site, since 2002, and his other contributions all went to Democrats.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Pfeffer was a Democrat when he was on the Santa Fe City Council, but supported President Bush in 2004 and switched parties in 2005.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

A Democrat who financially supported an opponent of Bingaman, who ended up receiving 71 percent of the vote, is going to have to explain why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A political newcomer with a lot of money has decided to challenge U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici next year. Santa Fe developer and Democrat Don Wiviott has been considering the race for a couple of months, but told Joe Monahan on Wednesday that he\u2019s officially running and will start the campaign with $400,000 of his own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}