{"id":39643,"date":"2012-05-08T08:08:53","date_gmt":"2012-05-08T14:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=39643"},"modified":"2012-05-17T07:51:03","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T13:51:03","slug":"in-hunting-heinrichs-views-find-cohesion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2012\/05\/in-hunting-heinrichs-views-find-cohesion\/","title":{"rendered":"In hunting, Heinrich\u2019s views find cohesion"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Martin

Martin Heinrich (Courtesy photo)<\/p><\/div>\n

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Martin Heinrich makes time \u2013 as recently as this weekend \u2013 to hunt to provide healthy meat for his family. It\u2019s in that action that many of his views find cohesion.<\/h4>\n

This is the first of four profiles<\/a> of the U.S. Senate candidates that seek to tell the stories of who they are and what shaped them.<\/em><\/p>\n

Even while he\u2019s served in the U.S. House, Martin Heinrich<\/a> says he has made time to hunt so his family has meat to eat throughout the year.<\/p>\n

His wife Julie buys some fish and chicken at the grocery store, but Heinrich estimates that 90 percent of the meat his family eats comes from elk, deer and javelina that he kills.<\/p>\n

\u201cI end up spending a lot of time in the rural parts of the state, even since I\u2019ve been a member of Congress,\u201d Heinrich said. \u201cIt\u2019s something I really enjoy, but it\u2019s also to make sure we have a full freezer through the winter.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s in that action \u2013 hunting to provide for his family \u2013 that many of Heinrich\u2019s views find cohesion.<\/p>\n

The Democratic U.S. Senate candidate is a conservationist<\/a> who usually wins the endorsements of environmental groups. He has a long history of pushing so-called \u201csmart growth\u201d in an effort to improve the quality of life in communities and protect the environment. He\u2019s also a 2nd Amendment supporter who, in 2009, joined 64 other House Democrats<\/a> in telling the Obama Administration they wouldn\u2019t support the reinstatement of a ban on assault weapons.<\/p>\n

If you want to get a better sense of who Heinrich is, you have to look to his childhood and the example his parents set.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents were very conservation-minded ranchers. They took care of my ranch. They were pro-wildlife,\u201d Heinrich told NMPolitics.net. \u201cAnd growing up hunting and fishing, being a sportsman and being pro-conservation \u2013 all of that seems congruous to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018The small family-farm approach\u2019<\/h3>\n

Heinrich attributes much about who he is today to his parents\u2019 work ethic. His father was a German immigrant who worked as a lineman for a power company and was a union member. His mother\u2019s first full-time job that he recalls was sewing jeans in a factory. She later worked in a wheel factory. Neither graduated from college.<\/p>\n

After work and on weekends his parents ran the family ranch in Missouri, where Heinrich spent most of his childhood.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe never had a lot, but we never were for want,\u201d Heinrich said.<\/p>\n

He described a \u201chuge\u201d garden that provided vegetables his family canned to eat through the winter. They also lived off a calf or two through the cold season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to suggest it was a hardship,\u201d Heinrich said. \u201cIt was just, in many ways, a great way to earn respect for the hard work ethic that many in this country have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heinrich and his wife try to live that way today and instill the same values in their two boys, who are nine and six. The video<\/a> Heinrich\u2019s campaign unveiled last year when he announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Jeff Bingaman shows one son feeding chickens in a coop in their backyard. Eggs from those chickens are part of the family\u2019s diet.<\/p>\n

\u201cEating eggs from the backyard, eating really lean, fresh game meat,\u201d and buying local vegetables, primarily at the farmer\u2019s market, are priorities for Heinrich and his wife.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always loved food, but my wife and I are big believers in trying to establish healthy habits in our kids,\u201d Heinrich said. \u201cThe kind of food that they\u2019re exposed to on a regular basis, I think it gives them a lot of cushion from the kind of corn-syrup based sodas and candies and other things that, before long, we won\u2019t be able to control their exposure to.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also about sustainability and the local economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes our local community stronger to have that sort of foodshed approach,\u201d Heinrich said. \u201cIt reminds me of the small family-farm approach that was sort of the norm when I was a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thinking about \u2018the quality of neighborhoods we want\u2019<\/h3>\n

Sustainable growth has been a big focus for Heinrich since he was an Albuquerque city councilor from 2003-2007.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"\u201c...growing<\/a><\/dt>\n

\u201c…growing up hunting and fishing, being a sportsman and being pro-conservation \u2013 all of that seems congruous to me.\u201d – Martin Heinrich<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI cut my teeth in politics at a time when Albuquerque was really grappling with those issues \u2013 not dissimilar from what Las Cruces has gone through more recently,\u201d Heinrich said. In the last several years Las Cruces\u2019 city government has shifted away from embracing any development project that comes along to instead attempting to grow in a more intentional and thought-out manner.<\/p>\n

Heinrich was part of that shift in Albuquerque. He described it as \u201can effort to want more jobs in our state and really build our economy, really start thinking about\u2026 the quality of neighborhoods we want, rather than just saying all growth is good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s been, I think, a very positive evolution in New Mexico,\u201d Heinrich said. \u201cFifteen years ago people viewed economic development as chasing low-wage call centers, and now we\u2019re talking about how you take ideas and technology from inside our universities and labs and transition that into jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a more mature economic approach,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Energy, Medicare and Social Security<\/h3>\n

Heinrich has a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He said that, along with his upbringing, contributed to his philosophy on growth. It also contributed to the decision to move to New Mexico.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Julie and I decided where we were going to settle after college, a lot of it had to do with the potential that New Mexico had,\u201d Heinrich said, mentioning Intel, the national laboratories and White Sands Missile Range \u2013 \u201call of these assets that I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve really taken full advantage of yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heinrich believes New Mexico can use those assets to improve \u201cthe way we manage energy in this country.\u201d As a college student he was part of a team that built a carbon fiber solar car and raced it from Dallas to Minneapolis. The car used LED lights that are common today, and regenerative breaking that puts energy back into the battery, which is one reason the Toyota Prius gets such good mileage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI continue to think that if a group of college students could do that in 1992, 1993, then we can do a much better job today,\u201d Heinrich said.<\/p>\n

Protecting Medicare and Social Security<\/a> is another focus for Heinrich. He said that passion, like his views on many other policy issues, was shaped by family and personal experiences. His father had a stroke earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents are both retired. They don\u2019t have an enormous amount of savings, and those things are what provide them the independence to have a meaningful life after years and years of working incredibly hard,\u201d Heinrich said.<\/p>\n

Still working to fill the freezer with meat<\/h3>\n

Heinrich\u2019s parents still live in Missouri, but this son has made his home in Albuquerque since 1995. Julie Heinrich was reading Bless Me, Ultima, a novel written by New Mexican Rudolfo Anaya, as the two were finishing college. She asked Heinrich what he thought of New Mexico, and he recalled vacationing here as a child \u2013 visiting Carlsbad Caverns, passing the lava formations near Grants.<\/p>\n

The two decided to give the Land of Enchantment a try, though neither had a job lined up. Several weeks later, they were living in New Mexico and listening to Anaya doing a reading, Heinrich said.<\/p>\n

Heinrich has come home most weekends since he was first elected to the U.S. House in 2008. He\u2019s spent many of those weekends with his family in Albuquerque or holding congressional events, but some were spent hunting.<\/p>\n

And even as he campaigns for U.S. Senate, Heinrich is working to fill the freezer with meat. This weekend, after events in Albuquerque and Roswell on Saturday, he got up at 2 a.m. Sunday so he could be turkey hunting near Santa Fe by 5:30 a.m.<\/p>\n

He came home empty handed. But there will be another time.<\/p>\n

Heinrich plans to instill the same values in his sons. He\u2019s taken his oldest son hunting for duck and turkey, but not yet for big game.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not far off,\u201d Heinrich said.<\/p>\n

A prior version of this posting incorrectly said Heinrich went hunting near Roswell this weekend.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Martin Heinrich makes time \u2013 as recently as this weekend \u2013 to hunt to provide healthy meat for his family. It\u2019s in that action that many of his views find cohesion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[156,289,119,147,138,117,290,227,116],"class_list":["post-39643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-2012-election","tag-2nd-amendment","tag-energy-policy","tag-environment","tag-growth-and-development","tag-health-care","tag-u-s-senate-profiles","tag-u-s-senate-race","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39643","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=39643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}