Two of New Mexico\u2019s Democratic freshmen in the U.S. House are already drawing potential 2010 challenges.<\/p>\n
Iraq war veteran Adam Kokesh<\/a> has formed an exploratory committee as he considers running against Democrat Ben R. Luj\u00e1n<\/a> in the Third Congressional District next year. The Marine, who has become a leading voice in the anti-war movement since returning to the United States, has gained quite a following though Ron Paul\u2019s Campaign for Liberty<\/a>.<\/p>\n There\u2019s even a Draft Kokesh<\/a> movement on the Internet.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u201cWhen I got out of the Marine Corps, I joined the monumental fight to end the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, bring the troops home to defend America and restore a Constitutional foreign policy. Having won the public to our side, it is time we take the fight to the capitol,\u201d Kokesh said in a news release announcing his exploratory committee. \u201cOver the next couple of months, I look forward to meeting supporters all across the district as we make our decision on whether or not to run for Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n Kokesh hasn\u2019t yet decided whether, if he runs, he will run as an independent or as a member of a political party, but he has drawn some support from the right and left. In addition to his anti-war stance, his blog<\/a> indicates his support for some traditionally libertarian policies. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, in the First Congressional District, Alan Woodruff<\/a> has announced that he will run against Democrat Martin Heinrich<\/a> next year.<\/p>\n Woodruff is a lawyer, founder of a brokerage firm and author of three novels and other books, according to his campaign Web site. He identifies himself on his site as a \u201cpragmatic social liberal and a fiscal conservative,\u201d and writes that he wants \u201cresponsible government — no matter what its size.\u201d<\/p>\n He says he\u2019s running because he\u2019s fed up with \u201cpolitics as usual\u201d and believes government should be run like a business. Woodruff\u2019s Web site doesn\u2019t indicate whether he\u2019s running as a member of any political party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two of New Mexico\u2019s Democratic freshmen in the U.S. House are already drawing potential 2010 challenges. Iraq war veteran Adam Kokesh has formed an exploratory committee as he considers running against Democrat Ben R. Luj\u00e1n in the Third Congressional District next year. The Marine, who has become a leading voice in the anti-war movement since […]<\/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-4534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4534","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=4534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}