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"You know, Governor Palin has more executive experience than Senator Obama, Senator Biden, and Senator Schumer combined because those guys have never run anything." -- Rep. Heather Wilson U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) MSNBC August 29, 2008 MSNBC's Peter Alexander: "There were several women spoken about as possible vice presidential candidates, Kay Bailey Hutchinson from Texas, Meg Whitman from eBay, Carly Fiorina, why Governor Palin?" Rep. Heather Wilson: "She's a chief executive of a state. She's a governor, former mayor of a city in Alaska. She's been a businesswoman. She helped her husband run the family fishing business. She's a...

The screencap captures it nicely: Heather Wilson, smiling. Robert Wexler, mouth agape. On this afternoon's Hardball, the feisty, brilliant [bio: high honors Air Force Academy grad, Rhodes Scholar] GOP representative from New Mexico took on the duo of the combative congressman from Florida and host Chris Matthews, and walked away a winner. The subject was Obama's Berlin speech, and by extension his presidential qualifications. You'll find excerpts below, but they don't do begin to do justice to Wilson's brio and the coolness under verbal fire she displayed. That's why I'd strongly encourage readers to view the video. Wilson kicked off...

A surrogate for John McCain made a leftward feint on a campaign conference call today, suggesting that the presumptive Republican nominee might pull troops out of Iraq sooner than Barack Obama. "He’d like troops to come home earlier than 16 months if the conditions allow it," Rep. Heather Wilson, (R-New Mexico), said of McCain.

Steve Pearce won the Republican nomination in the race for U.S. Senate over rival Heather Wilson and will now turn to the challenge of keeping Sen. Pete Domenici's seat in Republican hands. The southern New Mexico representative won Tuesday's primary with roughly 51 percent of the vote, compared to Wilson's 49 percent with 99 percent of precincts reporting statewide, according to unofficial results. Pearce, who ran as a right-wing conservative, will face Democrat Tom Udall, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, on Nov. 4. Wilson endorsed Pearce this morning, saying that Republicans have "no time for disappointment or for...

A photo finish appears to be in the works as a Survey USA poll shows Heather Wilson closing in on Steve Pearce in the last weekend of the primary campaign. Pearce is still clinging to a slim lead, but it's well within the poll's margin of error. The poll, conducted Friday through Sunday, shows Pearce ahead by one percentage point, 48 to 47. Wilson closed in on the three point lead Pearce had in the poll two weeks ago. The poll may reflect Pete Domenici's eleventh hour endorsement of Wilson as his choice to replace him in the U.S. Senate....

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in New Mexico shows that Democratic Congressman Tom Udall continues to enjoy wide leads over potential Republican opponents in the race for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat. Udall now leads Republicans Steve Pearce 53% to 37% and Heather Wilson 57% to 36%. Against both opponents, those figures reflect a very slight improvement compared to a month ago. In February, Udall was ahead by more modest margins.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in New Mexico shows that Democratic Congressman Tom Udall has widened his lead over potential Republican opponents in the race for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat. Udall now leads Republicans Steve Pearce 54% to 40% and Heather Wilson 56% to 36%.

Rep. Steve Pearce beat Rep. Heather Wilson to gain the top spot on the ballot for the U.S. Senate race in the June 3 primary at the state Republican preprimary convention Saturday. Pearce won with more than 54 percent of the vote, while Wilson had more than 45 percent of the vote from convention delegates, who are GOP party activists from around New Mexico.

A new SurveyUSA poll in New Mexico finds Congressman Tom Udall (D), who just declared his candidacy for the seat of retiring GOP Senator Pete Domenici, to be the clear frontrunner. For the Democratic nomination, Udall leads Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chávez by a 62%-32% margin, and also does better than Chávez in the general election match-ups. Udall leads the two Republicans, Representatives Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce, by margins of about 15% in both cases. If Chávez is the Democratic nominee, he trails Pearce by ten points and Wilson by one point. On the Republican side, Wilson is the frontrunner...

Heath Haussamen reports today that Rep. Tom Udall has decided to jump in the New Mexico Senate race and has started to call Democratic officials in the state to inform them of his decision. If confirmed, this would be a major coup for both the DSCC that relentlessly pressured Udall to run even after he ruled it out at the beginning of October, and for the netroots that organized a very successful Draft Udall movement. Previous reports had already indicated that Udall was moving to hire staff and putting the pieces of a run together -- so this latest report...

Heather Wilson, 48% Martin Chavez, 44% Undecided, 8%

Sen. Pete Domenici's announcement of his retirement at the end of his current term already is causing ripples throughout New Mexico politics. With an open Senate seat in New Mexico for the first time since 1972 -- and at least one Republican House of Representatives member considering a Senate run -- a rush of politicians began weighing possible opportunities. Rep. Tom Udall of Santa Fe, a Democrat who represents Northern New Mexico, hasn't made a public announcement concerning his plans. If Udall, who was recently assigned to the House Appropriations Committee, did decide to run for the Senate, at least...

Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M) will run for the New Mexico Senate seat that is expected to open up officially later Thursday when Sen. Pete Domenici (R) declares that he will not seek reelection in 2008, according to a source familiar with Wilson’s decision. Domenici has taken Wilson under his wing in recent years, and as he has gotten older, Wilson’s name has topped the list of potential heirs. A strong campaigner, she has survived several multimillion-dollar challenges in a swing district ...

Aug. 6, 2007 issue - Six years after 9/11 , U.S. intel officials are complaining about the emergence of a major "gap" in their ability to secretly eavesdrop on suspected terrorist plotters. In a series of increasingly anxious pleas to Congress, intel "czar" Mike McConnell has argued that the nation's spook community is "missing a significant portion of what we should be getting" from electronic eavesdropping on possible terror plots. Rep. Heather Wilson, a GOP member of the House intelligence community, told NEWSWEEK she has learned of "specific cases where U.S. lives have been put at risk" as a result....

4 in N.M. charged with corruption ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A former state senator and three other people were charged with corruption Thursday in a highly politicized case that a former federal prosecutor told Congress he believes led to his firing.A federal grand jury accused former New Mexico Senate President Pro Tem Manny Aragon and the others of conspiring to skim $4.2 million in public funds meant for construction of a county courthouse.David Iglesias, one of eight U.S. attorneys fired late last year, told Congress this month that he rejected what he believed to be pressure from U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici...

New Mexico Democrats, frustrated by their inability to defeat Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.), now are openly talking about redrawing the state’s Congressional district boundaries prior to the 2008 elections.

Heather Wilson on the Iraq Study group report as quoted in the Albuquerque Tribune: "Their recommendations range from the blindingly obvious, to the naive and simplistic, to the interesting but underdeveloped. I was expecting a steak dinner, and we got hors d'oeuvres."

Republican Rep. Heather Wilson retained her seat Friday, narrowly winning a fifth term in Congress by defeating Democrat Patricia Madrid and overcoming election-season sentiment that battered GOP incumbents nationwide. Wilson won New Mexico's 1st Congressional District after Bernalillo County Clerk Mary Herrera released the county's final unofficial count Friday night. The final unofficial tally was 105,916 votes for Wilson, and 105,037 for Madrid. That gave Wilson a winning margin of 879 votes — with roughly 211,000 ballots cast in the race. ''The people of New Mexico have asked me to continue to represent them in the Congress,'' Wilson said Friday...

New Mexico's switch to paper ballots stumbled to a rocky start Tuesday as Bernalillo County's elections administrator acknowledged there may have been a violation of federal law. Only two hours after polls opened Tuesday, two precincts ran out of paper ballots and some voters were turned away. "We would assume there is an infraction that occurred," said Jaime Diaz, Bernalillo County's election administrator. "There were no ballots to be issued." The state Republican Party ...backed off threatened legal action over the ballot shortages. Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M. ... called for federal observers to monitor the election. The GOP late Tuesday...

GOP confident of Wilson victory; county extends deadline to 9 p.m. With incumbent Rep. Heather Wilson holding on to a roughly 900-vote lead, and GOP observers claiming there are about 500 ballots left to count, according to this morning's Albuquerque Journal story, you'd think it would be over. The official unofficial number of votes left to be counted as of this morning is 1,985, but GOP tallies say the actual count is no more than 500, and county elections administrator Jaime Diaz told the Journal that an estimated 200 of those had been disqualified. But it's never over till it's...