Nice profile on Wenona Benally Baldenegro in the Huffington Post

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

We all receive the fundraising e-mails from former Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (another one today) telling us how she is kicking Tea-Publican Rep. Paul Gosar's ass in fundraising to date. See, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar stunned by rival's fundraising (Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., reported total contributions of $221,289 for the three-month period while Gosar, R-Ariz., took in total contributions of $166,544.) I suppose that's a good thing.

But there is another Democrat running in the CD-1 congressional primary whom I find a more interesting and compelling candidate. Candidate Announcement Update: Wenona Benally Baldenegro to run in CD 1.

Jeff Biggers at the Huffington Post has a nice profile on Wenona Benally Baldenegro. Arizona's New Democrats: Wenona's Historic Bid Inspires Bipartisan Campaign Against Radical Tea Party Rep. Gosar:

In one of the largest Congressional districts in the nation, stretching across the rural heartland of eastern Arizona from the Four Corners region to the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, the historic candidacy of Wenona Benally Baldenegro for the Democratic nomination for Congress is marking a new era in Western politics.

For Arizonans exhausted by the extremist Tea Party machinations of freshman Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who many view more dedicated to the Tea Party's beltway defiance of the Obama administration than the creation of jobs or protecting health care and investments in education, the hands-on rural American experience and Main Street platform ideas of public interest attorney Benally Baldenegro have galvanized a bipartisan campaign across the district's diverse constituency.

"We're extremely disappointed in Rep. Gosar," said Vera Skorupski, a long-time registered Republican from Sedona, Arizona and a campaign supporter of Benally Baldenegro. Citing Gosar's lack of support for Medicare and health care reform, Skorupski praised Benally Baldenegro for not ignoring the "compassionate conservative" tradition abandoned by "radical" Tea Party activists like Gosar and bringing together Democrats, Republicans and Independents.

Raised in the mining town of Kayenta on the Navajo Nation, the Harvard-educated attorney Benally Baldenegro will also become the first female American Indian member of Congress, if elected.

* * *

Benally Baldenegro will first have to face one-term former Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick in the Democratic Party primary. However, despite Kirkpatrick's dogged fundraising efforts this summer, few observers believe she can revive her listless and disastrous 2010 campaign, which turned away record numbers of Democrats and Independent voters with her support for the Bush era tax cuts and a poor environmental protection record.

The key to success for either Democratic candidate in Arizona, according to many party leaders, such as Ken Smith, the former Senior Vice Chair of the Arizona Democratic Party, is for the "DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington, DC) to quit trying to dictate to us who our candidate should be."

* * *

The bottom line: The Tea Party-beholden Gosar is out of touch with his own district.

"I am working to build a campaign that will bring people from all walks of life together to support a candidate who will stand up for the working people and middle-class families of America," Benally Baldenegro told a recent gathering in Flagstaff. "I will build a campaign that does not rely on PAC contributions from corporations, federal lobbyists, or special interest groups that seek to usurp the people's voice. My campaign will be built on donations from grassroots and individual donors who share and support the values that I will stand up for as Representative for Arizona's First Congressional District."

Read the entire post. Arizona's New Democrats: Wenona's Historic Bid Inspires Bipartisan Campaign Against Radical Tea Party Rep. Gosar.