On Thursday, former CIA agent Valerie Plame announced that she would seek the Democratic nomination to succeed Rep. Ben Ray Luján, who is leaving New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District to run for the Senate. In March, Plame had initially expressed interest in the Senate race, but she soon turned her attention to this open and reliably blue northern New Mexico House seat.
Plame was at the center of a national firestorm for years during the presidency of George W. Bush after conservative columnist Robert Novak revealed in print that she was a covert agent. Plame argued that Bush administration officials leaked her name to Novak to punish her then-husband, diplomat Joe Wilson, for an op-ed that declared that “some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”
The whole affair eventually led to the 2007 conviction of Scooter Libby, a former chief of staff for then-Vice President Dick Cheney, for obstruction of justice and perjury in the investigation into who revealed Plame’s identity.
Plame has occasionally attracted attention since the end of the Bush administration. In 2010, a movie was released adapting Plame’s memoir that starred Naomi Watts. In 2017, Plame tweeted out a story titled “America's Jews are driving America's wars.” Plame later deleted her message and said she had “skimmed this piece, zeroed in on the neocon criticism, and shared it without seeing and considering the rest,” even though the headline wasn’t exactly subtle. Plame also was back in the news last year when Trump pardoned Libby.
There may be a crowded Democratic field for New Mexico’s 3rd District, a 52-37 Clinton seat that’s home to Santa Fe. Attorney Teresa Leger de Fernandez and state Rep. Joseph Sanchez are already in, while First Judicial District Attorney Marco Serna has formed an exploratory committee. A number of other local politicians have also expressed interest in this race.
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