We were told by a close friend of Lujan's to look for his coffers to get to $1 million during the quarter because his new leadership position in the US House would attract national cash for him to disburse to fellow Dems. We took the bait and blogged it, but now that Lujan has not reached that mark, deserved or not, he gets an Alligator strike:

You had heard BRL will "blow the doors off" and have "at least seven figures." Well he came up very, very short on that. Pretty disappointing considering the fanfare. And when you dig into the money, it doesn't really get better for him. It's overwhelmingly corporate money: pharma companies, Walmart, fossil fuels and coal...to name a few. Not a good showing for all the bluster and what he did raise is a tough pill to swallow with the Dem primary base.

Point taken but no one is sneezing at the $650,000 the northern Dem congressman has banked. And he remains far and away the heavy favorite to take the June 2020 Dem nomination. Still. . .

BRL VS. MTO?

While Ben Ray won't be seen at any payday loan stores, the fund-raising report could give a bit of encouragement to Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver who is thinking about challenging Lujan for the nomination.

MTO's fund-raising would start at ground zero. The little she has in her state campaign account could not be directly shifted to a Senate race. Her hope is that national women's groups will rally to her side and kick in the cash needed to make a respectable run. But if she can't line that up it won't matter much if Ben Ray is at 650K or $1 million.

It's reported that MTO has been in contact with Emily's List as she mulls over her Senate decision. But that powerful group is aligned with US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who is an ardent backer of Ben Ray and who could be expected to run interference for him, but you don't know until you know.

Meanwhile, the BRL camp would be wise to line up a formal Pelosi endorsement before MTO has a chance to jump in. (He rolled out his first endorsement this week--from the NM Professional Firefighters Association).

A contested Dem Senate primary would cost in the area of $3 million or more, say the consultants. As Assistant Speaker with national connections BRL has the ability to get there. MTO probably does not.

The SOS has little to lose if she does make a run at the Dem nod and comes up empty--except perhaps her pride. She is not up for re-election until 2022 and if she gets in and something out of the blue happens that changes the narrative for a BRL win, she is there to take advantage. She is already indicating those are enough reasons to get her on the campaign trail. But none of them have dollar signs besides them and therein lies the rub.

R'S JOIN IN

The Republicans have their first official US Senate candidate on the campaign trail, but you're not hearing yelps of delight from them. That's because Gavin Clarkson, a Las Cruces business law professor who served in the BLM in the Trump administration, is not seen as a first-tier contender. He was the GOP nominee against SOS Toulouse Oliver in '18 and was easily defeated. He says he will hammer hard at the the immigration crisis on the border. That will help him with the GOP base, but this candidacy has narrow casting written all over it.

Insiders are starting to conclude that the GOP is not prepared to field a top tier candidate in the Senate race and won't. And that makes the Dem nomination all the more valuable.

STAYING SOUTH

Let's keep in the south and with Rep. Xochtil Torres Small. She reports raising $452,000 in the first quarter and had $519,000 in cash. It was a solid quarter and she needs each of them to be equally good or better. The R's will work hard to take this seat back and they will use immigration as their lever. Here's an interview Torres Small did with the WaPo that shows just how tricky this issue is for a southern Dem:

Torres Small wants more people to come into the country legally, and she supports issuing more work visas and simplifying the asylum process. But she also wants to secure the border. The best way to do that, she says, is not by building a continuous wall, but by hiring more Border Patrol agents and making sure they have all the resources they need. . . 

When talking to Torres Small about border security, there is one particular phrase that comes up a lot: “We need a clear and moral immigration system.” In a 30-minute conversation, she says it three times. The tag line, taken straight from a campaign ad, is hard to argue with. It’s also extremely vague, somehow appealing to many on both sides of an issue where the sides agree on almost nothing. There aren’t many of those types of phrases. So Torres Small says it again, and again and again.

As we blogged yesterday, GOP southern hopeful Yvette Herrell had $285,000 at the end of the quarter. Las Cruces businessman Chris Mathys, the other GOP hopeful, did no fund-raising but loaned himself $76,000.