Friend – I’ve had quite a year. 

In January, I suffered a stroke. And while that was incredibly difficult, I kept fighting during my recovery so that I could continue serving the people of New Mexico. 

I’m so lucky to have the support of people like you to keep me going, and despite this setback, I was still able to accomplish so much this year. 

Please read this article below highlighting my accomplishments this year, and please chip in to my campaign after so I can keep fighting for you: 

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Thank you, 
Ben Ray Luján

U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján’s year of change

Albuquerque Journal
December 17, 2022

He stood up to top Democrats in order to funnel money to New Mexico and recovered from a stroke.

2022 was quite the year for Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M.

After serving 12 years in the U.S. House, rising to the rank of assistant House Democratic leader, Luján said he’s finding his stride as a first-term senator, whose term started in 2021. The bills he was able to push through Congress will have an impact on the lives of New Mexicans, he said.

But Luján could have died this year.

On Jan. 27, he woke up dizzy at his home in Nambé.

At first, Luján paced around his home, drank some water and lay back down. Thankfully, he woke up again 15 minutes later.

“And the room went from spinning like a merry-go-round to spinning on its side,” he said in an interview last week.

Luján called his chief of staff and primary care physician, who advised him to go to the hospital. The senator’s family lives near him. His sister, Jackie, drove him to a fire station, and he was then taken by ambulance to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe before he was transferred to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque.

He had suffered a stroke in his cerebellum and underwent surgery to relieve the swelling.

A little more than two weeks later, Luján posted a video to social media of him and his doctors. He said he would soon be returning to the narrowly divided Senate. He received a bipartisan standing ovation when he returned to the chamber five weeks after his stroke.

How did the event change him?

“I’m much more careful now, just in general. And I think some of that may be the stroke and the other part is because I turned 50 this year, man,” he said. “Some of my mountain bike routines were probably a little more aggressive than they should have been. So I’m just trying to be smarter about stuff.”

When he returned to Washington, D.C., Luján said he continued to recover by regularly walking about 15 minutes to work from his apartment. He also credited his close friends, who include Sens. Corey Booker, Alex Padilla and Brian Schatz, and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

“I never lost cognitive ability,” he said. “I never lost my ability to speak.”

The stroke didn’t define Luján’s year.

The son of longtime state lawmaker Ben Lujan, New Mexico’s junior senator said his leadership experience in the House allowed him to get a running start in the Senate.

“It was important for me this cycle, with the success I have legislatively, to lean on my colleagues here in the Senate, but also my colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives, who helped me move legislation,” he said.

He developed a reputation as a behind-the-scenes mover and shaker.

“I’m often surprised with a number of my colleagues here in the Senate that will call me up to ask for ideas or advice or even invite me into the room for strategy because of the work I did in the House,” he said.

Some of his legislative highlights of 2022 include the Hermit’s Peak Fire Assistance Act. The bill was included in a continuing resolution passed in September and it devotes $2.5 billion to New Mexico to help the state recover from the largest wildfire in state history, which started when two Forest Service prescribed burns got out of control and merged.

The bill was included in a larger spending bill that received bipartisan support. But Luján said he at one point threatened top Democrats that he would obstruct the party’s other priorities if it wasn’t signed into law.

“That probably was the example within the last year of using all relationships and being willing to use every motion and privilege on the floor that I knew about to tell not only the Democratic leadership in the Senate, but also the White House, that I will go and do everything I can. I will obstruct. I will slow things down,” he said. “This has to (pass) because the federal government started this.”

He also secured additional funding for New Mexico’s national labs, which was included in the CHIPS and Science Act signed into law this year.

Looking forward, Luján said he remains optimistic for Democrats moving into the 118th Congress, which begins next year. The party will lose control of the House.

“I’m optimistic,” Luján said. “I believe we’ll accomplish a great deal throughout the Senate, and we’ll find ways to compromise and work with the House.”

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People for Ben
PO Box 25371
Albuquerque, NM 87125
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