Steve Pearce: Taking the test (Pub candidate for NM Governor)

To Steve Pearce, the most important thing in life is how you respond to what he calls “no notice tests.”

He has faced a number of those exams in his 70 years, beginning with his hardscrabble roots on a small farm near Hobbs through his time as a decorated pilot in Vietnam to his exceptional success with a small oil field services company – which barely survived the oil crash of 1999.

But the company did survive, and the kid who, along with five siblings, worked in the fields and raised pigs to buy their own clothes is a millionaire many times over and one of the wealthiest members of Congress, where he is serving his seventh term.

Now, the Hobbs Republican wants to be New Mexico’s next governor and will face off against Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham of Albuquerque in November.

That’s a test, or at least uphill battle, for any Republican based on voter registration numbers, but Pearce says he is proud of his reputation for getting out among the people – meeting and listening to them. He has easily retained his seat in a congressional district where Republicans are a minority.

Steve Pearce logged 518 hours of combat flight and another 77 hours of combat support flying during his six years in the Air Force. (SOURCE: Steve Pearce)

“Democrats will vote for you, but they’ve got to know that you care and that you’ll show up,” he said. “My parents were registered Democrats, but I don’t think they ever went to a political meeting. They just wanted to raise their family, take us to church, go to the fairs and pay the bills on time.

This is a very short excerpt to a very lengthy and well written favorable article on Steve. Highlights are as follows:

As a child was one of six children in a poor family in Hobbs.
Grew their own food and raised hogs with Steve winning a championship medal at the state fair.
As a nine-year old child worked alongside Mexican braceros hoeing and picking cotton, saying it was one of his first experiences with people who didn’t speak English, "but you could tell the kindness of the human heart, and they would help us poor struggling white kids."
Without a student deferment while studying at New State University, he was about to be drafted. He signed up for advanced ROTC training as a pilot (the only slots available) and entered pilot training upon graduation.
In Vietnam he flew C-130 transport planes into combat areas to support ground troops with supplies and ammunition. He logged 518 hours of combat flight and another 77 hours of combat support flying. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and two Air Medals. He served six years and attained the rank of captain.
Following Vietnam he flew crop dusting planes in Arkansas for several years, but missed his hometown. Upon return he met and married his wife Cynthia in 1981; they have have a daughter and two grandchildren.
His wife worked for Southern Union gas in the financial field and they bought a struggling oil field services company "Lea Fishing Tools." In the following years it prospered and reached about 50 employees.
In 1999 the price of crude cratered and oil and gas activity just about stopped. Companies were shutting down and those that didn't laid off 60 to 70 percent of their employees and cut salaries of those remaining by 30 percent. Pearce kept all of his employees at full salary paying about $50,000 per month for employees they did not need.
Just as things were bleakest and they were considering bankruptcy, oil jumped back. Soon they had more business than they could handle because they had employees trained and immediately available to support the revived industry.
Pearce ran for Congress in 2001 and replaced Republican Joe Skeen. He resigned and ran for US Senator in 2008 but lost in the strong Obama win and his Congressional seat was won by a Democrat. In 2008 he ran again for Congress and has won the vote of Republicans, Democrats and independents each two-years. Now he is giving up his seat to run for NM Governor this November.

His positions are conservative but his childhood experience in the cotton field tempers his stance on immigration. Pearce says he was one of the first Republicans to criticize the separation of children from parents at the border.

He has consistently opposed amnesty for people illegally in the U.S., but has long advocated a system that would allow many to work here and return home, freely crossing the border in both directions. “The wall isn’t the magic answer. … You’re going to spend billions of dollars and find that it didn’t really secure the border.”

Pearce said Republicans “have been afraid to solve the immigration problem, and Democrats didn’t want to solve it – even when they had 60 votes in the Senate.” He voted for both unsuccessful Republican immigration bills earlier this summer, including the one that offered amnesty (or a path to citizenship) for some DACA kids.

On education, he believes that not everyone needs to go to college. In today's economy vocational training can provide good paying jobs and his most recent TV ad pushes home that viewpoint.

Again, a very lengthy article that says a lot about the man, his background and how he would govern if elected. I encourage all New Mexicans to read it.

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Do you think this guy has a chance?

I sincerely don't know. He has been winning elections in heavily Democratic/Hispanic southern New Mexico for years. But he's running against a very personable female Hispanic Congressional representative with roots in the state going back a hundred years ago.

IMO his only chance of winning is by going to the heavily Hispanic and relatively poor community and in northern New Mexico and talking directly to them, especially with his heritage of having to work in the cotton fields as a child; they understand that. Also there are a lot of independents he can appeal to. He can forget about the area around Santa Fe which is bastion of left-wing "progressive" voters not unlike San Francisco.

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