What if we invested in New Mexico?

Recently my sons asked, “Daddy, when you’re governor can you stop our friends from leaving?” They’ve watched too many friends from our neighborhood and school leave with their families in search of better opportunities. It hurts to think that even at a young age they are fully aware that something is wrong. My sons, Asher and Gage, are my motivation and my daily reminder of the importance of the work ahead for our state.

Yes, we are struggling. But we don’t need more studies or statistics. What we need is leadership. That’s why I am running for governor. To turn New Mexico around.

For too long, we have had a governor content to make decisions for the next political cycle, not the next generation. It’s time that we have leaders with imagination, creativity and the will to make serious, game-changing investments into our state.

So I ask, what if we did things a better way? Here’s an example:

New Mexico is the second sunniest state, yet 48th when it comes to renewable energy production. That’s crazy. If we invest into a strength, our beautiful sunshine, we have the capability to generate enough clean energy to power other states while fueling job creation at home. We will turn New Mexico around by investing in ourselves.

Did you know New Mexico has state investment funds the size of Canada, Australia, Brazil and Mexico — COMBINED! So let’s put our $21.6 billion to work for us. Instead of arguing over pennies in Santa Fe, what if we invested 5 percent of these funds back into New Mexico? That still leaves us with $20.5 billion in New Mexico’s investment funds — and that doesn’t even account for future performance of the funds.

Let’s put New Mexicans to work repairing schools, bridges, arroyos and acequias. Let’s invest in new startups that are leaving to grow elsewhere and into new technologies.

Where we don’t invest, others do. That’s why we’re losing homegrown companies in expanding fields like cybersecurity, robotics, and 3D imaging. We must invest into 95 percent of our economy — local small businesses — to help New Mexico grow.

We’re short hundreds of doctors and nurses. Let’s invest in higher education, in teaching, in medical, nursing and dental schools and then follow that up with a promise to our young people:

If you’re willing to fill a need in our schools or hospitals and give back where we need you most, then we’ve got your back with lowinterest loans, tuition credits, and tools to ensure that we’re building communities, not only companies.

And we’ll invest in skilled trades at every level, restore lost trade classes to our middle and high schools, and work with local labor unions to strengthen and expand successful apprenticeship programs.

There’s no reason that tens of thousands of jobs need go to out-ofstate workers because we don’t have the skilled workforce necessary to do the jobs. We’re going to fix that.