End in sight, attacks get amplified
Campaign trail photos fuel fiery exchange between hopefuls Pearce, Lujan Grisham
Michelle Lujan Grisham and Steve Pearce made the last one count. The gubernatorial hopefuls maintained the feisty and abrasive tenor Wednesday night, using their final televised debate to continue slapping their opponent’s record and platform — Pearce dismissing Lujan Grisham’s economic development plans as harebrained and slight, and Lujan Grisham charging he has lied about her background and his financial interests in the oil and gas industry. The one-hour forum aired on KOAT-TV once again demonstrated the stark choice before New Mexico voters Nov. 6 as Pearce, the Republican, and Lujan Grisham, the Democrat, both sought to gain some late-stage momentum in the race to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Susana Martinez by landing a well-placed jab.
Pearce slammed Lujan Grisham’s “deficit of understanding” on economic matters, arguing her call for a minimum-wage increase would devastate small businesses and that her overall economic plan was too broad to be achieved.
“It shows how little she really understands business,” he said. “… You do not just create an economy out of thin air.”
Lujan Grisham, who has vowed to immediately raise the minimum wage to $10 and eventually to $12, fired back: “My multimillionaire opponent is completely out of touch with everyday New Mexicans who right now cannot afford rent, housing, food, gas or child care costs.”
Lujan Grisham, who represents the Albuquerque area in Congress, highlighted that Pearce released only a few documents showing one year of tax information and asserted that the congressman from Hobbs was “hiding” his personal wealth and ties to the oil and gas industry.
“You enriched yourself by millions of dollars by deregulating oil and gas while serving on [the House Natural Resources Committee] unethically,” she said.
Pearce, referencing Delta, the consulting firm Lujan Grisham co-founded that oversees management of the state’s high-risk health insurance pool, turned the accusation around: “You’re the one who has the company that is charging sick people a 10 percent surcharge to pay you lavish sums of money. … How in the world can you look yourself in the face?”
Lujan Grisham, who has vigorously defended Delta’s work with the high-risk pool, sought to expose Pearce as uninformed on the subject, asking him pointblank what the high-risk pool did and who it serves.
“The high-risk pool serves people who are high-risk,” Pearce responded.
“All the specialty I need,” he added, was pointing out that many states dropped their highrisk pools upon the advent of the Affordable Care Act and that Delta had won its contracts for management services without any opposing bidders.
“If you’re out there and want to bid, get in touch with the highrisk pool,” Pearce said.
The candidates sparred over immigration and how to best manage an expected $1.2 billionplus surplus from oil and gas revenues, with Pearce insisting the new money be put toward infrastructure and broadband and not toward recurring expenditures, and Lujan Grisham arguing some needed to be spent restoring social workers. She also said the revenue was a “moonshot opportunity” to boost public education.
The debate took a nasty turn on the subject of crime, as Pearce referenced a photograph in which Lujan Grisham posed with a man who was convicted of dealing heroin decades ago and whose sons led a street gang. The photograph was the subject of a recent Pearce campaign ad that framed Lujan Grisham’s apparent friendliness with the man in the photograph as reminiscent of Breaking Bad, the celebrated television show about Albuquerque’s underground meth world.
“All of the detailed plans you have laid out, my friend, mean nothing when you take pictures with the most notorious gangs in Albuquerque,” Pearce said.
Lujan Grisham said she didn’t know who the man was. “Shame on you, Steve,” she said. “I take thousands of pictures during my campaign.”
She added that Pearce had posed for a photograph with a Deming pizza shop owner who was convicted of felony child abuse in 2014 — and had donated $1,000 to Pearce’s gubernatorial campaign. Pearce’s campaign told the Albuquerque Journal this week it would donate those funds to a child abuse prevention charity.
Neither candidate blundered, as was the case in the two prior televised debates, and both amplified the lines of attack that have proliferated across New Mexico airwaves in recent weeks.
“It’s a Donald Trump-style of effort,” Lujan Grisham said, referring to what she said were Pearce’s “false” efforts to paint her as corrupt for her ties to Delta, from which she divested last year.
“We cannot go back to the [Bill] Richardson days; that’s where my opponent will take us,” Pearce said, seeking to damn Lujan Grisham by association with the administration of the Democratic former governor, for whom she served as a Cabinet secretary.
Early voting is open statewide.