Pierson: Timing right for CD3 run
Candidate wants to protect border, encourage less gov’t dependence
Republican congressional candidate Nick Pierson says there are a host of complex issues that need to be tackled at the federal level, but “experimentation” is rarely the right approach to solving them.
“People have an idea in their mind, and the petri dish is going to be us and our tax dollars. And so they have an idea that they’re going to do these grandiose things, and that sound good. And if it sounds good a lot of people will go along with it.
“But I don’t like to experiment on people,” he said, while visiting Yuma on Thursday.
Pierson is a retired financial adviser, born in Nogales and raised on Native American reservations in Arizona where his father taught school.
He said he has been involved with numerous Tucson groups and organizations, and founded Tus Vecinos en el Barrio, which began as a Republican outreach to residents of South Tucson but evolved into a nonpartisan community forum.
He said his profession taught him to do research before advising clients to take any course of action with their finances, and brought that approach to other parts of his life.
“Sometimes I’ll sound like a broken record, because I’ve been on boards where my position was in the minority,” he said. “But in the time period that the issue has been discussed, because I give information, I give facts that are well-researched, that are incontrovertible, gradually people start seeing that.”
He said that after getting permission from his wife of 47 years, Marolyn, he decided this year was the time to run for office.
“I believe that the timing is right, and my background working with both the private sector and my ability to work with organizations to get things done are going to be very valuable for the district,” he said.
He said he’s also had his eye on 16-year incumbent Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva for decades, ever since both were attending the University of Arizona in the late 1960s.
“He was on my radar back in school, he was just being a protester, and as a protester he got attention, but I didn’t feel he deserved all that attention,” Pierson said. “So I’ve been following what he’s done, and I figured that it’s time we get someone in there who can do a better job and who puts the community first, and help include the economic and living conditions in the district.”
Pierson said the government has a role to play in this by providing more and better job opportunities for residents, but does not favor programs which he says foster dependency.
“At the end of the day there are so many needs out there that everyone is going to have their hand out for the government, and I’d like to encourage people to be less dependent on the government, and as an example help them improve their standard of living by creating opportunities,” he said.
He said this holds true throughout the congressional district, with a Yuman telling him earlier Thursday the area needs a more diverse job base.
CD3 covers 15,688 square miles, running between southern Yuma County to southern Maricopa County, and east to parts of Tucson and Nogales.
It includes most of the state’s Mexican border, and Pierson said immigration and border issues are perhaps the most complex issue that must be dealt with for the area.
He said the presence of drug and human smugglers, who in turn pay the larger cartels in order to have a presence in the area, have made the borderlands a dangerous area.
“We need to protect the border. It’s not a safe border. I have family on the border, and they don’t feel very safe,” he said.
He wants to see tougher enforcement on employers who hire people who have crossed the border illegally, but also wants to see more workers allowed in when they are needed.
“If the labor force isn’t there I’m willing to have the work permits. Whether citizenship is associated with that, that can be a separate issue. But having permits for people to work here would solve a lot of the problems,” he said.
He said voters have been telling him about the consequences for their kids: “More than 60 percent of my district is Hispanics, and I have a lot of Hispanics that are complaining to me, grandparents and parents, that their children are not getting the benefits that they are getting.”
But he says he doesn’t know all of the answers, and will be looking for help from voters.
“That’s the way I would approach it with my constituents. This is the best research I have at the moment, what do you think? And someone else will know more than I do, and say ‘that’s a good idea because of this’ or ‘that’s not such a good idea because of this,’” he said.
Pierson has two opponents in the Aug. 28 GOP primary, Gustavo Arellano and Edna San Miguel. The winner will challenge Grijalva, who is unopposed in the Democratic primary, in the Nov. 6 general election.