Boycott of Chevron urged over ads in NM race
Oil giant funds attacks on Democratic candidate
SANTA FE — A coalition of progressive New Mexico groups is calling for a boycott of Chevron, after the global oil giant gave $2million to a Texas-based political committee that has launched hard-hitting TV ads in New Mexico’s land commissioner race.
The groups held a news conference Thursday near a Chevron station in Albuquerque to announce the proposed boycott.
“We’re trying to send a message to Chevron that it’s not OK to try to buy an election,” Eric Griego, a former state senator and state director of New Mexico Working Families, told the Journal after Thursday’s event.
Other groups involved in the boycott effort include the Native American Voters Alliance and the Albuquerque-based Organizers in the Land of Enchantment, more commonly known as OLÉ.
Chevron Corp. is one of the world’s largest oil companies, with more than $141 billion in revenue in 2017. The company has made waves with recent political contributions, including $4 million to try to defeat a petroleum-related initiative in San Luis Obispo County in California.
In New Mexico, the state land commissioner race between Republican Pat Lyons, a former land commissioner, and Democrat Stephanie Garcia Richard has apparently caught the company’s eye.
New Mexico Strong, a Texas-based political committee that was created in December 2017, reported earlier this month getting a $2 million contribution from Chevron in early September.
With that money, the political committee spent roughly $600,000 during a recent four-week reporting period, most of it on television and internet ads attacking Garcia Richard.
The contribution was legal because court rulings have established that New Mexico’s campaign donation limits — enacted after the 2010 election cycle — don’t apply to independent political committees, or super PACs, which can accept contributions of any size but are barred from coordinating directly with candidates.
Garcia Richard has described the outside spending as an attempt to influence the election’s outcome, while Lyons says he isn’t a fan of super PAC spending in general.
“I don’t have anything to do with them,” Lyons said in a recent interview. “I don’t even know what they’re doing.”
However, Lyons also said oil and natural gas companies are “fired up” about the Nov. 6 general election.
The land commissioner has authority to administer the use of 9 million acres of state trust land and 13 billion acres of subsurface mineral rights, and state oil production levels have surged to unprecedented levels in recent months — primarily in southeastern New Mexico — due largely to the use of new drilling techniques.