NEW MEXICO HOUSE DISTRICT 41
1. How have your prior experience and education prepared you for this position?
NO RESPONSE RECEIVED
My political education began at the kitchen table and continued in Washington where I was a legislative staffer and director of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. In seventeen years at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation, I built an $80 million endowment with an annual giving budget of $4 million. We funded education programs, early childhood home visiting programs, regional scholarship programs, and more. Those experiences prepared me to serve as an effective advocate for my district. As a legislator I have worked to support acequias, land grants/merceds, rural water systems, education, and cap predatory lenders in New Mexico at 36% APR down from 175%.
2. What three important issues would you plan to work on?
NO RESPONSE RECEIVED
Rural development, infrastructure, and education. As chair of the Rural Development, Land Grants, and Cultural Affairs committee, I hope to encourage economic development consistent with what rural residents want. The current budget surplus is an opportunity to build up our infrastructure; we must take it. Drinking and waste-water systems need repair and renewal. Acequias need to prepare for extended drought, which means they need to improve age old systems for the next 20 years. Broadband is essential both for economic development and for education, as Covid clearly showed. And education requires consistent support and funding. It is better to invest our Land Grant Permanent Fund in our children than to invest it in Wall Street.
3. How can the legislature balance the needs of farmers and ranchers with the priorities of cities and towns?
NO RESPONSE RECEIVED
It’s sometimes a difficult balancing act. Being less profitable, rural areas are often neglected by commercial providers of water, electricity, gas, telephone, or internet service. But in the long run all New Mexicans will prosper or suffer together. Without healthy rural areas and a vibrant agricultural sector, the cities cannot really prosper. And on many issues, the interests of urban and rural areas coincide. And the opioid crisis has hit urban and rural areas alike. We cannot improve broadband access to rural areas without also benefitting towns and cities. And in a period of extended drought, regionalized water management will help everyone in New Mexico. As we know, la agua es la vida, water is life.
4. What can be done to support the aging population, i.e., elderly housing, elder care, transportation?
NO RESPONSE RECEIVED
The biggest single problem I see seniors facing is the number of grandparents who find themselves raising grandchildren because the parents are absent due to mental-health issues, substance abuse, or incarceration. We need to improve our financial and social support for grandparents or other kin who must step in to raise children. We need to extend and improve opportunities for substance abuse treatment and repair the extensive damage done a few years ago to the state’s behavioral health system. And we need to do what we can as a state to improve access to health care. This past legislative session I voted to eliminate the state tax on Social Security, putting more of their hard-earned money in the pocket of seniors in New Mexico.