Roundhouse Roundup: Pearce says election will be about issues, not attacks.
U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, speaking to New Mexican reporters last week, made a pledge about his campaign for governor next year: He’s going to keep it clean, he said.
Pearce, the only Republican seeking to replace outgoing Gov. Susana Martinez, recalled past campaigns, including his unsuccessful 2008 bid for U.S. Senate, which he lost to Democrat Tom Udall.
In that race, Udall and Pearce had vast philosophical differences on many — well, virtually all — issues. But as Pearce noted, neither side launched personal attacks against the other.
“And we’ll do the same thing with Michelle,” he said, referring to Democratic front-runner U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham. “I hate the personal stuff in politics. … I’ll differentiate myself, but I will not put these desperate personal attacks out.”
He told a story about his first election to Congress in 2002 when he defeated state Sen. John Arthur Smith, a conservative Democrat from Deming in the 2nd Congressional District.
The polls were neck and neck in September of that year, Pearce said. “The national Republicans come in and they bring in a lot of money,” he recalled, “and they say, ‘You gotta say John Arthur Smith likes gays.’ ”
Pearce said he responded, “Well I don’t really care, but I ain’t gonna say it, number one, and number two, I don’t necessarily believe it, and number three, I don’t really see why it matters.”
The national GOP, he said, threatened to pull its financial support for his campaign. Pearce said he responded, “Well pull your damned money. I live in this state. You sons of bitches are from back East.”
At that point, the congressman apologized to reporters for the language. “Excuse me, I talk like an oil field guy.”
He continued: “You all are from back East and you don’t care about this state. But I live here. … They said, ‘We’ll, we’re leaving,’ and they did.”
But, Pearce said, “I thought they probably needed me worse than I needed them, so they showed up again two weeks later.”
But there were no homophobic attacks against Smith. “That’s what strong candidates are supposed to do, to say no to the viciousness from out there,” Pearce said. “Both parties have their viciousness and they’ve got their crazy stuff. … John Arthur and I get along well today because I didn’t do that.”
Pearce said despite political differences, he and Udall have a strong working relationship, which he said has served the state well. And he credits that to the issues-oriented campaigns both men waged in 2008. He and Udall have worked together closely in areas such as reopening the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, which closed for three years after a waste drum breached in 2014, releasing radiation into parts of the facility. Pearce also said he and Udall worked together to secure a new pilot training mission for Holloman Air Force Base near Alamogordo.
If it turns out to be true that Pearce and whoever wins the Democratic nomination next June really do run a clean campaign strictly on the issues, it would be the first time in eight years that’s happened here in a governor’s race. Since Martinez’s first run in 2010, campaigns for chief executive have been characterized by Martinez’s political guru Jay McCleskey’s slash-and-burn-then-slash-some-more style.
Even in 2014, when Martinez’s approval ratings remained high and Democrat Gary King’s campaign was sputtering, Martinez attacked King as if she were running 30 points behind.
As for the Democrats, I don’t see them making many personal attacks on Pearce. Instead, they’ll be busy making Donald Trump Pearce’s running mate, pointing to all the times Pearce has backed the president and quoting every news release in which Pearce praised Trump.
Pearce acknowledged that Trump could be a problem for him. “He is extremely unpopular in New Mexico,” Pearce said. “He’s much more unpopular now than he was on Election Day.”
But he said, “People do not perceive me as a deeply partisan figure. They’ve seen me fight [former President George W.] Bush. They saw me fight [former House Speaker John] Boehner, they’ve seen me already dust it up with Trump,” he said, referring to his refusal to back Trump’s first “Obamacare” repeal earlier this year and other issues.
Of course, Democrats have already attacked Pearce when he later voted in favor of the second health care overhaul.
“I want him to succeed, but I will not give him an inch beyond what he should be succeeding at,” Pearce said.
He said his polls show he’s succeeding in showing independence from Trump. “They’ve tried to tag me with him since during the election last year. We polled twice and our pollster said, ‘I don’t know what it is, but Trump is causing a wasteland for Republicans in New Mexico and you’re standing out there like a tree, just untouched.’ ”
The test will be whether that tree can withstand an onslaught from a well-funded opponent in a statewide campaign.