Greg Sowards campaigning for Congress in 2008. (Photo by Heath Haussamen)
Former congressional candidate Greg Sowards of Las Cruces announced today that he’s running in 2012 for the Senate seat currently held by Democrat Jeff Bingaman.
Here’s the statement Sowards released about why he’s running:
“The most pressing fight of our time involves the question: What will be the national atmosphere that our children’s children will live under? Will they have the liberty to experience and learn from those endearing lessons that freedom affords? Or, will they be deprived of that opportunity through governmental intervention and the squandering of their resources by shortsighted politicians?
“It is those questions that compel me to step forward and offer myself, my values and the conservative principles on which I will base any action in Washington.”
Sowards, a Republican, has been active in recent years in the Las Cruces T.E.A. Party, but he also attends meetings of the Progressive Voter Alliance to engage in dialogue with people who often disagree with him on issues.
Some might remember Sowards because of the campaign slogan he used when he ran for congress in 2008 – short, bald and honest. He won 17 percent of the vote but lost the five-way GOP primary that year to Ed Tinsley, who went on to lose the race to Democrat Harry Teague. Sowards spent several hundred thousand dollars of his own money on that race.
He also ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners later that year.
Bingaman hasn’t announced whether he will seek another term in 2012, but he held a fundraiser last month and raised about $400,000. His spokesman says he’s expected to announce his plans in March.
Another candidate
One other candidate has entered the 2012 Senate race, William S. English of Alamogordo. On his blog, English wrote in August that President Barack Obama is “ what literally amounts to an African dictator who could care even less about the people he is supposed to be governing than about his own comforts and abilities to live off the sweat of All Americans.”
He wrote in July about what he believes the “perfect ending” to Obama’s tenure would be: “Drop dead in front of Congress while accepting the responsibility for your stupidity and let us get on with fixing the problems you created.”