Sparring between Republican Senate candidates Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce continued on Monday with back-and-forth accusations related to the history of the decision to mothball Cannon Air Force Base.
I wrote last week that
Over the weekend, the Associated Press published a story on the situation that included this paragraph, quoting Pearce spokesman Brian Phillips:
“Pearce voted for base closings after assurances from Defense Department officials that a new mission would be found for Cannon, which in 2005 housed three F-16 fighter squadrons, Phillips said,” according to the Associated Press article.
That prompted another Monday release from the
“Last week, Mr. Pearce falsely claimed that the entire
“If Steve Pearce had some strong assurance from the Defense Department that could have eased people’s fears, surely he shouldn’t have kept that to himself,” she said.
Pearce’s response
The Pearce campaign sent a letter to supporters on Monday that cited an article published by the Albuquerque Journal.
In the Journal article, Phillips responded not by providing a copy of the alleged letter Pearce said the delegation signed, but instead by saying the five issued a joint news release in August 2005 titled “NM Delegation Accepts BRAC Decision to Create an Enclave at Cannon Air Force Base and Seek New Mission.”
That was two months before the House vote on the base closure and realignment plan. Phillips told the Journal that
Phillips also said that Wilson’s vote against the base closure plan, had the majority agreed with her, would have reopened the process and might have exposed other New Mexico bases to risk.
“The vote for BRAC was a vote to save Cannon, as well as all other
That was the topic of the letter Pearce Campaign Manager John Billingsley sent out on Monday. It also focused on Tom Udall who, like
“Read the article from today’s Albuquerque Journal and you will see that Tom Udall and Heather Wilson voted to put Cannon and all of our other important military bases at risk,” the letter states.
The August 2005 news release
It appears likely that Pearce’s claim that all five signed a letter asking for the mothballing of Cannon was wrong, because he has not produced such a letter despite requests.
And he has given differing statements to different audiences for his vote in favor of the plan that mothballed Cannon, but the statements weren’t necessarily contradictory. Perhaps he’s pandering by spinning his vote differently to different crowds, but the vote is still on the record. He can’t and isn’t trying to change that.
Pearce is right about the August 2005 news release. You can read it by clicking here. Two months before the House vote, all five members of
“Today is a partial victory,”
“While I am disappointed that we fell one vote short of an unqualified victory, I am pleased that the BRAC Commission provided us with a fighting chance to prove that Cannon Air Force Base remains a vital component of
The bottom line
Two months later, Pearce voted to uphold the BRAC recommendations, and Wilson and Udall voted against doing that. The majority of House members sided with Pearce, so the Senate never got to vote, but both senators from
The commission decided in August 2005 to direct the Department of Defense to attempt to find a new mission for Cannon. There was no promise then that one would be found. Pearce is now claiming that the DOD assured him a new mission would be found.
The bottom line: Pearce has clearly had some difficulty explaining his vote in a consistent manner, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t doing what he thought was in the best interest of Cannon by voting to approve its enclave status. It’s clear from the 2005 news release that he and Wilson both considered the decision to mothball Cannon a partial but not full victory. Pearce decided that was good enough to vote for the BRAC plan. The others decided it was not good enough.