Bea Sheridan
A registered nurse and Republican said today she’s joining the race for lieutenant governor.
Bea Sheridan said in a news release that she is running “because we are failing our children by remaining silent.”
“I will be a leader for the future of our children so they will not inherit the mess we have created by our silence,” she said. “I am no longer silent. I am no longer willing to sit by and let this state government ruin our children’s future.”
Sheridan said in the release that she is “a former business owner, author of two books on medicine, and currently is a registered nurse who runs the Pain Clinic at Lovelace Rehabilitation Hospital.” She’s also a mother of three and a grandmother of one. She’s lived in Albuquerque for 38 years and says she has served on the Bernalillo County GOP’s central committee and as a ward chairman.
“As lieutenant governor, I will look past the labels that identify us as being different from one another, and focus on the solutions to bring positive change for everyone,” Sheridan said in the release. “There are many problems this state has failed to address. We are spending over half of our budget on education, yet are near the bottom in performance in every category. With a 46 percent dropout rate, we need to address the issues that are causing our children to leave school.”
She said it’s difficult to create new jobs until education is improved, but she also favors “addressing the current tax code and rules and regulations that are causing businesses to move elsewhere, or not come here in the first place.”
On health care, Sheridan said she’s “a believer in personal responsibility with assistance when necessary” and said she will “focus on making good health methods available to all our citizens.”
“I believe in medical savings accounts and catastrophic insurance that will cover major illnesses and accidents,” she said. “I do not believe in the total takeover of health care by the government, at a state or national level. We need to make health care choices for our families and ourselves.”
And Sheridan said she believes people must “work together to regain our freedoms promised us in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Many have fought to protect these freedoms, and we cannot stand by and allow them to have died in vain.”
Two other Republicans have declared their candidacies for lieutenant governor — Santa Fe radiologist and former gubernatorial candidate J.R. Damron and former state Rep. Brian Moore of Clayton.