{"id":24376,"date":"2010-12-16T11:15:13","date_gmt":"2010-12-16T18:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=24376"},"modified":"2010-12-16T11:15:24","modified_gmt":"2010-12-16T18:15:24","slug":"sowards-announces-candidacy-for-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/12\/sowards-announces-candidacy-for-senate\/","title":{"rendered":"Sowards announces candidacy for Senate"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_24377\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-24377\" title=\"Sowards, Greg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/Sowards-Greg.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"251\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Greg Sowards campaigning for Congress in 2008. (Photo by Heath Haussamen)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Former congressional candidate <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shortbaldhonest.com\/\">Greg Sowards<\/a> of Las Cruces announced today that he\u2019s running in 2012 for the Senate seat currently held by Democrat <a href=\"http:\/\/bingaman.senate.gov\">Jeff Bingaman<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the statement Sowards released about why he\u2019s running:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe most pressing fight of our time involves the question: What will be the national atmosphere that our children\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sowards, a Republican, has been active in recent years in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lcteaparty.org\/\">Las Cruces T.E.A. Party<\/a>, but he also attends meetings of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pva-nm.org\/\">Progressive Voter Alliance<\/a> to engage in dialogue with people who often disagree with him on issues.<\/p>\n<p>Some might remember Sowards because of the campaign slogan he used when he ran for congress in 2008 \u2013 short, bald and honest. He won 17 percent of the vote but lost the five-way GOP primary that year <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/06\/tinsley-wins-republican-2nd-district-primary\/\">to Ed Tinsley<\/a>, who went on to lose the race to Democrat Harry Teague. Sowards spent several hundred thousand dollars of his own money on that race.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>He also ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Do\u00f1a Ana County Board of Commissioners <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/09\/mr-short-bald-and-honest-runs-for-county-position\/\">later that year<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Bingaman hasn\u2019t 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\u2019s expected to announce his plans <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/11\/expect-bingaman-to-announce-2012-plans-in-march\/\">in March<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>Another candidate<\/h3>\n<p>One other candidate has entered the 2012 Senate race, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.billenglish4senate.org\/home.html\">William S. English<\/a> of Alamogordo. On his blog, English <a href=\"http:\/\/beenfranklin.blogspot.com\/2010\/08\/to-protect-and-defend.html\">wrote in August<\/a> that President Barack Obama is \u201c\u00a0what 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He wrote <a href=\"http:\/\/beenfranklin.blogspot.com\/2010\/07\/open-letter-to-barrack-hussein-obama.html\">in July<\/a> about what he believes the \u201cperfect ending\u201d to Obama\u2019s tenure would be: \u201cDrop dead in front of Congress while accepting the responsibility for your stupidity and let us get on with fixing the problems you created.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former congressional candidate Greg Sowards of Las Cruces announced today that he\u2019s running in 2012 for the Senate seat currently held by Democrat Jeff Bingaman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[156,116],"class_list":["post-24376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-2012-election","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}