{"id":437104,"date":"2017-10-02T10:01:23","date_gmt":"2017-10-02T16:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=437104"},"modified":"2017-10-02T10:01:23","modified_gmt":"2017-10-02T16:01:23","slug":"if-youre-going-to-attack-pearce-at-least-tell-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2017\/10\/if-youre-going-to-attack-pearce-at-least-tell-the-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"If you’re going to attack Pearce, at least tell the truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

COMMENTARY:\u00a0<\/strong>When people enter the political realm, they can expect to be attacked. That comes with the territory. If those attacks are factual and honest, they\u2019re fair game. Unfortunately, in our current political environment,\u00a0people often mangle the facts and destroy nuance in order to reach their desired outcome.<\/p>\n

\"Ryan

Courtesy photo<\/p>

Ryan Cangiolosi<\/p><\/div>\n

This was the case with a recent column<\/a>\u00a0authored by MaryAnn Hendrickson attacking Steve Pearce, New Mexico\u2019s only Republican congressman and a candidate for governor.<\/p>\n

Hendrickson says Pearce believes New Mexico\u2019s public lands have \u201cno value,\u201d a claim that is so absurd on its face that it should discredit her entire case against him. Pearce has lived in New Mexico since he was a young boy and is an avid outdoorsman, sportsman and backpacker. He\u2019s spent his life enjoying the natural beauty of our state and has never once questioned the value of public lands and the treasures they hold.<\/p>\n

Pearce has consistently taken a measured position on public lands, as he did during the recent review of national monuments by the Department of the Interior. He advocates striking a balance between protecting resources and allowing for responsible development.\u00a0He\u2019s said this for years<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0He supports multiple uses for public lands instead of\u00a0using government mandates to shut\u00a0them off\u00a0from ranching, fishing and recreation.<\/p>\n

Despite Hendrickson\u2019s accusations, this hardly amounts to seeing \u201cno value\u201d in public lands.<\/p>\n

Hendrickson also wanders down the road of the nakedly partisan, chiding Pearce for legislation he offered to prevent the Bureau of Land Management from tightening regulations on methane output from oil production, even though that output has decreased 21 percent since 1990 as production has increased 47 percent. In reality, this legislation protected thousands of oil wells at risk of shutting down under increased regulations \u2013 wells capable of producing 145 million barrels of oil in New Mexico.<\/p>\n

These wells typically belong to small producers, and shutting them down would actually benefit large oil companies. Meanwhile, oil and gas revenues comprise up to 40 percent\u00a0of New Mexico\u2019s annual budget, which means Hendrickson is apparently advocating massive funding cuts to our public schools, indigent health care, and other essential services.<\/p>\n

Pearce is a\u00a0Republican representing a district with\u00a0a majority Hispanic population, where\u00a0Democrats significantly outnumber Republicans in voter registration numbers. And yet, Pearce has been elected to represent the Second District by wide margins, over and over again.\u00a0It\u2019s because he\u2019s visited every corner of the district, spoken with residents and community leaders from all backgrounds and any political affiliation, and has always been willing to consider viewpoints different from his own.<\/p>\n

When the Department of Interior announced its plans to review the legally questionable expansion of national monuments by the previous administration, Pearce held countless meetings in the Las Cruces area to make sure the community had a voice in the process. He\u2019s rightfully earned a reputation as one of the hardest working elected officials in America, and when he remarked that businesses, ranchers, border security personnel, and outdoorsmen were negatively impacted by the expanded monument, it\u2019s because he learned that information firsthand from people who were directly affected.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unfortunate that the debate over the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument\u00a0devolved as it did. Hardline environmental activists refused to budge an inch on the monument classification and misrepresented any thoughtful opposition. If you believe those activists, anyone who wanted to reduce the monument footprint by an inch actually wanted to sell off public lands altogether. This is perhaps Hendrickson\u2019s most disingenuous argument.<\/p>\n

Reducing the monument footprint, as Pearce favored, would not have affected public lands in Do\u00f1a Ana County at all. It only would have affected how those public lands could be used by, well, the public.<\/p>\n

As the chairman of the Republican Party of New Mexico, I\u2019m fully aware that there\u2019s a long campaign ahead of us and attacks will be coming from both sides as we debate the future of our state. As long as that debate is based in reality, it will be a healthy and informative campaign. But when accusations\u00a0have no basis in the truth, those accusations need to be exposed and rejected. New Mexicans deserve a campaign that educates instead of blurs the lines for the sake of partisanship.<\/p>\n

Ryan\u00a0<\/span>Cangiolosi<\/span>\u00a0is the\u00a0c<\/span>hairman<\/span><\/em>\u00a0of the Republican Party of New Mexico<\/a>.\u00a0Agree with his opinion? Disagree? We welcome your views. Learn about submitting your own commentary\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent column writer said Steve Pearce believes New Mexico\u2019s public lands have \u201cno value,\u201d a claim that is so absurd on its face that it should discredit her entire case against him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":437110,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[147,3278,3306],"class_list":["post-437104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-environment","tag-public-lands","tag-steve-pearce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437104","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=437104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}