This year’s ballot is packed with decisions, but one of the higher profile choices New Mexicans will make will be for one of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats. Republican candidate Larry “Lead” Marker got past the primary with more than 31,000 write-in votes, more than 13 times the minimum he needed to get on the ballot. Marker was born in Hobbs in 1963 and raised in Roswell. He worked in the oil and gas industry, and construction as well as farming and ranching. Marker’s only other political campaign was for the State Senate in 2024, where he lost in the primaries to Pat Boone for district 27. KUNM’s Daniel Montaño sat down with Marker to talk about his positions, his plans if elected, and what he thinks he could bring to the Senate that the incumbent, Democrat Ben Ray Luján, isn’t.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
KUNM: You've been involved in New Mexico politics for a little while now, but this is your first run for U.S. Senate. Why do you want the job, and what do you believe you would bring to the Senate that New Mexico isn't getting from Senator Lujan?
LARRY “LEAD” MARKER: Well, the United States Senate in the state of New Mexico — we haven't sent a conservative or Republican to the United States Senate — the last one that was elected was 2002. It was Pete Domenici, and he served until 2008. That was the last conservative senator we sent. We've had a few, I think [U.S. Rep] Yvette Herrell was. She did go to the House of Representatives a couple of times, once or twice. I'm not sure exactly sure which, but New Mexico needs a different type of representation in the United States Senate. If you think about it, half of the citizens of New Mexico, about half, would be considered, you know, very conservative, and the other half are or whatever you would consider progressive, or whatever. I believe that we need equal representation in the Senate, and I believe I'm the man to do that.
KUNM: And you've talked a lot about New Mexico's economy, public safety, and federal overreach. If you had to identify the biggest problem facing New Mexico right now, what is it, and what specifically would you do about it as a U.S. senator?
MARKER: The biggest problems that face New Mexico, and there again, we are going to get a little bit into state issues here, but my focus is going to be on what I can do for New Mexico from the federal office from Washington D.C.. A lot of these interviews they ask state questions, and then I've got to stop and say, “hey, this is a federal office. There's certain things that I'm just not going to be dealing with in Washington D.C.” Now, as a whole, in our entire country, and this affects New Mexico, this really affects New Mexico. (What) is the size of our debt? We're $40 trillion in debt. We're going to spend $1.9 trillion more than what we make in the United States, so that's an issue for New Mexico. Obviously, we have an aging electorate or an aging group of citizens in New Mexico. So, Social Security, and the solvency of Social Security is a big issue for New Mexicans. And I've got a plan put together that I believe by 2032, before we have to start reducing the benefits from Social Security, I actually have a plan put together that I think we can stop that from happening, and it would be a good plan moving forward that eventually Social Security would be solid. So that's a big issue for the state of New Mexico.
Of course, the border is an issue because we are a border state. Our border is secure right now, but we do need to do some reforms to our immigration system, and we need to remove the politics from immigration. That way, one side or the other doesn't have a benefit when it comes to immigration. Again, I would support term limits, and the main reason I would support term limits is because the problems we have in the United States should be issues that need to be solved instead of issues that you get elected on. So, the biggest issues facing New Mexico are like the rest of the country from a federal standpoint. We spend too much money, we're not making enough money, and Social Security is an issue.
KUNM: Speaking of Social Security, I actually have a question for you specifically on that. Would you mind giving us a little bit more detail about that plan? What exactly, specifically, would you change about federal spending, taxes, and Social Security to address those problems?
MARKER: Okay, federal spending, as a whole, we need to get a handle on how we spend money. A lot of people blame the deficit on the deficit and or the debt on the president, this president or any other. Appropriations originate in the House of Representatives. We all know that every dollar that's spent has to be approved by the Senate. Why the Senate gets a pass on this, I'll never know, but we need to take responsibility for what we do in the Senate and realize that the fact that we're spending money, and if you'll excuse the colorful language, we actually spend money like a bunch of drunken sailors, and that's not something that we can continue to do when you're looking at $40 trillion in debt. And, to expand on that a little bit, just prior to COVID, just prior in 2019, our deficit spending was a little less than a trillion dollars. It was close to $900 billion. A trillion is 1000 billions, and a billion is 1000 millions. So, as a listener and as a person, it's hard to conceive that amount of money, and I think our government doesn't conceive that amount of money either. Apparently, because they keep spending. But, just prior to COVID, our deficit spending was less than a trillion dollars. Well, it got up to $3.4, $3.5 trillion during COVID, and it went down a little bit after all of the COVID issues, but it's still a little bit more than twice what it was prior to COVID. Now, a lot of that is the interest that we pay on the national debt. We're spending the third largest expense we have in the federal government right now is the interest on the national debt. So, we need to manage our — we need to do a better job managing our debt, being (that) with bonds, bills, or notes, those different levels of interest and interest rates and stuff on that. We can manage our debt with that, because that's where most of our debt sits. We have intergovernmental debt.
As far as Social Security, here's my plan moving forward. And being in New Mexico, we're familiar with sovereign wealth funds. We used to call it the permanent fund, but we've got sovereign wealth funds in New Mexico. What I propose we do is we start a what I call a windfall sovereign wealth fund. Any time the federal government makes an extra-large amount of money, let's say they have the licenses, the auctions where they license off the FCC, the airwaves, we can make $80-to-100-billion on some of those auctions. We're going to have one next April. As a matter of fact, we're projected to make close to $100 billion on that one. We put that type of windfall money — or when the price of oil and gas goes up and we're making just a lot more money than what we usually make because of the royalties or more — we put that into, instead of spending that money blindly like a bunch of drunken sailors, instead of spending that money, we put it into what I would call a windfall sovereign wealth fund. Well, a sovereign wealth fund, you invest the money, and then the proceeds of that money are what you use. What I propose: until we get to $200 billion in the money that we make off those investments, we put it back into that sovereign wealth fund. It would take us probably less than two years, maybe a little bit more, to get to $200 billion. Once we reach that 200 billion, we continue to grow the sovereign wealth fund with the windfall that we get periodically, like tariff windfalls and things like that. We continue to grow that. Obviously, we can't just put money. There needs to be a baseline to cover our current expenses. But if we have an extra chunk of money, we put it in there. Well, after we get to that 200 billion mark, then the investments that the money we make on those investments, those go to supplement the income of Social Security. That doesn't sound like a lot of money at first. The money that we make on that sovereign wealth fund at 200 billion — we continue to grow that with windfalls in the future, and once we start supplementing the income of Social Security, that's going to move that date back so that we would be required to reduce benefits. That would move that date back every time we could put additional income in there, which would be monthly. Every time that would move that date back ever so farther away. While that sovereign wealth fund is growing. Norway has the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world right now. We could, within 10 years, we could get to a trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund, and if that money was providing the additional income for Social Security, Social Security would be solvent. That's one of my goals in the Senate. When I leave the Senate, it's a six-year term — one of my goals is to make sure that Social Security is solvent when I walk out that door.
KUNM: So, staying on some more of the economic issues, you're a strong supporter of New Mexico's oil and gas industry, and you've called for expanding oil, gas, hydrogen, and nuclear development. What role do you think fossil fuels should play in New Mexico's energy economy over the next several decades? And what do you say to New Mexicans who believe climate change requires moving away from fossil fuels?
MARKER: In the state of New Mexico — and there again, we are the second largest producer of crude oil in the United States. We have a lot of federal land. There's millions of acres of federal land in the state of New Mexico. Plus, we have millions of acres of state trust land. We produce oil. We produce oil. Those are the extraction industries. Do work a lot on those lands. The technology that we have available, and being in the oil and gas industry for the past several years, and growing up in that industry, I've seen the advances in that industry that do protect the environment, and a lot of that was brought on by the industry itself. For example, back in the late 70s and early 80s, you could actually legally dump at least one barrel of produced water and some of your skim oil right there in a dirt pit at your tank battery, and that was legal. We'd be out dove hunting or quail hunting or something, and there would be dead birds in those pits and stuff. That that kind of stuff doesn't exist in the oil field in New Mexico anymore. So, we're seeing a lot cleaner oil field than we've had in the past. Obviously, there's always going to be accidents and mistakes. But with the technology we have right now, and the fact that the oil industry, and mainly it's the individuals in the oil industry, we are conscious of the environmental impact of that industry, and so we're probably. The best stewards of that part of the state of New Mexico, it's not a free for all out there like it probably at one time was, but as people learned: this doesn't work. As people learn and as technology has expanded, and we realize there are some things we did in the past that we shouldn't have been doing, but we did change that. And moving forward, I would rely more on the industry itself to police itself, and technology is going to continue to improve. For instance, in the coal industry, we can burn coal a lot cleaner now than we have in the past. I'm a big proponent of — you're going to hear me say — you know President Trump always says drill baby drill? Well, I'm one of these guys, and this is, I guess, going to be my catchphrase, or I don't know what you're going to call it. I'm all about drill, baby, drill… dig baby, dig… grow, baby, grow… build, baby, build.
I'm saying that to get this country back on track, we don't need to increase taxes. We need to increase the tax base, but we need to do it responsibly, knowing that the environment is critical to the future of our grandchildren. I want to leave my grandchildren an economy to where when they get married, if their wife wants to go to work, she can go to work, but she's not required to go to work. Or if the dad wants to stay home and raise the kids, or you know, however it works. A one-income family should be the goal of the economy in the state of New Mexico. There's nothing wrong with both people having a career. I think that's fantastic. I grew up around strong, independent women. I'm surrounded by strong, independent women, especially in my campaign. I don't have an issue with that, what I have an issue with, is when people have to work two and three jobs just to make a living. When New Mexico, the resources we have here, again, a lot of it in the oil and gas industry. We've done a disservice to our mining industry. There's a lot of things we can do in New Mexico with our natural resources, but we need to do it responsibly.
KUNM: So, speaking of, you mentioned President Trump and some of his policies there, and you have said that you support most of President Trump's policies, but you've also criticized his administration on issues like tariffs and the presidential war powers. What does it mean to be an independent senator when you agree with your president politically, but believe that he is exceeding his constitutional authority.
MARKER: When and that was in — I actually did say that in an interview, and I do stand beside that. What I believe has happened in the United States and in our federal government: we do a little bit in the state government. We're going to stick with the federal government for now. We need to get back to the Constitution the way it was written. We need to quit manipulating it. We need to take a look at it, take it literally. This is how it was written. We do have separation of powers. Now, as far as that goes, I support President Trump's policies. I support what he's doing because we hired a guy. When we voted for him, we hired a guy that's going to take the bull by the horns and get things done. Okay, be that as it may, when you hire a gentleman like that or hire a person like that, there's plenty of women like that too. When you hire a person like that, you're going to have to realize that you need to rein them in at times. Right now, the Senate doesn't seem to have the grit required to take their rightful position within their authority of the Constitution, I'm not knocking President Trump because, to be honest with you, I would be pushing the envelope myself when it came, especially when it comes to Iran. You're not as old as I am. I'm 62 years old. I remember when Iran took the hostages back in 1979. I remember the Beirut bombing when it was one of the proxies of Iran. I remember the things that Iran has done to the United States and mainly to our military, to our service men and women. So, Iran is an issue we should have taken care of 30 years ago. When you talk about the ability or the authority to declare war, if you ever watch M.A.S.H. back in the day, you know we had the Korean War back in the '50s. They called that a police action. There never was a war. Well, that was an issue back in the '50s, and we still haven't solved that issue. So, as a senator, I'm going to say, “okay, we need to get back to the Constitution. This is what you do. This is what you do. This is what you do.” We get back to that. That's going to solve a lot of the political issues we have. The tariffs? Tariffs are a tax. The legislature, the Congress, House and Senate. I call the House and Senate Congress together. Most people call the House Congress, but however you want to label it, the legislative branch. Let's stick with that one, the legislative branch is in charge of taxes and how to levy taxes. What they need to do is talk to the president. Say, “okay, what's our policy? How are we going to do this? How are we going to leverage the authority that we have? What amount of that authority are we going to give you to solve the issue? That you're wanting to solve for your negotiation” and things like that. We need to have better communication between the branches of the government. We need to cut the partisan stuff out of anything that benefits the United States of America and the citizens within it. The politics needs to be out of it. Immigration, tariffs, things like that. As a whole, when you're dealing with issues that affect the United States outside of its borders, we need to remove the ability for one side or the other to gain a political advantage, basically, and it's going to be tough to do. But the Constitution is written in a way, if we followed the Constitution, it wouldn't matter which party you were with, or your position. It's a constitutional republic. The law is the law.
KUNM: Along those same lines, you're choosing to run for Senate at a time when Washington is deeply divided. What do you think that New Mexicans should expect from their senator when their interests conflict with the priorities of their own party or the White House,
MARKER: When I get elected as a senator from the state of New Mexico to the United States Senate, I'm going to Washington D.C. to represent the citizens of the state of New Mexico. I'm not going to the United States Senate to represent the Republican Party. I'm not going to Washington D.C. to represent Donald Trump or his administration, I'm going to Washington D.C. to represent the citizens of the state of New Mexico, the people that hired me to go there and do a job. As far as the partisanship or the nonpartisanship, I'm going to do what's good for the citizens of the state of New Mexico based on my principles, my beliefs, and the principles and beliefs of the people that I represent.
KUNM: You've made federal regulation of agriculture and grazing rights a major issue. What specific federal regulations or policies would you change, and how would you balance that with environmental protections on federal lands?
MARKER: Okay, we could get a little bit into the farm bill, but that's such a massive elephant that we don't have enough time. And we could have 20 of these, and the farm bill wouldn't — we couldn't cover the whole farm bill. But in short, I'm just going to be as short as possible. Any time the federal government can regulate somebody out of business without consequence when they're wrong, the federal government is exceeding its authority. You could go to the grazing rights, not just on Bureau of Land Management, but you go to Forest Service land. It's public land, but the Forest Service controls a big chunk of it. When you have the Forest Service cutting allotments, how many cows can graze on an allotment that that rancher has actually purchased, and that puts that rancher out of business — you have an issue. There's no consequence for those, and there seems to be no remedy. We continue to expand and expand the — our ability to utilize our grazing, not just on Bureau of Land management land, but also on Forest Service land, is continually shrinking. Right now, we have the smallest inventory of beef cattle in the United States, (smaller) than we've had in the past 60 years. That's creating a lot of problems. As far as the regulations from the federal government, we need to make sure that they're common-sense regulations. They're not based on a whim or political ideals. They need to be based on facts and law. And we can actually accomplish a lot, but we need to get back to communicating. And there again, we need to remove the political benefit from one side or the other. Obviously, I'm going to take the side of the ranchers, but I'm also going to take the side of the environment because I am a hunter, and I do enjoy the public lands. I want my grandsons and my granddaughters — I want them to grow up in the same kind of a world that I grew up in. We're in the state of New Mexico. If you want to go on BLM land and you want to camp, and you want to do whatever you want to do, I want to see that preserved forever. State trust land is a little bit different. You do have to have permission, or you have to have a hunting license, or whatever. State trust land is a little bit different, and the access is a little tougher. But I want to maintain our public lands. I don't ever want to sell our public lands. I want to protect our public lands but also realize that that is the future of our nation. It’s in the resources, and a lot of it is under our public lands.
KUNM: Speaking of the environment, you said that you support bringing data centers to New Mexico, but at the same time, you've also raised concerns about data centers possibly shifting costs onto residents and on small business utility customers. What policies do you think Congress should adopt to make sure those costs are borne by the companies driving the additional demand?
MARKER: From the federal standpoint, we're going to be a little bit limited. We should be a little bit limited as to what we can do from the federal government, because each county needs to decide if they want data centers. They can do that with their ordinances, their building ordinances, and their zoning laws.. We don't need to be selling our prime agriculture land to build data centers. That's a no-brainer. We need to have ordinances in place, and if every county that accepts a data center, they need to tighten up their ordinances. They need to remove the loophole so they can't be manipulated by expensive lawyers, and then they need to tell the data center “if you're going to come in and you're going to be a good neighbor, you're going to be a good neighbor out here. You're not going to be a good neighbor here.” When I say “out here,” what I propose we do is we take areas of the state, like for instance, over there just north of Loco Hills, New Mexico. It's oil and gas country. A lot of marginal wells have been there over the years, a lot of gas production that's locked in. There's no water table, so there's no aquifer to be contaminated, a lot of produced water in the area, a lot of natural gas. We could actually make a massive, and it's — most of it is federal land. We could make a massive, what I would call a, data park. You would call it an industrial park in that area. We could actually pre-permit data centers, but when that data center moves in there, a lot of the infrastructure would be there, but that data center has to provide its own electricity and has to provide its own water if it uses water to cool its equipment. Then, that's when we would employ the technology of desalinating produced water. They make enough money on data centers they could afford to do that, and it wouldn't take very long. The technology for desal(ination), which is already moving ahead pretty quickly, it would move ahead even more quickly, and that's how we could move New Mexico further into desalinating and more New Mexico technology like what we're talking about before. So, I say, if a county wants data centers. They need to tighten up their ordinances. They need to tighten up their requirements. They need to require them to be a good neighbor. But we need to move them outside of the areas where people live, or there would be a hindrance. If they're not going to be a good neighbor, we don't want them. Texas messed up a little bit. Well, probably quite a bit, because they gave them all the tax benefits, and they basically it was a free for all. We need to learn from that mistake. It's great that Texas made that mistake. That's not a mistake that we need to make. We need to be smart enough to learn from everybody else's mistakes. I welcome the data centers under certain conditions. Let's just put it that way.
KUNM: Gotcha. Another thing that you've brought up during your campaign is border security and fentanyl, both have been things that you brought up several times. What specific changes to federal immigration and border policy would you support, and what would you do differently from the policies currently being implemented by the Trump administration?
MARKER: Okay, I'm really proud of what President Trump and Tom Homan have done with the border. They shut the border down. It's tight. We did have that issue a few days ago with the cartel shooting at some of our people. We need to take care of that rather swiftly. That needs to stop. It never needs to happen again. We need — and I'm going to leave that one there. As far as policies moving forward, immigration policies, they need to be common sense. We need to welcome the best and the brightest. We need to define the best and the brightest. To me, the best and the brightest is not only your college educated or your people that lean more towards your white collar. To me, where I come from, the best and the brightest are those guys that get up every morning. They put their work boots on, or and those ladies, they get up every morning. They put their boots on. They go to work. To me, that's the best and the brightest. If you want to come to the United States, you want to assimilate as the citizens of the United States, and you want to go to work and help make our country a better place. Bring your family, you know, whatever it takes, but let's do it legally. Let's build a system where we can weed out the people that we don't particularly want. Your drug dealers, your malcontents, things like that. But we do want the best and the brightest, and I define the best and the brightest as the people that are going to come over here, and they're going to assimilate into the United States. They're going to be proud of the country they live in. They're going to fly the flag of the United States of America, declare allegiance to the United States of America. I'm all about tradition, and I'm all about your family tradition. Maybe over there, but you're an American citizen. You will assimilate to the United States. As far as our visas, our short-term agriculture workers and motel workers, and all of that stuff, we definitely need to have a streamlined policy. We need to have a policy that welcomes workers over here in a timely manner. They come over in an orderly fashion, do their jobs, because most of them, everyone I’ve ever met was only interested to come over here and go to work and make some money and send some money back home. And that that might be their vacation for the years they come over here and go to work. I love those people and it's great and I've been around a lot of them in my life, being in southeastern New Mexico. Our visa — we need to have a visa program for short-term workers if they want to come over, go to work, make some pretty good money over in the United States, and then go back home and live with their families and stuff. That's fantastic. There again, that's another issue.
Like I mentioned before, we need to remove the politics from it. I am going to be one of those people, and I'm just going to tell you this. You didn't ask, but I'm going to tell you anyway. I don't believe that when we have a census, if we're counting illegal aliens, I don't believe that those people need to count on the representation of the nation. They don't right now. The number of representatives we have in the House of Representatives is predicated on how many people live in a certain state. Well, it should only be United States citizens that count for that representation. I realize that those people live there, but the fact of the matter is, the illegal aliens are typically kind of transient. They're a kind of transient that comes and goes, so we don't get a stable picture of the actual citizenry of that area. Anyway, I'm going to be one of those that says the census needs to be based. We need to have. I believe we need to have a citizenship question, and the only ones that count towards representation in the House of Representatives are the legal citizens of New Mexico, people here legally.
KUNM: So New Mexicans, obviously, they’ve got busy lives. They're trying to work, all that sort of stuff. For somebody who hasn't been paying too much attention to the campaign so far, what do you think is the most important difference between you and Ben Ray Luján?
MARKER: If you look at the totality of our lives, I don't believe you could get more opposite of Ben Ray Luján than me. You know my life experiences — I grew up. You know, things were tight. My dad — he was a union electrician, made good money, but he had six kids. My mom didn't work up until the time I was in the fourth or fifth grade. Then she had to go to work. I know what it's like to see your dad struggle to try to make a living. He was supporting six kids. This was in the 70s and early 80s, and then as I got older, I started working early in life. You know, started out working on little farms and various different jobs at gas stations. And then when I was 17, I went to work on drilling rigs my last year of high school. So, my life experiences in general are significantly different than what Ben Ray Luján's would be. And this sounds mean, but it's absolutely not mean, and I'm not trying to be a funny guy. I'm just stating a fact. My granddaughter has more life experience than what Ben Ray Luján does. When I got out of high school, like I said, I was already working on drilling rigs. I worked on drilling rigs a few more years, and I went into business for myself in the garage door business. The oil field cratered, you know, and the oil field will do that, and it's going to do that again. You know, we had a bust in the oil field. I went to work for a company called Overhead Door a few years later. I started one door company, did that, and stayed in construction, and always kind of kept my foot in the oil and gas industry, and as I got older, you know, I bought a farm, and all of that stuff. Through life— I've been really, really blessed in this life. I really have. I've experienced a lot of things. Grew up around agriculture, and that's been a part of my life my whole life. So, all of that being said, the totality of my experiences in this life, what I've seen, what I've experienced in this life. I know what it's like to work for the other man and live paycheck to paycheck. I know what it's like to work 14, 16, 18 hours every day for 20 or 30 days straight and just be totally beat up. You know, I'm 62 years old. I'm still in really good physical shape. I'm still a pretty good hand when I go on the job. I like when I go on the job. Now, I like to tell the young guys “I can still outwork you.” But, my life experiences are going to be the main difference. The way I view life is, I view life as you get up and you go to work. You don't ask for a handout. Sometimes you need help. Everybody's going to need help sometime. I don't have a problem with that, but we need to focus on our federal government providing an environment — a regulatory environment, and an economic environment — to where a young person can get up, get out of high school, whatever education level that they want to stop at. They can get out, they can go to work, or they can start a business, or they can do whatever they want to. Provide those opportunities, and ignite that passion in New Mexicans to eventually be the best. We've taken the butt whipping of being last on a whole lot of different things. Right now, we need to ignite that passion. What I propose we do — the biggest difference in me and Ben Ray Luján is I want to ignite the passion of New Mexico. To build and be better and be the best ever, it seems to me that Ben Ray Luján wants to continue to provide entitlement programs, keep people under the foot, or the heel of the federal government for the rest of their lives. I can't imagine living like that, and I can't imagine anybody wanting to live like that. When I look a man in the eye, when I hand him his paycheck and he earned it, there's a lot different look than a guy going to the post office and having to — what-we-call “back up to the mailbox to grab a paycheck.” We need to ignite that passion in the citizens of the state of New Mexico, and I'm seeing that passion right now. We're tired of being last, and this is the election where we ignite that passion.
KUNM: Well, we're coming up on our time here, but I wanted to give you a chance to highlight anything that we didn't bring up, or get a last message out there. Whatever you'd like to say, the mic is yours.
MARKER: Yeah, I could actually sit here for an entire week and talk about all this. I'm excited about the election. I'm excited about the next six years of my life. I'm excited about what we're going to be able to get accomplished. I'm going to go to Washington D.C. There's going to be times that I'm probably a little bit crossways with the established Washington, whatever you call that up there. But what I'm going to do, like I said, I want to go represent the citizens of the state of New Mexico, whether they were the ones that voted for me or not, or agree with everything. That's not the point. They are citizens of the state of New Mexico. When I get hired to go to Washington D.C. I want people to know I'm going to make decisions on what's good for the state of New Mexico. I'm going to make them based on my principles and what I believe is the best thing for the citizens of New Mexico. As far as in this election, I've had kind of a hard time with media getting much coverage. I appreciate what you've done here, especially, and I'm not talking about all media, but I'm having a hard time getting any traction. My name doesn't get mentioned a lot in the newspapers and stuff. It's usually “the opponent of Ben Ray Luján.” Well— and I know the strategy of the other side is: “well, let's not mention the guy's name. Let's don't give him a debate.” I wanted to debate Ben Ray Luján. He was invited. He — apparently his camp has decided they're not going to debate me. Well, and I know that's part of his strategy. I'm not a total idiot. I know that's part of his strategy, and that might be smart. But the issue I have with that: if your political strategy is more important than your responsibility to let the citizens or the voters know where you stand on issues, then your strategy is wrong. You need to express to the citizens what you plan to do for the next six years. Six years is a long term. It’s a very long term. It's a very very big decision to put somebody in an office for six years, and he's there. So, I believe, especially in this Senate race, we need to have a debate. We need to let the voters see “who is going to best represent me going down the road?” I've got 1,000 other things, but you look like you're getting tired, so I better shut up.
Support for this coverage comes from the W.K. Kellogg foundation.
