Two Democrats and three Republicans are running for governor of New Mexico. The primary is on June 2, with early voting already underway. For the first time, people who are registered as independents can now vote in New Mexico primaries. Former U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland was the first Native American U.S. Interior Secretary and is leading in the polls against her rival, Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman. She spoke with New Mexico PBS host Nash Jones recently on New Mexico in Focus about her policy priorities.
NMPBS: Your competitor, Sam Bregman, is the Bernalillo County District Attorney, and he's positioned himself in some ways as kind of the law and order candidate, or the tough on crime candidate in this race. How does your plan to combat crime differ from Mr. Bregman's, and why should voters who consider public safety their number one issue elect you instead?
DEB_HAALAND: My plan differs in the fact that I want to get to the root causes of crime. It's my belief that the root causes of crime start long before somebody commits their first crime, right? You know, think about the ways we can help families to have stronger family units. Some parents have to work, three and four jobs just to make ends meet when they should be spending more time with their families. I think we can foster more of a family unit that would be beneficial to children. Our public school system, so many children don't read early enough, and if they can read early enough, that opens up an entire educational journey for them. The terrible fentanyl problem that we're experiencing in New Mexico, a lot of folks, they commit crimes because of substance use. We need to get those illegal drugs off of our streets, so law enforcement needs the tools to get violent criminals to get illegal drugs off our streets, and we just need to get to the root causes of crime.
NMPBS: As Interior Secretary, you instated or proposed several protections for public lands in New Mexico, and in some cases, sacred lands here across the state. As Governor, how would you balance preserving New Mexico's natural resources with tapping them as an economic driver?
HAALAND: There are places to drill and mine, there are places not to drill and mine, right? Chaco [Culture National Historical Park] isn't one of those places. I mean, look, when I was Secretary of the Interior, we really consolidated the footprint of oil and gas, and yet we still were producing oil and gas. It's really ensuring that we are making our steps count, right? That we're not just opening up every inch of our state to the industry, but thinking deeply about where does this make sense and where does it not make sense.
NMPBS: New Mexico does have some of the strictest emission standards in the country, but the Environment Department has struggled to keep up with enforcement. How under your governorship would you support enforcement of these strict standards? So they're not just in the books, but actually being followed?
HAALAND: We might need to hire some more folks, make sure that these people are trained and that they understand the laws and the regulations, just staffing up in the best way possible, I think, will really make a difference in how we're managing that.
NMPBS: With the oil and gas industry contributing so much to the state's revenue, do you imagine there'll be some pushback on that if the money that's being spent on staffing up the Environment Department, for instance, is oil and gas revenue money?
I mean, I don't think anyone would argue that our children deserve clean air, clean land, clean water, right? Our children deserve all of those things, and so those would be my top priorities, making sure our kids have what they need to thrive. I don't see any industry executive arguing with that fact, so I think they are working hard also to make their footprint smaller, to operate in a cleaner way. Technology has really blossomed for so many industries over the last five to 10 years, and it's up to us to make sure that we're implementing those technologies in the furtherance of how industry operates in the state. We need sustainable industry here. The climate crisis is ready to swallow us whole. We need to make sure that we are protecting our environment for future generations.