"So, the people generally saying that are not living on $30,000 a year. "Is it fair to waive poverty in front them?" he interrupts. Pearce's experience growing up in a lower-middle class family seems to be on the tip of his tongue when SFR asks about the argument that it's unfair to waive six-figure jobs in front of desperate communities when there are long-term health costs that are harder to consider in tough economic times. "We ship our oil from southeast New Mexico to Houston and make Houston one of the richest cities on Earth," he says.
His knowledge of the oil industry has shaped his drive to add a refinery to New Mexico's natural resources portfolio. He and his wife, Cynthia, are the sole owners of an equipment leasing company and have enough other business interests to land him inside the top 50 wealthiest members of Congress, with a net worth of at least $7.73 million, according to Roll Call. He speaks frequently about creating jobs. But they haven't disappeared, Pearce says, and he didn't have to land in water. He's flown himself around the world and had to land in the Gilbert Islands, which are threatened by rising sea levels. Pearce believes a lot of the research behind the global scientific consensus on human-caused climate change has been directed to get that result. Government agencies are biased, he says, and while he can't point to anything specific with gun control, he says he knows it when he sees it.
He thinks data is important, but how it's gathered is important, too. There you run the risk of scientific bias, Pearce cautions. Should the CDC be allowed to ask them by researching gun violence? Banning bump stocks? He's open to the discussion. Pearce generally doesn't think gun control will do much to curb gun violence and says gun ownership limits are hard to discuss in hypotheticals. "I want accountability for people who are choosing to do nothing in the face of it," he says. And he wants schools that refuse security personnel to have to be on the record with that choice. He wants the federal government to provide metal detectors for public schools. Gun-free zones, he says, are invitations to school shootings. He also believes, though, that some of them should be armed. "We want the teachers to do everything except teach," he says. He thinks teachers have been turned into bureaucrats instead of educators. Sometimes, however, they bump up against each other. And despite the fact that it took more than a dozen requests from SFR to his staff (and a public promise at a luncheon attended by our editor and publisher) to get the man to sit down across a conference room table, Pearce doesn't seem like a guy who is afraid to share his opinions.
Pearce, who also served three terms in the New Mexico Legislature, comes off as a guy who puts a lot of stock in personal experience. He thinks he would have done a lot better in 2010, and this time, he believes he has the political timing down. And that was the year of the financial meltdown," Pearce tells SFR during an hour-long conversation on a recent afternoon. He's never lost a race there, but he couldn't make that appeal stick on a statewide level in 2008, when he narrowly defeated a more moderate Heather Wilson in the US Senate primary, but was trounced by Tom Udall in the general election, losing by more than 20 points. While Pearce's southern New Mexico congressional district has been leaning more and more his way since he was first elected in 2002, it still has more registered Democrats than Republicans and a majority of voters identify as Hispanic. Martinez recently refused to endorse Pearce, and the veteran congressman says that's fine by him. Susana Martinez that the problem isn't with Republicans, it's with her. Pearce must convince a state that's in the final months of its second term under now-unpopular Republican Gov. He doesn't seem likely to arrive at a satisfactory saturation stopping point until Election Day in November. He plans to barnstorm around the state until he's told everyone he can that he's the man who should be governor. He doesn't plan to put a dent in that own-bed deficit anytime soon. Steve Pearce says he's spent about four nights in his house since June.
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