Griggs, Kugler seek Senate District 34 seat

New Mexico Sen. Ron Griggs, R-Alamogordo, and his opponent for the District 34 seat Darren Kugler, D-Cloudcroft, said despite which candidate wins in the 2020 General Election Nov. 6, the State Legislature will have many difficult decisions in the new year.

Griggs, 68, is a former Alamogordo City Commissioner and former mayor of Alamogordo. He's held the seat since 2012 and was on the Alamogordo City Commission from 1999-2012.

"I think that this time we have a chance to elect folks that will change New Mexico,” Griggs said. “For the past 90 years, we’ve been controlled basically by one political party. I think this year, this time, we have a chance to change that control and I’d like to be a part of that group that puts New Mexico back on track.”

Kugler is running for District 34 because he wants “to try to assist this district in dealing with reality.”

"I would like to see New Mexico accept its reality, stop with the empty promises, try to feed our children and see if we can make New Mexico proud of what we are without… some myth we can’t fulfill,” Kugler said.

Rural broadband

As a member of the state Senate Interim Science, Technology and Telecommunications Committee, Griggs hears discussion on expanding broadband across the state, particularly in rural areas, he said.

“That’s something that genuinely we need to do to, the challenge is funding broadband in places where you don’t have very many people,” Griggs said. “We’re working on different sorts of ideas and I think there will be legislation introduced (in the 2021 legislative session) to really accelerate that process.”

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Griggs hopes it can be done since rural broadband expansion is something all sides agree upon, he said.

More:Udall hosts rural broadband roundtable at NMSU-A

Kugler thinks that rural broadband expansion should be “the priority over the electric grid and expansion of phone (service).”

COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic and the emergency public health orders that have been placed to prevent its spread are part of an ongoing conversation on both sides.

Griggs thinks that Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has acted within the scope of a law that “did not anticipate a crisis like this.”

“She has taken it to its extreme,” Griggs said. “I don’t believe that that’s what needs to happen in New Mexico. I think we have got to get a check-and-balance for this law because no governor — and not just this one — but no governor should have the ability to operate unchecked by the legislature.”

Griggs said that the powers granted to the governor in a crisis need to be scaled back by addressing the existing law.

Griggs said equity is also needed in re-opening the state amid the pandemic. 

“What the governor did in initially shutting everything down, that was overly expansive to allow the big stores to stay open and you had to close the small ones,” Griggs said.

“When a store like Dollar Boots and Jeans can look at Tractor Supply being open and Dollar Boots and Jeans having to be closed, that’s just not done right, and I think had we been able to say that Dollar Boots and Jeans could stay open at 50 percent capacity, I think that would have been a reasonable approach.”

Griggs said the closure of local restaurants was also a point of contention in the re-opening process.

“The governor closed them twice after allowing them to be open. There was never an opportunity to see if opening at a 5 percent capacity was a reasonable approach,” Griggs said. “All you have to do is look at how bad that’s hit people in Alamogordo.”

More:COVID restrictions on restaurants not "fair and equitable"

Griggs would like to open the local economy back up but the authority to do that rests with Lujan Grisham.

There are still federal and state loans available to small businesses.

Kugler thinks that Lujan Grisham has been “on the right track but (the restrictions) have been ineffective because the people of New Mexico and outsidet visitors have not adhered to them."

More:Dine-in restrictions tax local restaurants

Kugler thinks that helping small businesses especially restaurants will be hard.

“I think we’re just going to have major loss of businesses that shut down,” Kugler said.

“We need to figure out how to help those employees: the waitresses, the cooks, cashiers. The industry was already suffering. I don’t know how we bring it back.”

Nicole Maxwell can be contacted by email at nmaxwell@alamogordonews.com, by phone at 575-415-6605 or on Twitter at @nicmaxreporter.