Republican candidate Ronchetti visits Clovis

Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Ronchetti said his lack of experience in government is one of his greatest pluses.

To think that experience in government should be a prerequisite for seeking office, he said last week during a visit to Clovis, is “arrogant.”

President Joe Biden has had 50 years of experience and has left the country in a mess, he said, making a similar comment about New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s years of government experience.

Ronchetti said he is a believer in small government.

“Bigger government crushes people,” he said.

Ronchetti said the state’s most pressing issues include inflation and high prices, crime and education.

 “Family budgets being crushed by inflation and taxes,” and small businesses have been hurt, he said. “We’ve got to address that.”

New Mexico state budgets have been growing, he said, and instead of finding new ways to spend the money, the state should be “giving it back to the people.”

He said Gov. Lujan Grisham’s $200 tax rebate checks to taxpayers “aren’t nearly enough.”

Kendall Witmer, press secretary for the Lujan Grisham campaign, responded in an email that in 2020 and 2021, the state saw “the most number of business formations ever,” citing U.S. Census data.

In 2019, she said, New Mexico ranked among the nation’s top 10 states for job growth, experiencing the state’s “best year for job growth ever.”

The state has become the nation’s second-largest producer of oil and gas, producing more during the Lujan Grisham administration than ever, even while it grew the state’s clean energy economy to be one of the largest in the country, Witmer wrote.

Ronchetti said catch-and-release bond-setting and the end of some liability immunities for police officers are discouraging many from becoming police officers and accounts for officer shortages in the state.

Witmer wrote that Lujan-Grisham tried to pass bail reform during the 2022 state Legislature, but the Legislature “stood in the way.”

On education, Ronchetti said local school districts should have more say in how students are educated to achieve state learning achievement standards.

Ronchetti said there are five or six pages in the state’s current social studies curriculum that focus on “ways to pit kids against each other,” he said, instead of uniting them.

Witmer responded that New Mexico’s social studies standards needed updating, because they had not been updated since 2009, leaving out significant U.S. events.

 Ronchetti was asked, “Did Donald Trump win the presidential election in 2020?”

His answer: “No.”

“It has nothing to do with New Mexico anyway,” he said. “We are hurting now, and focusing on things from the past are not going to help.”