Schools and Education: Education is the backbone of a healthy society. In order to ensure our schools remain safe and engaging places to learn, and to make sure that our best teachers stay in New Mexico to help educate the next generation, I support policies that will place our schools where they should be: at the top of national rankings. I support bills to raise teacher pay, to incentivize teachers to stay in the school system rather than jump to the private sector, and to increase school safety and security in all schools.
For years now, schools across the state have sung the same song and danced the same dance every August: "Our HVAC is broken!". This is a problem that does not need to exist. As your state Representative, I will push to fund HVAC upgrades for schools across the state.
As a tireless advocate for libraries and the Right to Read, I am appalled by censorship efforts in schools and libraries across the country. While I agree that some content does go too far for children and should be restricted from them, we should also not be sanitizing everything we present to our children. Children should know how their bodies work, and they should be presented with a truthful account of history that does not omit crucial details or modify them to suit an agenda-- any agenda.
As a STEM educator, I recognize that science and math are just as important as reading and writing. As a Representative, I will support efforts to put hands-on STEM education in every elementary school classroom. I will also support ensuring that middle and high school science classes have the resources they need to discover STEM close-up.
Crime and Safety: For too long, crime has run rampant throughout the state. As a Representative, I will support efforts to get drugs off our streets, put repeat violent offenders in prison, and make sure that rapists, murderers, and child predators are sentenced harshly (but fairly). At the sam time, though, I recognize that many criminals require mental health treatment, and so I support providing them with the help they deserve. I believe that, with proper treatment, many people can become productive members of society.
Similarly, I believe everyone arrested for drug- or alcohol-related crimes should be able to undergo addiction treatment.
Abortion and Equal Rights: I believe abortion should be safe, legal, and, most importantly, rare. I believe we should provide sex education in schools to ensure teenagers are educated on safe sex practices, and that contraceptives should be reaily and inexpensively accessible.
I support the rights of LGBTQ+ people to marry, adopt, and live their lives as they see fit. I believe we should take further steps to end racial and gender discrimination, that all law enforcement officers should be required to wear body cameras at all times while in uniform, and that all law enforcement officers with multiple valid use of force complaints in a short period should be relieved of their duty.
Guns: I firmly support responsible gun ownership. At the same time, though, I also believe that we should do whatever it takes to get guns out of the hands of dangerous people.
I believe gun owners should be licensed, and should have to undergo gun safety training at regular intervals to maintain their license. I believe we should maintain a registry of guns and their licensed owners to help ensure they stay in the hands of those who can be responsible with them.
I support continuing to require background checks and seven-day waiting periods for all gun purchases, and background checks for ammunition purchases if the person purchasing the ammunition does not own a registered firearm capable of firing that caliber of ammunition.
I believe violent felons should be banned for life from having a gun license, and we should ban high-capacity magazines.