Rep. Steve Pearce (R) Elected 2002, 2d term
Born:	Aug. 24, 1947, Lamesa, TX
Home:	Hobbs
Education:	NM St. U., B.B.A. 1970, E. NM U. M.B.A. 1991
Religion:	Baptist
Marital Status:	married (Cynthia)
Elected  Office:	NM House of Reps., 1996-2000.
Military Career:	Air Force, 1970-76 (Vietnam).
Professional Career:	Owner, Lea Fishing Tools.
DC Office	1607 LHOB20515, 202-225-2365; Fax: 202-225-9599; Web site: www.house.gov/pearce
State Offices	Hobbs, 505-392-8325; Las Cruces, 505-522-2219; Roswell, 505-622-0055; Socorro, 505-838-7516.
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Southern and eastern New Mexico is a disparate landscape: endless sagebrush-strewn acreage and then, suddenly, 9,000-foot mountain peaks rising along the Continental Divide. The eastern part of this region--places like Clovis and Portales, Lovington and Hobbs--speaks with a Texas twang rather than a northern New Mexico lilt. In Little Texas, oil has long been the economic mainstay; cattle ranching is common and cotton is grown on irrigated land. One of the larger towns is Roswell, site of a supposed flying saucer landing in 1947 and now home of the International UFO Museum and Research Center. Further west is White Sands National Monument, with its immaculate gypsum dunes and animals with specially evolved white coloration that allows them to survive predators in the harsh environment; close by is Alamogordo, where the first atomic bomb was exploded at 5:29:45 a.m. Mountain War Time on July 16, 1945. Like many places on America's high plains, population here is thinning and old economic pillars are crumbling; Carlsbad, once reliant on potash mining, aggressively sought the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a nuclear waste repository. In central and western New Mexico, the scrub land shades into desert, and people are crammed into small cities, protected from summer's burning heat and winter's deathly cold. The Hatch Valley, in the desert adjoining Interstate 25, is home to perhaps the world's finest chili peppers--the traditional cornerstone of the Southwest's spicy cuisine. Places like Silver City and Bayard were built on mining, and occasional discord; the story of a strike by Mexican-American workers at a zinc mine here in 1950 and 1951 was told in Salt of the Earth, a movie with such a volatile message that it was blacklisted.

This is also an international frontier--the tiny town of Columbus was the site of a raid by Pancho Villa and his irregular band of soldiers in 1916. Las Cruces, now New Mexico's second largest city, has grown at rates well above the statewide average, thanks to migrants from Mexico coming up the Rio Grande. For decades, Anglo and Mexican ranchers across the border spoke "the common language of cattle"; communities frequently shared public services with their cross-border neighbors and left the gates open at night for stragglers stuck too late on the wrong side of the border. But rapid development due to NAFTA, a surge in illegal immigration and drug trafficking have brought enormous strains. Still, the New Mexico portion of the U.S.-Mexico border remains far sleepier than elsewhere: Whereas El Paso sees more than one million crossings a month, the three border posts that dot New Mexico's largely empty 150-mile frontier see less than 100,000.

The 2d Congressional District of New Mexico covers this southern part of the state, going as far north as the suburb of Las Lunas and the Isleta Pueblo south of Albuquerque and the Acoma Pueblo to the west. Demographically and politically, it is diverse. It includes most, but not all, of New Mexico's Little Texas--majority Anglo and solidly conservative, though with a Democratic heritage. It includes Las Cruces and the mining counties in the southwest corner of the state; Las Cruces is politically marginal and the mining counties Democratic. And it includes the Indian country around the pueblos, which is strongly Democratic. The district was 47% Hispanic in 2000, the highest of any New Mexico district, and 5% Indian. But more of the Hispanics are ineligible to vote here than in the 1st or 3d Districts.

The congressman from the 2d District is Steve Pearce, a Republican first elected in 2002. He grew up in Hobbs, near the Texas line, and graduated from New Mexico State in Las Cruces; he served in the Air Force and flew missions during the Vietnam War. He returned to Hobbs and started an oil-field service company. In 1996 he was elected to the state House. In 2000 he ran for the Senate, but lost the Republican primary to former Congressman Bill Redmond. In 2002, Republican Congressman Joe Skeen, stricken with Parkinson's disease, announced he would not run again. Pearce had two major competitors in the Republican primary: former state representative Phelps Anderson of Roswell, the son of former Arco chairman Robert Anderson, and Ed Tinsley, the owner of the K-BOBS USA steakhouse chain, who got Skeen's endorsement. Pearce ran a deft primary campaign. Using youth volunteers, he maximized his vote in Little Texas. He built on his ties to Las Cruces, where he had gone to college, and carried its Dona Ana County with 38% of the vote. Tinsley carried ten counties, but with no geographic base won only 27% of the vote. Anderson, without much support outside his home county, won 24%.

In the general there did not seem to be much difference between Pearce and the Democratic nominee, state Senator John Arthur Smith of Deming. Smith was an opponent of abortion rights, a believer in Second Amendment rights, a conservative who had often split from liberal Democrats in the legislature. But he proved not to be as adroit a campaigner as Pearce. Smith boasted that he had never raised any money for his state Senate campaigns. This time he did raise some money, and was the beneficiary of national Democrats and independent spenders. But Pearce, with the help of two visits from George W. Bush, raised much more. Pearce piloted his own plane around the district; Smith drove his own car (this matters in a district that covers 69,598 square miles). Pearce issued a press release saying, "Pearce takes strong stand on Iraq, Smith weak on issue." Smith ended up supporting the Iraq war resolution, the only New Mexico House or Senate Democratic candidate for Congress to do so. Despite polls showing a close race, Pearce won by a solid 56%-44% margin. He won large percentages, from 58% to 77%, in Little Texas. Smith's margins in his home county and in the mining and Indian counties were not enough to offset this.

In the House, Pearce usually voted with conservatives. The House passed his bill to eradicate water-depleting tamarisks in Western states, including New Mexico. He also won House approval of his bill to revitalize potassium output on federal lands, a substantial source of jobs in New Mexico; most potash is used as fertilizer, and the decline in production during the past decade had raised costs for farmers. He encouraged the Bush administration to drill for natural gas in the large Otero Mesa desert grassland in his district, which Governor Bill Richardson strongly opposed. In 2004 New Mexico was a target state in the presidential election, and George W. Bush appeared often with Pearce. But Pearce ran a bit ahead of Bush, winning 60%-40%, against Gary King, a Clinton Energy Department official and son of former three-term Democratic governor Bruce King. Pearce has said he wants to get Skeen's seat on Appropriations, but hasn't yet.

Committees

• Financial Services (32d of 37 R): Financial Institutions & Consumer Credit; Housing & Community Opportunity.
• Homeland Security (14th of 19 R): Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection & Cybersecurity; Emergency Preparedness, Science & Technology; Intelligence, Information Sharing & Terrorism Risk Assessment.
• Resources (19th of 27 R): Energy & Mineral Resources; Water & Power.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	0	0	0	0	80	53	95	96	81	100	--
2003	5	--	0	5	--	61	97	92	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	9%	--	84%		13%	--	85%
Social	15%	--	85%		36%	--	61%
Foreign	11%	--	80%		25%	--	68%
For National Journal's complete 2004 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 108th Congress (More Info)
1. Drilling in ANWR Y 2. Approve Bush Tax Cuts Y 3. Medicare/Rx Bill Y 4. Bar Overtime Pay Regs. N 5. DC School Vouchers Y 6. Ban Human Cloning Y		7. Restrict Gun Liability Y  8. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion Y  9. Ban Same-Sex Marriage Y 10. Fund Iraq War Y 11. Bar Cuba Embargo Funds N 12. Intelligence Reorg. Y

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2004 general	Steve Pearce (R)	130,498	60%	$1,997,549
	Gary King (D)	86,292	40%	$1,143,705
2004 primary	Steve Pearce (R)	unopposed
2002 general	Steve Pearce (R)	79,631	56%	$1,573,911
	John Smith (D)	61,916	44%	$826,735

2004 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 127,391 (58%) Kerry (D) 91,073 (41%)

2000 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 96,161 (54%) Gore (D) 76,868 (43%)

For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Second District, please see the Almanac 2000 online. Please note that these older returns reflect district lines as they existed prior to 2002 redistricting.

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: R + 6
• District Size: 69,598 square miles
• Population in 2000: 606,406; 71.0% urban; 29.0% rural
• Median Household Income: $29,269; 22.4% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 26.7% blue collar; 52.9% white collar; 20.4% gray collar; 14.9% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 44.3% White, 1.6% Black, 0.5% Asian, 4.8% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 1.2% Two+ races, 0.2% Other, 47.3% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 7.4% German, 5.9% English, 5.7% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.