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Harry Garcia
“My goal is to help New Mexicans,” said Representative Harry Garcia. Rep Garcia is the incumbent for New Mexico House of Representatives District 69, Rep. Garcia was originally appointed to fill this position by Republican Governor Susana Martinez in September 2016, he was elected to the position in 2018, reelected in 2020 and is seeking another term in the NM House of Representatives.
Garcia’s first year in the legislature was a tough one, he said, but after taking the time to learn about the legislature, he quickly found his feet. What really worked for Garcia, was that he stopped looking at the processes in the legislature and started focusing on what can benefit the people of Grants, Cibola County, and the other counties in his district. This is when the tide started to turn for Garcia, and he became more successful in his endeavors, the legislative processes followed.
In his time in office, Garcia learned the importance of working with other representatives and senators to accomplish mutual goals. He said that working together with then-Senator Clemente Sanchez and Representative Eliseo Alcon of Milan, he was able to bring significant funding to the Grants/Cibola County School District. Working together, Garcia helped bring a new football field to Grants High School, $5 million for roads in Grants, 1.8 million to finish the construction of First Street, 2.5 million for a multi-use arena in the city of grants, of which construction is preparing to start, and significant funding for the repair of Washington Bridge. Garcia did not mention, but is also responsible for funding an ongoing project that will expand the economic opportunities of the Grants-Milan Airport.
“If you go in with the mentality that you’re just going to do Democrat stuff, or Republican stuff, you’re not going to get anything done,” Garcia said.
On crime, Representative Garcia said that the constitutional amendment passed by New Mexican voters in 2016 that began “Catch and Release” was beneficial and helpful at first, but it was quickly twisted into a system that has been let criminals off the hook where they just go and reoffend. Garcia said he supports revisiting and sending the catch and release bill back to the people to correct the ongoing issues with catch and release, and bring crime back down.
Garcia always pays a little extra attention to veteran’s issues. He chairs the Veteran’s Services Committee in the House of Representatives and is a Marine Corps veteran himself. His work with veterans has included efforts to save VA hospitals in rural New Mexico and keep financial support rolling in for state-backed veteran’s services.
“My goal is to help New Mexicans. I want to help New Mexico. I especially want to help rural New Mexico, there is always so much focus on the Albuquerque area and the Rio Grande corridor, and not even focus on rural New Mexico and rural New Mexicans. I want to change that and bring more attention and more help to the people of rural New Mexico.”
Representative Garcia does have a primary challenger, a write-in candidate named Marvin Trujillo. The Cibola Citizen attempted several times to contact Trujillo but only heard from his wife, who asked for us to email him our questions, it would be unfair for all of the other candidates who were expected to give at least a phone interview and have to think on the fly with our questions to have time to think out an appropriate answer, therefore we refused to email the questions and asked for Trujillo to call us back, he never did.