Viante New Mexico

Oct 3, 2019

New Mexico, how did we get here?

In the first episode of the inaugural Viante New Mexico: A Way Forward Podcast hosts Rhiannon Samuel and Dale Armstrong talk to New Mexico leader Ed Lujan. The discussion started with why New Mexico is at the wrong end of many national lists and why he feels hopeful about the state’s future. You won’t want to miss this conversation with a New Mexico legend. Rhiannon: Thank you everyone for joining us today on the Viante New Mexico podcast. Viante New Mexico is a nonpartisan organization whose goal is to find transparent and accountable information on our state elected officials. To find out who’s working together to fix our education, crime, and quality of life issues. Today on our first episode of our first season, we have with us Edward Lujan, along with Viante co-Chair and Founder, Dale Armstrong. I as always am Rhiannon Samuel, Executive Director of Viante New Mexico, and today we’re going to talk about, “How did we get here, New Mexico?” We want to have a deeper conversation about how we ended up on the wrong end of so many national lists. I want to talk about why we brought Edward Lujan here on with the show with us. I’m going to start with his bio. He was born in Santa Fe and he is a graduate from NMSU with a bachelor’s degree in agriculture and a masters in agricultural education. He is the former CEO of Manuel Lujan Agencies and retired in 1997. He was instrumental in getting the National Hispanic Cultural Center built and is now Chair Emeritus of it. He was a former chairman of the NM Economic Development Commission, served on the board of directors of the Albuquerque Economic Development Corporation, and was chairman of the state Republican party from 1983 – 1987 just to name a few of his community leadership roles. Dale, Ed, thank you for joining us today. Dale & Ed: Thank you for having us on here. R: Dale, I’m going to kick it off to you and let you start our conversation. D: Its interesting. To me, Ed is a strong pillar of the community, actually the state of New Mexico. I wanted to ask Ed why did he choose to build and grow your company and family here in New Mexico and not somewhere else. I think you’re pretty passionate about that. E: Yes, I am, Dale. Obviously, it’s a bit of genealogical history. Our families came into New Mexico in 1600, so we have always been New Mexico and lived in Santa Fe, we were born and raised there then I moved to Albuquerque in ‘68. My father started the insurance agency in Santa Fe. Then I did here, we opened a branch in Albuquerque. Didn’t think so at the time, but fortunately they sent me here. But really, that’s why we’re here, in New Mexico. New Mexico truly is God’s country as far as we’re concerned. It’s got so much to give, that I don’t have any desire, don’t think my kids do to live any place else but New Mexico. It does have its problems, big time, and we have to do the best from my perspective, whatever I can to help get rid of this “I Can’t” attitude. R: I want to dissect a little bit more, “God’s Country.” Why do you think New Mexico is, what are the elements that make you love it so much? E: There’s so many things that New Mexico has, but one of them is the weather. If you really look at it, none of our weather is severe, but yet we have distinctly four seasons. They’re very distinct. I feel sorry for the southern part of the country. All of the hurricanes, all of the tornadoes. WE just don’t have any. I think we’ve had in my lifetime maybe we’ve recorded seven of eight tornadoes in New Mexico. They just aren’t here. There’s so much here, when you begin to look at the natural things we have: oil, gas, air, wind. Everything’s here. When this world was made, the good lord stopped here and said, “I’m going to build this my way” so New Mexico is that way. D: I agree with that. I know that you’re passionate about your family, you’re passionate about New Mexico. Have you been able to keep all of your children and your grandchildren here in New Mexico or have they up and left? E: No, they’re all here with the exception of one. I have 4 children, 14 grandchildren, and 15 great-grandchildren. All of them are here with the exception. One of my granddaughters and her four children. They live in Singapore. He got a job in that part of the country, but I’ve been very fortunate. We’ve been very fortunate that they were able to stay here, able to find jobs, that they could stay here. That unfortunately isn’t the case for everyone. D: We’ve ran into a lot of people that that’s a big deal to them. That they have family that leave. I feel fortunate too, my two sisters and one brother are still in New Mexico, and a majority of their kids are here in New Mexico. You have a long history with New Mexico, your family has a long history with New Mexico, when we look at the three things Viante cares about, we look at things that any citizen should care about. We’re not after the divisive things which they are plenty of those out and about. When we talk about education, crime, and quality of life. Right now, in those areas we have our challenges, and I’m just curious with your experience have you found a time in the state’s history where we actually excelled in those areas? Maybe we can help guide to repeat that or get back to that space. E: I don’t know, Dale. I don’t mean to be critical, but we need to look at where we’re at, and where we’re going. I don’t know that we’ve ever been in a place where we can say we’re there. A lot of reasons. I can surely tell you, I taught school in the 50’s; nothing’s changed. In fact, it has gotten worse. 30% reading rate, 38% math rate. We just aren’t there. Quite frankly to me, the three things you mentioned, those are the pillars of viable economic development resurgence. One time they asked me how can we get the economic development better? My pure answer is raise education, period. I hate to say it, but if I was CEO of a company that was not here, and looking to come here, it would be a very difficult decision. Knowing New Mexico and knowing what I know, it would be a very difficult decision for me to bring my company here with those kinds of statistics. We have in this state, I served on Economic Development Commission, I’ve served on a lot of economic development committees. My big thing that I’m interested in is Education, economic development, and the art; the culture. To bring a company in, and I looked at the pluses and minuses. The culture and the art might bring them in no problem. I would look in the crime part of it and see that maybe can be repairable very quickly. If I brought my company here, I would be on the forefront of trying to help repair that. When I look at education, what about it? It really behooves all of us to get really interested in looking at education and do our part in trying to move education forward. We had this “poor me” attitude. When you look at “poor me” it creates chips on your shoulder. The more chips you have, first you can’t run, secondly you keep piling those chips on and it’s difficult to walk. What’s happening to us, and it does bother me, it’s all “poor me”. We can’t get out of this because we have too any poor people. We can’t get out of this because we have too many non-English speaking people. We can’t get out of this because were rural, and all of things we can’t. There’s no such thing as a poor person being able to learn. My cliché is when the good lord made us he didn’t say, “I’m going to make you with a small brain because you’re going to be poor, and I’m going to make you with a big brain and a smart brain because you’re going to be wealthy.” He never said that. It’s the same brain, he didn’t take sides. So, nobody can tell me you can’t learn. Go ahead… R: I don’t mean to interrupt, but I agree with you. This is something that comes up in…

Play