BILL McCAMLEY (D-NM)-- A PROGRESSIVE APPROACH TO RURAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

There are two Democrats running to replace rubber stamp wingnut Steve Pearce in New Mexico's gigantic, sprawling 2nd congressional district. One is a right-of-center, Republican-lite oil man who contributes to GOP politicians. The other, Bill McCamley, is the progressive, grassroots candidate. Bill is an on-the-ground, sleeves rolled up expert on rural economic development. I called him yesterday and asked him if he could help DWT readers who don't live in rural settings understand some of the problems that beset people and understand what can be done to ameliorate them. Below is Bill's report. Please consider making a contribution to his campaign after you read it:

Last September I had the chance to sit down with Steve Jarding, who was Mark Warner’s Campaign Manager and who co-wrote Foxes in the Henhouse: How the Republicans Stole the South and the Heartland and What the Democrats Must Do to Run ’em Out. Jarding is a real dynamic guy who had lots of great ideas to share. If you haven’t read his book, its premise is simple: Democrats have failed to reach out to rural America… and as a result, rural America has stopped paying attention to Democrats. 

For me, this message really hit home. As the Executive Director of the New Mexico Rural Development Response Council, I spent two and a half years traveling to small communities throughout our state and assisting them with issues like affordable housing, economic development, infrastructure, and education. I saw how often rural New Mexico was ignored by politicians from both sides of the aisle-- but especially by Steve Pearce, the incumbent I started running against last April but who’s now running for Senate. As a result, rural New Mexico is in trouble. In the Second Congressional District (where I’m running), every single one of the small rural counties lost population between 2000 and 2006-- including two that shrunk by over 10%. 

Now that I am running for Congress, I want to make sure that I visit rural communities as much as I can, and that I talk about the issues that matter to rural New Mexico. In particular, there are two critical policy issues that need to be addressed to assure that small towns can stay viable places for people to live: economic development and health care.

Regarding economic development, the biggest problem that I saw was the divide between the workforce development/education sectors and those trying to recruit and/or incubate businesses in small towns. When these two groups of people do not communicate, sustainable economic development is not possible. Let’s say a local workforce board or community college decides to set up a specific educational service; for example, training for work in a cheese plant. However, there is no cheese plant located in the town, so educated workers will take their taxpayer-funded training and leave to another area where there is a cheese plant and they can get a job.

On the flip side, what if an economic group in the same community tries to recruit a metal goods company to the area? There aren’t any trained workers for this industry because all the available people are being trained to work in a cheese plant. The business will choose not to come because they will not be able to find employees. This scenario may seem silly, but I saw it happening in communities of different sizes all across the state.

One of the things I want to encourage in Congress through federal agencies is project-based development. It means that all resources in an area from workforce training/education, infrastructure development, transportation, and economic incentives need to be focused on a single project (or very small number of projects) that will allow resources to be used as effectively as possible.

Instead of inventing separate efforts, a community should come up with a plan that the majority of residents wishes to pursue, and then federal agencies should come in and fund programs that support the overall project concept. So, if a community wants to make cheese, the Department of Transportation could provide small grants that assist with the ability to get dairy trucks in and out of the town, educational institutions should train people to make cheese, the USDA should help with marketing the cheese, etc. If we don’t pursue this concept, and limited resources in small communities continue to be divided, these towns will keep having problems, and their populations will remain stagnant or decreasing.

Health care is another large issue nationwide, but rural communities face health care challenges that go beyond the ones that are facing the nation as a whole (i.e., the uninsured, the underinsured, the cost of prescription drugs, etc.). They have had massive problems recruiting health care providers of all varieties (primary care doctors, specialists, and nurses) to their areas, meaning that even if everyone has the ability to obtain health insurance, as both Democratic presidential candidates have proposed, they will not have regular access to the providers that give this care.

Any major health care reforms need to take this into account. Provisions should be made to award more funding to rural community hospitals, health clinics, and programs that will incentivize doctors and nurses choosing to live and work in rural towns. If this is not done, no health insurance program, no matter how well-designed, will provide the access to care that rural citizens desperately need.   

New Mexico’s Second Congressional District is large-- about the size of Pennsylvania. There are a lot of small communities that need help. Paying attention to them and their issues is good politics, but even more importantly, it’s good policy.

Over the past few days the frustration of average Americans has become a hot-button issue in the Presidential race. Many rural Americans are just as frustrated as their urban and suburban counterparts, if not more so.

How does this frustration affect people in rural New Mexico? In a recent poll of Democratic primary voters in the 2nd Congressional District, 90% of those who answered thought that Washington was broken. Nine out of ten. Think about that.

I spent an hour pumping gas for voters at a gas station in Los Lunas, New Mexico on Saturday, and I heard over and over how frustrated people were about the inability of Washington to do anything to help with all the rising costs that they are facing (without any comparable rises in what they're
earning).

We here in southern New Mexico see what everyone else does... the bailouts of Bear Stearns without the help for the middle-class family whose home is being foreclosed, the trickle-down tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans without the same help for the middle class, the best health care in the world available for those that can afford it, while one in five New Mexicans has no health insurance and many more are underinsured.

But in rural New Mexico, because of the lack of good jobs, health care provision, and many other services, these frustrations are magnified. This is why I am running; to make sure that Washington enacts policies that help out the normal person instead of special interests, and in doing so helps to keep rural communities as viable and sustainable places to live.

-Bill McCamley
candidate for Congress- (NM-02)