Exclusive — New Mexico’s Steve Pearce on Republicans’ Redistricting Lawsuit: Court’s Decision Could Affect the Next 10-30 Years

Former New Mexico Republican Congressman Steve Pearce told Breitbart News this past weekend that the outcome of a  lawsuit challenging the redistricting map in the state can affect the next 10-30 years or more after the Democrat-controlled legislature and Democrat governor used their position to gerrymander the state for political gain.

Pearce, who represented New Mexico’s Second Congressional District from 2003 to 2009 and again from 2011 to 2019, explained the importance of the Republicans’ lawsuit on redistricting and how much the Democrats’ abuse of the redistricting process would affect the state on SiriusXM‘s Breitbart News Saturday.

Pearce explained that the legislature created the redistricting committee in New Mexico, with two Republicans, two Democrats, and two independents. The committee was supposed to hold meetings in various parts of the state, including central New Mexico, the four geographic quadrants of the state, and one of the tribal lands, according to the Citizen Redistricting Committee website.

The former congressman noted that the committee did the work and developed three maps. But, when it came to the Democrat-controlled legislature, Pearce said, “they just routinely dismissed all the maps and dismissed the work of that commission and said, ‘We’re going to do our own thing.’ That happened in December of last year.'”

Listen:

He said that the legislature “came out with a map that was … gerrymandered” in December, which the state House and Senate passed, and the governor signed into law. But Pearce explained that he had been watching the process for “about a year” with the intent to file a lawsuit if the Democrats ignored the committee. Reports showed that multiple judges kept recusing themselves from the suit, which continuously took valuable time. And as Pearce explained, the Democrats’ only argument after the state Supreme Court assigned a judge to the suit and put a date on the books was that they wanted everything to be dismissed, claiming “this thing is too late.”

Pearce said that a judge assigned to the case ruled in the Republicans’ favor by agreeing that there is a “strong, well-developed case that the Senate [unintelligible] was a partisan gerrymander created in an attempt to dilute Republican votes.” Pearce further explained that while the process of overturning the Democrats’ gerrymandering is still ongoing, and it appears that the new maps will stay in place for this year, the future is at stake.

“If we allow the maps to stand — they’re very egregiously gerrymandered — if we allow them to stand, they could well be in place for the next 30 or 40 years, which would just remove any chance for Republicans to win, and New Mexico needs congressional seats. So that’s a kind of a thumbnail sketch of where we’ve been over the last month,” he said.

“Keep in mind that for the maps to change, the census occurs every ten years. But you have to have a new law that changes the maps,” he explained. “It’s been about 30 years since we’ve been able to get a law passed, we might have a Republican governor and Democrat legislature, maybe the Democrats didn’t all agree. So this is at least a 20- or 25-, probably a 30- or 35- [year effect] if we aren’t very careful. So … the stakes are huge.”

Pearce clarified that it is vital to have a Republican representing the state and the different areas because Democrats want to kill different industries and kill jobs — such as mining, oil and gas, and agriculture — that the state needs to thrive.

Describing the process when he was in Congress, he said that “there is a real congeniality among committee members, Democrats and Republicans toward each other, that if it’s your district, your jobs, then we’re going to leave it alone if you ask us to leave it alone.”

“I was able to intercede, well, no Democrat is going to stand up for oil and gas, no Democrat is going to stand up for the military,” he added. “That’s the reason the Afghanistan debacle is so bad, [Democrats] don’t understand or appreciate the military. No Democrat is going to fight for agriculture water rights. They’re going to follow the party line. And so what’s at stake here is being able to keep the social customs, the economic customs, and jobs that we currently have.”

Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.

Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.