By Vanessa Dabovich
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/krwg/local-krwg-928854.mp3
Las Cruces, NM – In this year's midterm election only the House of Representative seats are up for grabs and Incumbent Joni Gutierrez who is a landscape architect is facing off against Republican Virginia Robertson a local small business owner.
If re-elected Gutierrez says she would like to focus on education and job creation in the state.
Gutierrez- "Education and jobs hand and glove, those are the top priorities. I think we have a lot of opportunity here in Dona Ana County to create a lot more jobs and great education. Everyone deserves quality education and just don't think we can give up. I think that we need to really fight so that our kids will get a good education and be competitive enough to go away, but want to stay here because the jobs are available."
Gutierrez is a member of the Government Restructuring Task Force which is legislators and private citizens that come together to look at consolidating resources when it comes to government. She says combining departments will help the current budget issues.
Gutierrez also says she has been working on creating a planning department.
Gutierrez-"When it comes to capital outlay money we sort of just tend to be a little bit district by district. We don't really look at the needs statewide. I think if we had a planning dept. we could look at everything from how we use our state land to how cities develop and help local communities with some of the resources as far as planning. When we get our national report card NM is just not that good when it comes to using capital outlay money to do statewide efforts so I'm proposing that we have a state planning department."
Early voting is taking place now through October 30th at the Dona Ana County Government Center and early voting at other polling locations begins on October 16th. You can hear a previously aired story on Challenger Virginia Robertson in the Election 2010 section of our website, KRWG.org.