Albuquerque native boasts larger cash reserves than other Republican candidates

Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico

This article was originally published by Source New Mexico.

Doug Turner, an Albuquerque native who founded an international communications company and is now running in the Republican gubernatorial primary, said he would work to lower taxes, improve education and dismantle “large chunks” of the state’s troubled child welfare agency at the Albuquerque Journal’s ongoing candidate town hall series Tuesday.

Turner unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2010 and lost in the primary to Susana Martinez. He told a crowd gathered at the newspaper’s auditorium that he’s been disappointed in the state’s lack of progress since then when it comes to issues of economic development, taxation and public safety.

“I’d never run for anything before,” he said. “We are more or less the same place today on so many different levels as we were in 2010…that is really a driver on why I’m running. At some point if we don’t change things, things just continue to get worse.”

Turner spoke at the newspaper’s town hall event just a day after releasing his campaign’s first fundraising report, which showed he has more cash on hand than both of his Republican rivals — Rio Rancho Mayor Gregg Hull and former state cabinet secretary and current cannabis CEO Duke Rodriguez — combined.

Turner, who underperformed at the Republican pre-primary convention in March, only launched his campaign in January, which gave him a significantly shorter fundraising window than other candidates.

He said he was not in a position to form a campaign last year as he was grieving the loss of his wife to breast cancer. 

“I spent most of the year making sure my kids were OK,” he said, adding that he mentioned his political aspirations to his children. “My middle daughter, who’s 16, asked, ‘Dad would you regret it if you didn’t do it?’”

Turner used his time on the stage Tuesday to say he’d work to lower taxes, improve education and reign in the troubled New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department.

He said he believes it’s important to bring New Mexico’s personal income tax rate, which can run as high as nearly 6%, in line with surrounding states.

“Arizona’s 2.5%, Texas is 0%. To compete even with our surrounding states we need a better tax structure,” he said, adding that he’d work to cut New Mexico’s to “at least” 3%. 

Such moves will play a key role in attracting more economic growth to the state, he said. He pointed to developments like Project Jupiter in southern New Mexico and Intel in Rio Rancho as significant employers — and noted that water use for such projects should remain responsible.

But he said those developments should not come at the expense of small businesses.

“Small businesses in this state are really the driver of job creation,” Turner said. “We tend to gravitate to the unicorns that are going to save us.”

Education is an important building block in creating a robust economy, Turner said. He cited his time with Public Charter Schools of New Mexico, a school-choice advocacy group, and said he believes teaching children to read will prepare them to eventually graduate with the skills they need to land a good job.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in March signed an education bill into law that requires schools to teach best practices from a pedagogy known as structured literacy. Similar legislation in Mississippi coincided with a dramatic rise in National Assessment of Educational Progress scores.

“Look at our history competing with Mississippi — we were always competing for who could be next to last,” Turner said at Tuesday’s town hall. “If we’re moving kids through the system without solid metrics, we’re going to graduate more kids who don’t have the skills they need.”

Issues of turnover and abuse have long plagued the state agency tasked with overseeing child welfare. The New Mexico Department of Justice last week published a blistering report that accused CYFD officials of failing to address “systemic failures,” including gaps in protecting drug-exposed infants. Attorney General Raúl Torrez should remake CYFD “from the ground up.”

Turner said he agreed that “large chunks” of the agency ought to be dismantled, but said he was not on board with any effort to remove the department from the governor’s purview or to put it under the supervision of a commission.

After the event, Turner told Source NM that, although he hasn’t held public office, his experience consulting with clients such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the U.S. Department of Defense gives him the insight needed to lead the state. He praised Rio Rancho Mayor Hull for steering the growing suburb for more than a decade, but said he believes the governor’s office needs a fresh perspective.

“Rio Rancho is great, but the state isn’t Rio Rancho,” he said. “The state is different from one corner to the next and we have different challenges. We have the same desires, but we have different problems.”

Joshua Bowling is a senior reporter for Source New Mexico. He's reported in New Mexico, where he broke stories of lavish spending at Western New Mexico University and more, since 2022.