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I have lived all over this state. Born in Albuquerque, I earned my bachelor’s degree in Materials Engineering from New Mexico Tech in Socorro, take my son to the water parks in Artesia and Carlsbad every summer, and he refuses to let me pass by Bricktown USA and the Roswell UFO Spacewalk without stopping both ways. I genuinely like New Mexicans — the ones who work the rigs, the ones who jockey the registers, and the ones who show up every day to keep Holloman flying and White Sands testing. I build iPhone apps and pill bottle caps, design chemical plants, and make GPS technology easier to use — all from scratch, with patents pending. I have a master’s degree from Georgia Tech and a specific, personal understanding of what it looks like when government systems are used as weapons against the people they are supposed to serve.

I am pro-Second Amendment, anti-government overreach, and pro-military.
I bet you don’t even know the Democrat incumbent’s name, and why should you? He hasn’t done much to earn it. New Mexico is a purple state with a long track record of weak Republican candidates. The votes are there. They are waiting for someone worth voting for.

I am not running to make a statement. I am running to win.

There is already a Republican making his case in this primary, and I respect that effort. My candidacy exists to ensure that New Mexico Republicans — and every independent and fed-up Democrat in this state — have a fighter on the November ballot no matter what the primary produces.
Everybody else running for something in this state whines about affordability, crime, and an education system that ranks 50th — without offering solutions or a credible plan to achieve them. 

Here is the solution: it’s the paychecks, stupid. People who work just as hard as their grandparents did, and get paid almost as little, even as prices have gone up on everything. You will not get Dollar General or Walmart to pay people what they are worth until a big factory opens up in town and pays $28 an hour to start with a high school diploma. We used to have those factories. They got sent to China. Now China is falling apart, and we have the opportunity to bring them back.

Otero County already knows this story firsthand. In 2013 there were plans to open the largest garnet mine in the United States right here in the Orogrande district — 47 jobs, $58,000 average wage, $160 million in economic impact over ten years. Industrial garnet is the abrasive that waterjet machines use to cut titanium, composites, and armor plate — the exact materials being fabricated for the weapons systems tested six miles down US-70 at Holloman and White Sands. The deposit is still there.

The end market is literally next door. The mine never opened because China undercut the price and nobody in Washington was paying attention. Our military buys that garnet from China. Let that sink in.

That is not an isolated example. The carbon fiber in every F-16 airframe at Holloman, the composite structures in every drone flying out of that base, the specialty materials in the hypersonic systems being proven at White Sands — the supply chains for all of it run through China, quietly supplied with Persian Gulf oil. 

Eddy County produces the petrochemical feedstock for carbon fiber. Otero County has the defense end market literally next door. The missing piece is the manufacturing facility in between, and the senator willing to fight for it in Washington. That is a $28-an-hour job for someone currently cleaning motel rooms or waiting tables at Denny’s — doing honest work that doesn’t pay what it’s worth because nobody ever built the factory that would force the market to compete for them.

The same government that ignores these opportunities has no trouble showing up at your door. I believe in a Federal Bureau of Authentication — a dedicated body to ensure that government documents, court records, and law enforcement actions are what they claim to be. I believe the systems built to protect citizens should not be turned against them. I have seen firsthand what it looks like when a legal firearm purchase becomes the trigger for a government home visit. That is not a hypothetical. That is happening to New Mexicans right now.

I know what it is to be taken for granted by Santa Fe and ignored by Washington. That shared experience — from Orogrande to Alamogordo to the whole of southern New Mexico — is the beginning of a coalition worth building.

My name is Matt Channon. I am running for U.S. Senate. This November, let’s vote the bums out.

Matt Channon is a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in New Mexico. He is an engineer, inventor, Uber driver, and dad. Learn more at mattchannon.com.