Susan Morée:
The first question is, tell us about how your background has prepared you to serve in this office?
Simon Sotelo, III
Okay, I think my background in community organizing, event planning has prepared me for this office, but also I have worked on a couple of pieces of legislation at the state level and at the federal level. I have spent my entire adult life advocating for my community in different ways, whether it being creating coalitions that bring resources to our community, working on public land issues. I've also spent a lot of time working on the youth mural program projects here in our community. I have served on several different boards, including the Youth [unintelligible] Program Advisory Board. I have worked with the Silver City Gospel Mission. So, my entire adult life has been just advocating in different ways for our community. I've also organized one of our largest events of the year. It's called Chocolate Fantasia.
Susan Morée:
Second question, why are you running for this office?
Simon Sotelo, III
I am running for this office again, spending most of my adult life working and advocating for my community, volunteering, things like that. I recognize this position as a way to be able to continue that work at a much higher level, at a broader reach, so to speak. And that broader reach would be extending from not just advocating at a grassroots level for projects, organizations, issues within my community, it would actually be at a, again, at a higher position with a broader reach. And county commissioners are the go-between. And so that allows the opportunity to actually bring more resources into our community to help fund the work that's already being done in our community.
Susan Morée:
Next question is, what are the top issues in your district for this office?
Simon Sotelo, III
First one is mental health, the coexistence of the mine and the community itself. I think another one would definitely be funding quota indefinitely, which is our public transit system here in Grant County and possibly expanding it. Another one would be just resources and general roads, infrastructure. We also have the detention center, which happens to be one of our largest expenditures as a county and also the hospital. It does sustain to other counties along with ours. And so we need to work on the infrastructure there to bring more doctors, nurses into our hospital and into our community.
Susan Morée:
And how would you successfully address those issues?
Simon Sotelo, III
Oh, so I think one of the first things is looking at where we are spending the most amount of money. And again, one of those is the detention center and finding ways to curb the amount of people that we are incarcerating within the detention center. The other one is looking at quality of life that we are offering to nurses and doctors to be able to keep them here long term. Gila Regional does operate on quite a few traveling nurses and traveling doctors, which means they're not building a consistent relationship within our community for the people that they are serving. And I believe that the way to do that is, again, through looking at fiscal responsibility and funding to make these things happen in the long term.
Susan Morée:
And what else do you think is important for voters to know about your campaign?
Simon Sotelo, III
I think one of the most important things for voters to know about my campaign is that I am not taking any money from special interest groups or political action committees. I am completely funded by community members here who want to see change moving forward, creating long-term sustainability for our community, and also people who know that we need to make progress while also honoring where we are at culturally, financially, and historically within our community, surrounding the mines, surrounding the economic development that we have done in the past. Also knowing that we need to expand upon it and make it much more sustainable.
