Rick Newton, of Taos, will soon announce his intention to run for Congress in 2012 against incumbent Ben Ray Luján, D-NM.

Newton, a Republican, said he has never held elective office, but his exploratory committee has been at work in the Third Congressional District longer than a month in preparation for his campaign.

“I’ve been talking to county chairs throughout the district,” he said. “I’m not a career politician.”

Newton said he plans to make his official announcement Nov. 1.

He is now retired, but Newton said his experience with the defense industry and business in general makes him a good choice to represent Northern New Mexico in Congress. He said he is a “solutions-oriented” candidate who has ideas that cross party lines, including a way to “fix” Social Security without raising taxes or cutting benefits.

“It really is specifics,” he said. “It will be attractive to both sides of the aisle.”

According to campaign literature he has prepared, Newton’s ideas for Social Security include replacing “$2.6 trillion in high-risk IOUs with hard assets like rare earth minerals, oil and gas, uranium and base metals.” According to Newton’s literature, under his plan the government “pays back the $2.6 (trillion) it stole with hard assets of real value,” jobs are created and states earn more royalties from natural resources on state lands.

Among other stands that he cites in his campaign brochure, Newton believes that “supply-side growth in the private sector is good for long-term jobs,” and he would like to see less regulation and “stop the Fed’s printing of money.” To create jobs, Newton suggests repealing the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, which gave Congress the power to impose an income tax, as well as “downsizing” the government and eliminating “excessive regulations.”

Newton is opposed to abortion, teacher tenure provisions and “all public sector collective bargaining,” according to his brochure.

Newton is in favor of limiting the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment in order to prevent “anchor babies.” He also favors school vouchers, charter schools, merit pay for teachers, mandatory Spanish and Chinese classes and “paid private sector summer work for teachers.”

Newton is also in favor of what his literature refers to as a “Shariah Law Amendment” — “I favor an amendment that clarifies the separation of church and state: ‘No religion shall advocate the violation of any law found to be Constitutional nor engage in any sedition to disobey any such law.’”

Newton said he grew up in Hannibal, Mo., a small community in the likes of which he said people tend to be “more patriotic” and “faith-based.” He said he hopes to gain national attention (and funding) while doing book tours for a “political autobiography” he is working on but has yet to find a publisher for.

Newton said he plans to base his campaign in Taos, where he said he believes he can win over Democratic voters with his ideas.

“I’m offering specifics,” he said.

He said he enjoys interacting with people at town hall forums and thinks he can connect with voters that way.

“That’ll make the difference,” he said.

Although Northern New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District generally is considered a “safe” Democratic seat, a Republican who recently moved to Taos plans to challenge incumbent Democrat U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján next year.

Rick Newton, a businessman whose career has included high-profile deep-sea recovery projects, is scheduled to formally announce his intentions at 7 p.m. Tuesday at his campaign headquarters, 307 Paseo del Pueblo Sur.

Luján is serving his second term in Congress. Newton will be his first declared challenger, Republican or Democrat, in the 2012 race.

According to his campaign website and campaign material, Newton was involved in the recovery of a nuclear-powered Soviet submarine in the Pacific Ocean as well as recovery of the SS Central America, a steamship that sank in 1857 with an estimated $1 billion in gold, and other underseas projects.

He also helped prepare Soviet nuclear threat assessments for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.

Newton owns a small security technology company that has applied for patents, campaign manager Ken Scarborough of Taos said in an email Monday.

Newton has been living in Albuquerque but recently signed a lease-to-purchase contract on a home in Taos, Scarborough said. He has owned other property in the Taos area, Scarborough said.

According to a campaign brochure, Newton not only advocates changing some existing laws, but also seeks to amend the U.S. Constitution. He says the 16th Amendment should be repealed to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service. He supports replacing current income tax laws with a flat tax.

He also wants to amend the Constitution to prohibit Islamic Shariah law and “clarify” the separation of church and state. Newton would insert language into the Constitution saying, “No religion shall advocate the violation of any law found to be constitutional nor engage in any sedition to disobey any such law.”

Newton also favors changing the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment to apply only to U.S. citizens, not “any person” as the amendment reads. This would be intended to prevent “anchor babies” — in which children born of foreign parents in the U.S. automatically become citizens.

Luján’s opponent in the last election, Tom Mullins, caused controversy when he joked in a radio interview about using land mines along the border to stop illegal immigration. Newton is taking a different approach to that issue.

“I have experience in new border security technologies that detect tunnels and safely ‘repel’ those attempting to cross illegally,” his brochure says. “Without harming anyone, my plan treats border crossers with respect and directs them to Points of Entry where they can enter legally. We need and want legal guest workers with specific education and skills. Drug transporters and terrorists can be detected at [points of entry] and dealt with forcefully.”

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com. Read his political blog atroundhouseroundup.com. 

Rick Newton is new to this political campaigning thing. Maybe that’s why he’s not afraid to talk about an issue most politicians avoid as electoral poison — reforming Social Security.

“I’m proud to say that I’ve never run for office,” the 64-year-old from Taos told Capitol Report New Mexico during an interview, adding, ”I’ll agree to be a congressman here for six years but that’s about it.”

So whether it’s out of conviction or political naïvete, the retired engineer, physicist and small businessman who has officially tossed his hat into the ring to run as a Republican in Congressional District 3 for the seat in the US House of Representatives currently held by Democrat Ben Ray Luján offers a dramatic proposal when it comes to Social Security and the national debt.

“I have a lot of experience in business and a lot of different disciplines like oil and gas and mining and defense,” Newton said, “and I felt that this is a time where my background matches up perfectly with the problems that we are facing today or that we may be facing just around the corner.”

So what’s Newton’s plan?

“There were $2.6 trillion that was our excess payments that went into that fund and all of it was taken by previous Congresses and there’s not a dime left in it. But there is basically a government IOU … We should exchange that IOU for hard assets, real assets like oil and gas and minerals. As I got more and more into it, I realized that it did a lot of things. It not only secured those Social Security benefits, but over time if you pick things that are in limited supply, and those hard assets will only go up in value over the coming decades. So we don’t need to have a tax increase, we don’t need to have a cut in benefits or extend the age to receive benefits. We can actually be repaid that which was stolen away from us and that asset value will go up over time.”

Luján has been a harsh critic of making any changes at all to Social Security and in late August, he appeared at a senior center in Santa Fe along with former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and said, “working people need our help … our message is to protect our Medicare and hands off our Social Security.” (Click here for that story a video interview with Luján.

But Newton says that so far he’s gotten positive feedback about his plan — although his candidacy is still in its infancy.

“As I’ve explained to people and laid it out before them, I haven’t had one single person complain about it or say that it was not viable,” Newton said, adding, “We don’t need to have this partisan bickering anymore. It’s not a Republican or Democrat issue. It’s just simply saying, let’s take our natural resources, manage them effectively and in the process bring jobs to northern New Mexico and fix the Social Security system.”

Newton goes on to say that New Mexico should develop rare earth elements to bolster not only Social Security and Medicare but the economy in general.

“It just happens that right here in northern New Mexico, in the third district, we have over one-quarter of the nation’s rare earth elements,” Newton said. “That means that no only can we fix Social Security and that fixes the debt, but that brings lots of jobs to New Mexico … it can be done cleanly and safely for the environment so it’s just an ideal situation for the third district.”

It’s going to be an uphill battle for Newton, though, considering the Third Congressional District has many more registered Democrats than Republicans. On top of that, Luján has name recognition and, according to the most recent Federal Election Commission documents, already has $281,553 cash on hand for the 2012 campaign.

“I don’t care who you voted for three years ago [the presidential election],” Newton said, “but next year, consider the person who’s best qualified. And I believe it has to be someone who is strong in business if we expect to get jobs back to northern New Mexico.”

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You can look at Newton’s takes on other issues, such as border security, the 2nd Amendment (“I am a strong defender of gun owners’ rights,” he says in his campaign literature), abortion (“I am pro-life … period”), education (Newton calls for mandatory Spanish and Chinese classes), his opposition to public sector collective bargaining and his support of a Shariah Law amendment to the Constitution (“No religion shall advocate the violation of any law found to be Constitutional”) by going to his websitewww.ricknewton2012.com