Steve Pearce is a "consistent conservative," his campaign ads and literature proclaim.

The three-term congressman from Hobbs is an aggressive supporter of the oil industry. His years running an oil-field service company made him a fortune. Only 20 members of the U.S. House of Representatives are richer than Pearce, according to an analysis of financial disclosures by the watchdog Web site OpenSecrets.org.

An Air Force veteran, he is an Iraq war hawk. He's anti-abortion and against what he sees as wasteful government spending.

At a recent forum in Los Alamos, he unblinkingly defended his vote against amendments to an energy and water appropriations bill that would have meant large budget cuts for Los Alamos National Laboratory. The bill was full of wasteful earmark spending, Pearce explained, telling the audience, "I will vote against wasteful spending every single time."

According to the Washington Post Votes Database, Pearce has voted along Republican party lines nearly 94 percent of the time in the current session of Congress.

His positions have won him the support of many conservative groups. The anti-tax Club for Growth has bought television ads lauding Pearce and attacking his Republican primary opponent, Heather Wilson.

Pearce's positions also have drawn backing from social conservative groups such as the National Right to Life Committee, the Family Research Council, the Susan B. Anthony List and the Campaign for Working Families. Another such group, Common Sense Issues, has run telephone "push polls" touting Pearce and badmouthing Wilson and Tom Udall, the state's Democration congressman who is also seeking the Senate seat.

The campaigns might be having their desired effect. A SurveyUSA poll this month for KOB television found 55 percent of Republicans who identified themselves as conservative favored Pearce, compared to 41 percent for Wilson. Self-identified conservatives constitute 65 percent of the state GOP, the poll indicated.

In addition, Pearce was getting nearly 40 percent of the moderate Republican vote and more than a third of liberal Republicans, according to the poll (although self-described liberals only made up 3 percent of the Republicans polled).

Overall, the poll showed Pearce slightly ahead of Wilson in the Republican primary.

Pearce dismisses the idea his battle with Wilson will damage Republican prospects for holding onto Sen. Pete Domenici's seat in the general election.

"The discussion of who we are as Republicans is positive," he said in an interview. "I really do think we're looking at ourselves right now in this race, and I think we'll come back together after the primary. I was in a very hard-fought, five-way primary back in 2002, and all five of us came together afterward. So I suspect that we're gonna be OK. ... This is just campaigning. I'm just talking about my view of the world and hers."

Oil contributions

Both Pearce and Wilson have been targeted in ads by a national environmentalist group called Defenders of Wildlife, which says the two Republicans took large contributions from the oil and gas industry and voted to benefit those companies. Pearce has a zero (out of 100) rating from that organization; it gives Wilson a 20 percent rating and Udall 100 percent.

According to OpenSecrets.org, oil and gas is the biggest industry contributor to Pearce's campaigns, providing just under $500,000 since he first ran for Congress in 2002. He's raised nearly $6.8 million since then.

However, Pearce said oil-and-gas money is "a very small percent of what we've collected. One editor said if that's all you're collecting from oil and gas, I think either they're underhelping or you're underasking."

In Pearce's run for the Senate, reports show substantial backing from energy companies and their employees. Four of his top five donors this year are energy companies: Marbob Energy, $18,400; Contran Corp. (which manufactures security products, furniture components, and operates a treatment, storage and disposal facility in Texas), $17,941; Yates Petroleum, $12,500; Conquest Energy Corp, $11,500; and Mack Energy $11,500.

Pearce says his votes aren't influenced by campaign contributions. "To somehow think I'm going to come here and for a thousand-buck contribution to my campaign, I'm going to change who I am?" he said.

"If you look at my votes, my votes reflect my belief in an energy policy that is needed for this country," Pearce said. Some environmentalists, he said, "wish we had a renewable-fuel economy. But I don't know anybody who drives a wind car. I don't know anybody who drives a solar car or a nuclear car."

"If we have a need for oil and gas today and the price is going up, it's because the supply is not matching demand," Pearce said. "And therefore we should increase the amount we're drilling in this country, out in the continental shelf, north in (Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge). We should be producing shale oil."

Pearce said comments "that we should be doing this to lower your price of gas every day" cause opponents to claim he's in the pocket of big oil.

Lea Fishing Tools sale

In October, a national liberal group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington listed all three Republicans in New Mexico's Congressional delegation on its list of "the 22 most corrupt members of Congress."

Wilson and Domenici were included for their well-reported phone calls before the 2006 election to former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias — calls Iglesias interpreted as pressure to bring corruption charges against a prominent Democrat, former state Sen. Manny Aragon of Albuquerque. Both Domenici and Wilson have denied pressuring Iglesias. Domenici was admonished by the Senate Ethics Committee.

With regard to Pearce, the group cited the sale of the assets of his oil-field service company, Lea Fishing Tools. CREW pointed out Pearce never reported the $12 million transaction on required financial disclosure forms.

Pearce, who has labeled CREW a partisan group out to smear Republicans, said after CREW's report, he took the issue to the House Rules Committee, which cleared him of any wrongdoing. House rules don't require disclosure of "transactions that involve the assets of a business that is actively involved in a trade or business," the House Ethics Committee told Pearce in a letter.

The nonpartisan publication Roll Call, based in Washington, D.C., said last month about Pearce's not reporting the proceeds of the sale, "under House rules, he didn't have to."

In early 2003, Roll Call reported, Pearce, a member of House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, was put on a new Republican Task Force For Affordable Natural Gas. Wilson also was a member along with 16 other House Republicans. The task force was charged with examining the causes of high natural gas prices, the impact of those prices on the economy and ways to increase supply to meet demand.

In August of that year, Pearce presided over a field hearing of the task force in Hobbs. Although the company wasn't on a witness list published several days before the hearing, the vice president for strategic planning at Key Energy Services testified, saying volatility in natural gas prices creates boom-and-bust cycles that are virtually unmanageable for companies that support the oil-and-gas industry.

About six weeks later, Key Energy announced it had purchased the assets of Pearce's company. The $12 million sale was more than twice the company's value Pearce had claimed on his 2003 financial disclosure forms. The sale included the transfer of $5.2 million of Key's stock to Pearce's company.

Pearce said in an interview there was nothing "fishy" about a Key Energy official testifying. "The task force has no capability," he said. "I'm not the chairman of the committee. I just chaired the hearing because it was in my hometown. And the testimony is fully part of the public record."

"The sale had been locked up two months before that," Pearce said.

Of the Hobbs hearing, Pearce said: "There was nothing in the hearing that even remotely dealt with our industry, the (oil-field) fishing tool industry or the relationship between us. Their company was not even remotely advantaged by (the hearing)."

He didn't invite Key Energy to participate, he said, but there's nothing wrong with the company testifying. "Key Energy is an international provider of oil-field services, so if you're going to talk about the stability of the workplace, the access of people, then you would talk to one of the biggest providers in the world of this kind of service."

Why didn't Pearce publicly state he was in the midst of a multimillion dollar deal with the company when Key's vice president testified? "We'd signed a nondisclosure (agreement)," Pearce said.

Months after buying Pearce's assets, Key Energy fell upon hard times. In early 2004, the firm announced it had discovered widespread financial irregularities and could not produce an annual report for 2003. Key fired its senior managers and restated its earnings for 2000-2003, declaring about $200 million in write-downs for accounting errors. The company's stock was removed from the New York Stock Exchange for about two years after the accounting scandal, but it has since been reinstated.

After the sale of assets, Pearce changed the name of Lea Fishing Tools to Trinity Industries Inc. The company, now run by his daughter and son-in-law, specializes in party rentals — "Tents, tables, chairs, knives, forks, everything," Pearce said. On his latest financial disclosure forms, the congressman lists Trinity's value at between $5 million and $25 million.

I have to live here

While Pearce proudly touts most of the national conservative groups backing him, Wilson has criticized him for relying on "out-of-state special-interest friends." Pearce said he won't let such groups compromise his integrity.

He said this attitude had cost him millions of dollars of support in the past. He talked about his first general election campaign for Congress in 2002 when he was running against state Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming.

"They wanted me to say some pretty ugly things about John Arthur Smith," Pearce said, referring to a Washington group he declined to name. "They said they were going to pull their money out, these people from Washington. I said you'll have to pull your money out because I don't believe those to be true.

"I consider him to be honorable," Pearce said of Smith, who now chairs the state Senate Finance Committee. "I wanted to win the election because I believe my viewpoints are more sound, but I didn't want to impugn (Smith's) character.

"So we didn't say 'em and I feel good today because I think John Arthur is doing a tremendous job right now economically and fiscally for the state. ... When these people wanted to pull $2 million out of my campaign and take it back to Washington, I said, 'Go!' I have to live here and you don't. You come in for 30 days or 90 days. You don't care what the destruction is."

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com.

STEVE PEARCE

Age: 60

Residence: Hobbs

Education: B.A. from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, 1970; M.B.A. from Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, 1991

Career experience: Served in the U.S. Air Force, 1970-1976, including service in Vietnam. Made his fortune in the oil services business before becoming a congressman

Political experience: Member of the New Mexico state House of Representatives, 1997-2000; U.S. House of Representatives, 2003 - present

Personal: Married to Cynthia Pearce, one adult daughter. After his Air Force years, worked as a chief pilot for a small charter flight company in Hobbs and flew crop-dusters

Arrests: None

Web site: http://peopleforpearce.com