Los Alamos County Council candidate Gary Stradling waits his turn to speak at this morning’s Council Candidate Forum hosted by the Chamber of Commerce at UNM-LA. Photo by Bonnie J. Gordon/ladailypost.com
By BONNIE J. GORDON
Los Alamos Daily Post
bjgordon@ladailypost.com
During the Los Alamos Chamber Breakfast Forum for County Council Candidates this morning, Republican candidate Gary Stradling addressed worker shortages in Los Alamos with the following remark:
“There is no way to have the workers you need without addressing the housing market. The housing is the core – you can put all, you could put barracks up here and hire Filipinos to come work, but that’s stupid. We have people here. We have a lot of the solution. It is to have people who are in New Mexico come live here and work here. We have about 12,000 people commute into the County every day. That’s a lot of people.”
Some community members thought the reference was racist or at least insensitive.
“What I said was fine, but I knew as soon as I said it that it would be distorted,” Stradling told the Los Alamos Daily Post this afternoon. “I was comparing the Saudi Arabian practice of bringing Filipinos in to live in dorms because they do not have domestic demographic for labor, and said, ‘but that is stupid’, we can get the people we need to come live here in their own homes. Some people were not familiar with the Saudi practice and so they didn’t understand what I meant.”
“It’s a shame everyone has to run for cover over things like this,” Stradling said.
He said that he finds it “especially annoying” to have what was meant as “an absurdity” taken out of context and turned into the polar opposite of what he meant.
Los Alamos County Chamber Director Ryn Herrmann stressed that the Chamber does not take political positions.
“We had the event so candidates have a platform to answer questions that are of interest to small business owners,” Herrmann said.
Stradling addressed those whose feathers were ruffled by his comment saying:
“Apparently our local politics is a game of partisan ‘Gothcha’. Taking gratuitous offense and ascribing mal intent where there isn’t any, is typical of the game. I want these workers to be part of our community, not to be treated as ‘guest workers’. If anyone sincerely misunderstands that as being insulting, I hope they will talk to me.”
