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Category: Politics: Enter at your own risk Politics: Enter at your own risk
Published: 01 August 2018 01 August 2018

gavin clarkson rsGavin Clarkson, Candidate for NM Secretary of StateLAS CRUCES, NM- Dr. Gavin Clarkson, a former NMSU business professor transferred $10,500 from his congressional campaign account Tuesday to help fund his new campaign for New Mexico Secretary of State. Clarkson was nominated by the Republican Party of New Mexico's State Central Committee during a July 7 meeting.

An Albuquerque-based federal court last year gave Republican gubernatorial nominee Steve Pearce the green light to transfer over $1 million raised for his congressional campaigns to bankroll his current bid for governor.

Pearce was originally blocked from making that move by Clarkson's opponent, incumbent Democrat Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, who wrongly attempted to apply New Mexico's $5,500 per-election limit to inter-campaign transfers for the same candidate.

"Democrat Bureaucrat Maggie Oliver's fundamentally flawed reasoning," Clarkson says, "has already cost taxpayers at least $133,000 in legal fees to reimburse the Pearce campaign, and I plan to file a public information request so voters can find out how much additional money she flushed down the drain paying lawyers to pursue her hyper-partisan agenda attacking the First Amendment and free speech."

An enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation, Clarkson served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Economic Development in the United States Department of the Interior until the end of 2017, when he resigned to run for elective office.

Clarkson recently filed a lawsuit against New Mexico State University, alleging workplace discrimination and wrongful termination based on his political beliefs, which is a felony in New Mexico.

Clarkson earned a BA and MBA from Rice University, was a cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School, and was the first tribal member to earn a Doctorate from the Harvard Business School. Clarkson is also the only doctoral graduate in the history of the Harvard Business School who has placed in a livestock show.

The Secretary of State serves as New Mexico's chief elections officer and chief ethics officer and administers the Corporations Bureau.