New Mexico News
| MEET JOE CARARRO, REPUBLICAN |
| Posted by () on May 21 2008 at 4:06 PM |
Joe Carraro got his first taste of public service nearly 30 years ago when he opened a pizza place near the University of New Mexico and started giving odd jobs to homeless people.
As the need grew, he and other restaurant owners launched Project SHARE and served dinner to the homeless each night. But the restaurant owners couldn't find shelter for the people they fed, so Carraro looked to state and federal programs for transitional housing and got no help.
That frustrating experience formed the basis for his political outlook and shaped his nearly 20 years in the New Mexico Legislature. "That's when it started sinking in that there was something wrong with government," he said.
Carraro has since sold his restaurants, and, retired from everything but his Senate job, he is seeking the opportunity to work on a larger scale in Congress.
"We've been lulled into thinking everything is going to be all right," Carraro said, "by a president and by a Congress, which has switched back and forth, saying 'the Democrats are crooks, let's put the Republicans in there. The Republicans are crooks, let's put the Democrats in there.' ''
Carraro was raised in New York on Long Island. His father, an Italian immigrant, was a New York City police officer. After Carraro's mother died, he and his father moved to Albuquerque to be close to relatives, and Carraro got a finance degree at UNM, then returned to New York to be a stockbroker.
He missed his father and New Mexico and moved back to open a pizza restaurant with some friends, eventually expanding to a second location.
He got involved in Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign as a volunteer and after Reagan was elected, he decided to run in a newly created state Senate District in Albuquerque. The district had four Democrats for every Republican.
Carraro campaigned door to door and gave people IOUs, pledging he would resign from the Legislature if he didn't fulfill his campaign promises. He won, and he says this election has some parallels to that first race.
"People get to the point where they've had enough," Carraro said. "The issues are just on a national scale now. Now it's the economy, it's the war in Iraq."
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