David Cargo

Life and career

Cargo was born in Dowagiac in Cass County in southwestern Michigan, the eldest of three children of Francis and Mary Harton Cargo. In 1957, he received an L.L.B. from the University of Michigan Law School at Ann Arbor.

He represented the Albuquerque area in the New Mexico House of Representatives from 1963 to 1967, when he was elected governor at the age of thirty-seven. As a representative he won one of the first lawsuits forcing proportional representation in the state legislature. He remains one of the youngest governors elected to date in U.S. history, along with Harold Stassen in Minnesota (1938), Bill Clinton in Arkansas (1978), Christopher "Kit" Bond and Matt Blunt in Missouri (1972) and (2004), respectively, and Bobby Jindal in Louisiana (2007).

Election as governor, 1966 and 1968

Cargo was considered a liberal Republican, more in the Nelson Rockefeller mode than in the image of Barry Goldwater of neighboring Arizona. He had difficulty winning the Republican primaries in both 1966 and 1968; both times he faced State Representative Clifford J. Hawley of Santa Fe. In 1966, Cargo won with 17,836 (51.8 percent) to Hawley's 16,588 (48.2 percent). He improved his primary performance in 1968, when he defeated Hawley, 28,014 (54.9 percent) to 23,052 (45.1 percent).

Cargo won the general election of 1966, when he barely defeated Democrat Gene Lusk. Cargo received 134,625 votes (51.7 percent) to Lusk's 125,587 (48.3 percent). Running again in 1968, Cargo won by an even smaller margin, 160,140 (50.5 percent) to Democrat Fabian Chavez Jr.,'s 157,230 ballots (49.5 percent).

As governor, Cargo started the state film commission, which brought millions of dollars in revenue to the state of New Mexico. Cargo established ties to Hollywood and was even asked to appear in several films. In 1971, he made a cameo appearance in Bunny O'Hare, starring Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine, as well as in Up in the Cellar (1970), starring Larry Hagman and Joan Collins. During his first campaign for governor, he was known as "Lonesome Dave."

Later losing campaigns

Cargo could not seek a third two-year term in 1970. Gubernatorial terms were changed to one four-year term in which a person could not seek consecutive re-election with the 1970 election, and subsequently two four-year terms with the 1990 election. Cargo hence ran for the U.S. Senate in 1970, but he lost the Republican primary to the conservative choice, Anderson "Andy" Carter. Carter polled 32,122 (57.8 percent) to Cargo's 17,951 (32.3 percent). Andy Carter then lost the general election to incumbent Democrat Joseph M. Montoya. Cargo tried for New Mexico's other Senate seat in 1972 but again lost the primary, this time to the eventual senatorial winner, Pete Domenici.

From 1973 until 1985, Cargo relocated to Lake Oswego, Oregon, with his wife, Ida Jo, and five children, Veronica, David, Patrick, Elena, and Eamon. In 1984, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for state treasurer in Oregon.

After returning to New Mexico, Cargo won the Republican nomination for Congress in 1986 for New Mexico's 3rd congressional district but was defeated by the incumbent, Democrat Bill Richardson. Cargo ran for mayor of Albuquerque in 1993 but lost to Martin Chávez. He tried for a gubernatorial comeback in 1994 but finished in fourth place with 13 percent in the primary and lost to the eventual winner, Gary Johnson. Cargo made his final race in 1997 when he again contested the Albuquerque mayoralty, but he finished third and lost to Jim Baca.

Despite his many political defeats, Cargo continued to practice law in Albuquerque. In 2010, he wrote an autobiography titled Lonesome Dave.

Cargo died at the age of eighty-four of complications of a stroke which he had two years earlier.