The best part of ranching, according to Candy Spence Ezzell, is when everyone helps each other out — whether it’s branding time or there’s a broken center pivot sprinkler.
She would know.
The self-proclaimed “staunch conservative” state senator, who represents parts of Chaves and Eddy counties, has been a full-time farmer and rancher since 1993 — more than a decade before she took office. Now the longest-serving female Republican lawmaker in the statehouse, she describes herself still as she might have 30 years ago.
“I’m a farmer’s daughter,” Ezzell said. “I’m a rancher. I work with the land. I’m boots-on. I am the hired hand out at the ranch, OK?”
Ezzell, 72, was born in the southeastern New Mexico city of Artesia — population 12,875 — and raised on a nearby family farm she still frequents. She calls herself “a product of the Artesia public school system” — after graduating from Artesia High School, she attended New Mexico State University and Eastern New Mexico University’s branch campus in Roswell.
Ezzell and her husband, T. Calder Ezzell Jr. — an oil and gas attorney who she said pays for her “bad habits” — bought a cattle ranch southwest of Roswell in 1993, which the two have operated since. She has also served as a 4-H leader, a gymnastics teacher, a volunteer firefighter and a baseball coach.
She is heavily involved in horse racing — one of the drivers of New Mexico’s economy, she said, alongside oil and gas and agriculture.
“I’m very outspoken in support of those industries that provide jobs and help improve our various communities throughout the state,” Ezzell said.
Background
Ezzell first ran for office in 2004, vying to replace Democratic incumbent Pauline Ponce in the state House of Representatives. Ezzell chose to run, she said, because she felt the representation District 58 was getting was not beneficial to its residents — or to the state as a whole.
She pointed to Ponce voting in favor of a bill that would have put Breathalyzers on all New Mexico vehicles as one example.
“That was not good for anybody,” Ezzell said. “I mean, my grandmother who was in her late 70s, early 80s, who was still driving, was very cognizant of everything going on — and she would have had to have a Breathalyzer on her vehicle. No, I don’t think so.”
Ezzell was unopposed in the Republican primary, and won her seat by about 800 votes in a county that overwhelmingly went for President George W. Bush twice. During her first regular legislative session in 2005, she sponsored a later-signed bill that increased a mill levy to $1 per head on all livestock animals in counties with county predator control programs.
In 2023 — following nearly 20 years in the House — Ezzell ran to replace former Sen. Cliff Pirtle, a Republican who announced he would not seek reelection after being embroiled in a scandal. Santa Fe police responded to a domestic dispute at Pirtle’s rental house during the session, where his now-ex-wife told police she had caught him with another woman.
“People were fed up with certain shenanigans that were going on,” Ezzell said. “I thought, ‘Now is a good time to make that change.’ ”
The Senate, Ezzell has found, is a lot different from the House. Namely, she said, senators are more contemplative.
“Even though the other side of the aisle might be the majority right now, they do take the time to listen and weigh the pros and cons of every bill that is presented,” she said. “And I like that — instead of just being controlled by the speaker of the House like it used to be under certain speakers.”
She said the transition from her House committees to her Senate committees has been easy, too. Ezzell serves on the Senate Conservation Committee — where she is the ranking member — and the Senate Education Committee.
Much of the legislation she has championed over the years has focused on agriculture.
During the 2025 regular session, Ezzell and three fellow Republicans sponsored a bill that would have made the unlawful use of underground water a crime. That bill died, but one of her proudest moments in the Roundhouse also related to water — a resource that is integral to New Mexico, she said.
Early in her legislative career, Ezzell carried a later-signed bill that allowed the Interstate Stream Commission to buy land and the corresponding water rights but that prohibited the commission from subdividing the land without purchasing new, additional water rights.
Ezzell is also a strong proponent of the oil and gas industry, which she said helps farmers run their tractors, haul their livestock and transport food. Without it, she said, people would not be able to eat.
“People are going, ‘Well, y’all are just ruining the land,’ ” Ezzell said. “No, we’re not. I ranch. I raise cattle. These calves go into a person’s refrigerator or freezer after they’re processed. If we overgraze our lands, guess what? We don’t have enough feed to sustain our herd, to be able to make a living.”
She said she thinks people who have never experienced ranch life could stand to learn things from those who have. That’s in part why Ezzell is against the New Mexico State Fair being moved from Expo New Mexico; she said the annual event is often the only opportunity for kids who live in Albuquerque to interact with animals.
Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced in 2024 she wanted to redevelop Expo New Mexico — potentially turning the site into mixed-use housing, retail and entertainment areas. It is not yet clear whether the fair will move; preliminary plans released last month floated both the idea of its relocation and keeping it where it is.
On the education front, Ezzell supports the Trump administration’s move to dismantle the federal Department of Education — something New Mexico Democrats have asserted could harm public schools, but Republicans have framed as a way of rightfully returning the handling of education to the states. She also agrees with the push to close the nation’s borders — “if somebody wants to come in the United States, come in legally,” she said.
And she really thinks children should start learning cursive again.
“They cannot read the Constitution of the United States,” Ezzell said. “The Constitution is written in cursive.”
As she prepares for the upcoming 30-day legislative session, which begins Tuesday, Ezzell is eager to see the bills lawmakers put forth on medical malpractice reform — sky-high premiums have been blamed in recent years for an exodus of doctors from the state — and juvenile crime. She is also looking forward to her mares giving birth to five new foals, which she won’t get to meet until the session ends.
“I’m always so glad to be back home,” Ezzell said, adding, “If you’re doing your job, you come home mentally drained.”
Beyond legislation, Ezzell will bring her homemade cookies to the Roundhouse, which were stolen — with only a ransom note on her phone left behind — during the 2020 session, The New Mexican reported at the time.
Linda Joiner, a friend of the Ezzells who operates racing stables in Santa Teresa and has trained their horses for years, described the senator as “a heck of a cook.” The crime, then, makes sense: Ezzell makes ginger cookies that rival those bought at a store, Joiner said.
Ezzell will also be armed with her jokes over the next few weeks, noting lawmakers have to keep their senses of humor intact during each session — or else they would all be bawling.
“I always tell people there’s three types of bones you have to have if you’re going to be serving in Santa Fe,” she said. “You have to have a wishbone, you have to have a backbone, and you have to have a funny bone.”
Once, during a session when former longtime Sen. Tim Jennings — a Democrat who once represented the district Ezzell holds today and a friend of Ezzell’s — was still in office, she took a stack of Post-it notes outside and completely covered his car. She’s not often a prankster, she said, but Jennings got a kick out of it.
And then there’s the candy dish, a relic of Ezzell’s office that she made when her state fair grand champion bull died.
“I did a little bit of surgery on him and took that bull sack, if you get my drift,” Ezzell said. “I tanned it out and everything. I laced it, I welded some rods, I put it on a horseshoe to suspend it. And that is my candy dish.”
Ezzell is also, self-admittedly, “not bashful at all.”
“I can be, believe it or not, pretty outspoken,” she said. “I say what’s on my mind. That’s just what it boils down to.”
During the 2019 session, an opponent of one of Ezzell’s bills called for action against her after her microphone picked up her saying “don’t clap, don’t clap, don’t clap, —holes” when the bill was permanently tabled, KRQE reported at the time.
‘Tough outer shell’
In 2024, then-state Sen. Mark Moores — an Albuquerque Republican who had recently announced he would not run for reelection — described Ezzell to New Mexican columnist Milan Simonich as “the least serious person in a building full of non-serious people.”
Her friends would put it differently.
“Candy has a tough outer shell,” said Jacque Rich, who first met Ezzell when she was in junior high. “But I’m telling you, she’s the real deal.”
Rich’s husband rode the school bus with Ezzell, she added, and once remarked he would assuredly lose against Ezzell in a snowball fight — good at baseball as he was.
Rich and Ezzell are now partners on a few racehorses. Even at the track in Ruidoso, Rich said, she has seen Ezzell immediately express empathy for others when things go wrong.
“She’s unique because she’s not jealous of anybody,” Rich said. “If her horse doesn’t do any good but somebody else’s does, she’s thrilled. She’s the first one to the winner’s circle to support you.”
Joiner said Ezzell has both a “real listening ear” — she puts her personal phone number on all the literature she gives out to constituents — and “a real go-to attitude” in the face of any problems.
“Her word is just as good as her handshake,” Joiner said. “If she tells you that she’s going to do something, she is that type of person: She will see to it and do the best that she can.”