On Friday night I got a chance to sit down separately with two candidates for the Public Regulation Commission — the Green Party’s Rick Lass and Democrat Jason Marks — for KNME’s “New Mexico In Focus.”

Lass is seeking the District 3 PRC seat being vacated by CD3 congressional candidate Ben Ray Lujan, while Marks is seeking a second term representing District 1 on the powerful regulatory body.

In case you didn’t know, the PRC regulates gas and electric utilities, insurance companies, telecommunications, transportation and other industries doing business in New Mexico. The job of PRC commissioner pays $90K a year and this year several candidates for PRC are running as publicly funded candidates, including both Lass and Marks.

Unfortunately, neither Jerome Block Jr. (Lass’ Democratic opponent) nor Tim Cummins (Marks’ Republican opponent) accepted KNME’s offer to appear on the show. That was a major disappointment, and in both instances it appeared as though it was very much a strategic decision to flake out.

Friday night, the KNME broadcast included edited versions of the interviews I conducted with both Lass and Marks. The versions below, however, are the full, unedited interviews. Each runs approximately 20 minutes.