Background
Cargo was born in Dowagiac, Michigan, the eldest of three children born to Francis and Mary (née Harton) Cargo.
Cargo was born in Dowagiac, Michigan, the eldest of three children born to Francis and Mary (née Harton) Cargo.
He was a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School (Bachelor of Laws: 1957).
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. He remains one of the youngest governors elected to date in United States. 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). Cargo was considered a liberal Republican, more in the Nelson Rockefeller mode than in the Barry Goldwater image.
He had difficulty winning the Republican primaries in both 1966 and 1968.
Both times he faced State Representative Clifford J. Hawley of Santa Fe. He improved in 1968, when he defeated Hawley, 28,014 (549 percent) to 23,052 (451 percent).
Cargo received 134,625 votes (517 percent) to Lusk"s 125,587 (483 percent). As governor, Cargo started the state film commission, which has 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, which starred Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine, as well as in Up in the Cellar (1970), which starred Larry Hagman and Joan Collins. During his first campaign for governor, he was known as "Lonesome Dave."
Cargo could not seek a third two-year term in 1970. Gubernatorial terms were changed to one four-year term in which you 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 United States. Senate in 1970, but he lost the Republican primary to the conservative choice, Anderson "Andy" Carter.
Carter polled 32,122 (578 percent) to Cargo"s 17,951 (323 percent). Andy Carter then lost the general election to incumbent Democrat Joseph M. Montoya.
He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for State Treasurer in Oregon in 1984. Cargo ran for Mayor of Albuquerque in 1993, but was defeated by Martin Chávez.
He tried for a gubernatorial comeback in 1994.
Cargo ran a poor fourth (13 percent) in the primary and lost to Gary Johnson. He ran his final race in 1997 running again for Mayor of Albuquerque but came in third place in the October election losing to Jim Baca. Cargo continued to practice law in Albuquerque.
In 2010 he wrote an autobiography titled Lonesome Dave.
Cargo died on the morning of July 5, 2013 from complications of a stroke he had suffered two years earlier. He was 84.