Goddard finally responds to Whitley e-mail attack

Less than five weeks before the election, Doña Ana County Republican Party Chair Sid Goddard has finally responded to the Democratic Party chair’s attempt to politicize the county election task force.

In a guest column published Sunday in the Las Cruces Sun-News, Goddard attacks what he calls “eight decades of failed Democratic leadership” in New Mexico and writes that the Democratic Party lacks vision and keeps power by spreading fear.

The column is in response to an e-mail Doña Ana County Democratic Party Chair Melinda Whitley sent to her party’s supporters at the beginning of August urging them to attend meetings of the county election task force.

“We need to have a big Democratic presence,” Whitley wrote in the email. “… The Republicans are working very hard to totally discredit our clerk through attacking the bureau of elections. We need support from you, our loyal Democrats, to point out the good things the bureau of elections has done and to speak favorably about Rita Torres – otherwise the county commissioners are going to hear only comments intended to discredit the clerk’s office.”

It continues from there.

“The Republicans want control of the county clerk’s office very, very badly. They can’t win it through an honest election, so they are trying to get hold of it by these means. We cannot allow this to happen,” Whitley wrote. “At this moment, Republicans control the district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s department, which means that they can reveal or suppress, investigate or not investigate, any type of incident they choose – which obviously is why we read these constant attacks against Democratic elected officials in our Republican-controlled newspapers. Just imagine what would happen if they also controlled the county clerk’s office… So please, my friends – pack the public meeting halls. Let everyone know that we Democrats stand together, we are still in control, and we intend to stay that way.”

Goddard probably waited eight weeks to respond because he and Whitley were both serving on the task force, which presented its final report to the commission about two weeks ago. Click here to read the entire report.

In Goddard’s column, he writes that Democratic leadership has left New Mexico “in the bowels of per capita income, education and health care rankings. Yet we rank near the top in per capita tax burden.”

He attacks Democratic County Commissioner Oscar Vasquez Butler’s proposed moratorium on development in and around arroyos and his blame of developers for recent flooding, writing that Democratic leadership has done “little to improve the lot of our colonias, nor has it addressed the fact that 25 percent of our residents live at or below the national poverty level.

“As said in the film The American President, ‘if you can’t sell it and have no solutions, you’re left with two alternatives: 1) make the public fear it, or 2) find someone to blame it on.’ Right out of the Democratic leadership play book,” Goddard writes.

He then responds to Whitley’s allegation that Republicans control area law enforcement and newspapers.

“Forget that I’m the chair of the Republican Party; as a citizen, I am so outraged over this allegation that I want Melinda Whitley to produce proof of collusion between the Republican Party, the district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s department. This accusation should infuriate the entire Doña Ana community!” he writes. “It is beyond the pale and so blatantly false it rises to the level of malicious intent. It is libelous and should be retracted with an immediate public apology. It has everything to do with fear!

“… The Democratic leadership in Doña Ana County is afraid,” Goddard writes. “They are afraid of an electorate capable of determining its own future, one that may exclude them. Make no mistake; this is about position, power and privilege. This is not about their need to solve issues, but rather about their need to camouflage issues in the emperor’s old clothes of fear and blame.”

You can read Whitley’s defense of her e-mail by clicking here.

I will say this: Whitley asked for such a scathing critique, and many Democrats I spoke with were surprised it didn’t come sooner. Kudos to Goddard for holding his tongue while the two were working together on the elections task force.

Then again, Goddard was in a unique position: A Democratic-controlled commission agreed to set up a task force to investigate the operations of an elections bureau overseen by a Democratic clerk, and it happened in an election year. That must be a dream come true for a Republican Party chair. All Goddard had to do was sit back and let it happen.

Whitley, on the other hand, was in a tough position, having to deal with a commission that put aside partisan politics to find real solutions to problems with past elections. Her job, like Goddard’s, is to be partisan.

So, after many Republicans and few Democrats attended the first public hearing held by the task force, she sent out the e-mail. Goddard was right: It had a tone of fear. I’ve already written that Whitley’s accusation of a Republican conspiracy involving law enforcement and newspapers is ridiculous.

Whitley picked a fight, and now she has one (though I suspect she would say Republicans picked the fight by attacking the county clerk). This should raise the level of partisan rhetoric leading up to the election and might further discourage the thousands of independent voters in Doña Ana County.