Is Doyle Pruitt, the Republican candidate for a seat on the Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners, lying about whether he’s ever served as an elected official?
The evidence suggests he is lying, and Pruitt, in a brief interview, refused to answer any questions about the situation.
Pruitt has told the Las Cruces Sun-News he has prior experience as an elected official on a city council in
A spokesman for that city, Don Waldie, wrote in an e-mail that Pruitt ran for city council in 1980 but came in 13th out of 14 candidates, winning 308 votes out of about 4,000. Pruitt has never been a city council member, Waldie wrote.
In addition, the city, located in
Reached by telephone, Pruitt refused to answer questions about the situation.
“I’m not running for office in that state. That’s not my platform,” he said. “… I just have no answer for it. I don’t understand it. Well, I do understand it but I’m not going to go into it. I’ve made some enemies. That’s it.”
Pruitt was quoted by the Bulletin as saying that he served all but two months of his term on the Lakewood City Council before quitting because he was “tired of being a minority of one.” Asked about the city saying he never served on the council, Pruitt told the newspaper that “somebody’s playing games.”
The Democratic Party of New Mexico attacked in a news release.
“It is extremely important that the public can completely trust the candidates running for office,” Scott Krahling, Pruitt’s Democratic opponent for the District 4 seat, said in the release. “If one misleads the public regarding their résumé and past public service, then we must question their honesty, integrity and ethics.”
Pruitt, who has lived in