GOP gubernatorial debate won’t change much

Republican gubernatorial candidate Allen Weh needed to shine at Thursday’s candidate debate to make up ground he’s lost against opponent Susana Martinez, but while he had a very strong moment near the end, he didn’t stand apart in a forum in which all five candidates did reasonably well.

Doug Turner brought the most solid performance to the debate, presenting a mix of witty one-liners that got people’s attention and solid discussion of policy issues. Janice Arnold-Jones was policy-focused and solid.

Pete Domenici Jr., showed that his ability to present himself as a candidate has improved significantly since he entered the race.

Like Weh, frontrunner Martinez didn’t stand above the other candidates, but she was solid – which means she accomplished what she had to in order to maintain her lead heading into the final weekend of the campaign.

The bottom line: With only a few days left in this race, the debate isn’t going to change the outcome.

The money

Heading into the final days, then, Martinez keeps the lead. Her closest opponent – Weh – filed his final campaign finance report Thursday. It shows that, in the last few weeks, Weh has loaned his campaign another $600,000 to keep running TV ads at a faster pace than Martinez, but he only raised about $41,000 from other contributors.

Weh ended the reporting period with $52,820.04 on hand. Of course, if Weh needs additional money he could spend more of his own.

Martinez hasn’t yet filed her finance report. The Secretary of State’s Office extended the deadline for filing the reports to 5 p.m. Friday because of a power outage that struck the office this afternoon. But The Associated Press reported that Martinez raised “about $721,000 and cash-on-hand of $139,000.”

That’s a huge amount to raise in three weeks. Someone has been pitching in big to help Martinez keep up with Weh’s self-financing, which is now at $1.6 million.

Like Martinez, Turner hasn’t yet filed his finance report.

There weren’t too many surprises in the other candidates’ finance reports. You can find Domenici’s here and Arnold-Jones’ here. Domenici gave his campaign another $55,000.

The bottom line is that we already knew the other candidates – Turner, Domenici and Arnold-Jones – didn’t have the resources to keep up with the battle between Martinez and Weh, because they haven’t been spending as much on TV ads.

For better or for worse, that’s an accurate measure in a race of this caliber of who’s going to lead in the polls – and usually on Election Day.

Best moments

But back to the debate. The catchiest lines of the night came from Turner and Arnold-Jones. Turner’s came when he was discussing his belief that the Rail Runner isn’t a good use of taxpayer dollars – in spite of what the Richardson administration has claimed.

“What we’ve experienced is a great Jedi Mind Trick on how wonderful this is going to be,” Turner said.

Arnold-Jones’ shining moment came in response to a statement in which Weh said he would bring a baseball bat to clean up Santa Fe and a question about what she would bring to Santa Fe.

“I don’t have a baseball bat. I had a little bitty camera,” Arnold-Jones said of her well-known push to force webcasting on the Legislature.

The most emotional moment came during Weh’s closing statement. He told the story of being present in Vietnam when a soldier had his legs blown off. The soldier realized his legs were gone as he was being carried away, and Weh said the soldier started singing a song that carried across the battlefield.

It was a moment Weh said has brought him inspiration ever since.

Back-and-forth between Weh and Martinez

There was some back and forth between Weh and Martinez at the debate – a continuance of the nasty battle they’ve been fighting on television and elsewhere for about two weeks – but it was relatively tame. Referring to the GOP party chairman calling him out for airing a false and misleading ad, Weh said there has been some “unethical” dealing behind the scenes and his integrity has been attacked.

Weh encouraged voters to decide the race rather than letting party insiders do it.

Later, Weh brought up Martinez’s accusing him of supporting amnesty. “Let me unequivocally state I am not for amnesty and have never been for amnesty,” he said.

“We can go back and forth, Allen, about whether it’s amnesty,” Martinez responded, but she said the fact is that the Bush immigration reform plan, which Weh supported, would have allowed people in the United States illegally – she used the number 13 million – to stay.

Martinez claimed that would have cost taxpayers $2.7 trillion and said, “that is bad policy.”

“We’ll have to debate the 13 million issue with Susana at a later time,” Weh responded.

Watch the debate

You can watch the full debate here:

Denish looms

Meanwhile, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Diane Denish has continued her impressive fundraising. She reported Thursday that she raised almost $465,000 in the last three weeks, spent $521,000 and ended the reporting period with $2.65 million on hand.

“I am extremely grateful for the strong showing of support I have received,” Denish said in a news release. “Creating an economic turnaround is going to take hard work, leadership and concrete ideas. People have signed on to my campaign because, like me, they believe our state’s best days are ahead of us.”

But another new poll showed that the general election won’t be a walk in the park for Denish. The poll, from Rasmussen Reports, showed Denish leading Martinez in potential general-election contest 43 percent to 42 percent. In late March, Denish led Martinez by 19 points in a Rasmussen Reports poll.

The new poll shows Weh trailing Denish by 6 points in a potential match up. The other three GOP candidates trail Denish by 14 points or more.

The survey of 500 likely voters was conducted on Tuesday and has a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.