Republican gubernatorial candidates Allen Weh, left, and Susana Martinez.
With the surge of Sarah Palin’s endorsement and a new poll propelling her, Republican gubernatorial candidate Susana Martinez went for the kill Monday by unveiling the first negative TV ad of the primary race.
The 30-second ad accuses opponent Allen Weh of supporting amnesty – a hot-button issue for many GOP base voters that comes as the immigration debate has been reignited by the murder of an Arizona rancher and that state’s controversial new law.
“Allen Weh, divisive party chairman, pushed amnesty for illegal immigrants,” the ad states. “Weh wrote that he supported the amnesty plan for 13 million illegal immigrants.”
“Politician Allen Weh. Wrong on amnesty,” the ad states.
The ad is referring to Weh’s support for the 2007 effort by then-President Bush and others to reform the immigration system. It depends in part on a column Weh wrote for the Albuquerque Journal.
“As (Bush) does, I also favor a controlled guest worker program, and further favor finding a compassionate and equitable solution for the approximately 13 million illegal immigrants who have been working in this country for more than two years without committing any criminal acts,” Weh wrote.
“We all should recognize that a lot of hard jobs in construction, agriculture and the oil industry are being done by many of these people that are crucial to our economy,” he wrote. “Thus any knee-jerk reaction to resolve this issue without taking this into consideration is simply not in our collective best interests.”
Watch the ad here:
In a news release responding to the ad, Weh Campaign Manager Whitney Cheshire complained about the negative assault but said nothing about the claim that Weh supported amnesty.
A fight that’s been brewing
A negative battle between Weh and Martinez has been brewing for some time. A few analysts I spoke with after Martinez’s ad aired Monday afternoon said they were surprised that it took this long for the race to go negative. Others expressed worry about the effect a negative primary could have in general election, citing the divisive 2008 U.S. Senate primary race between Steve Pearce and Heather Wilson.
Martinez’s weekend surge is what prompted the war between Martinez and Weh. Many analysts expected Weh to have a slight advantage in the race, but a weekend Albuquerque Journal poll showed the two in a statistical tie – Weh with 31 percent to Martinez’s 30 percent.
That, coupled with Palin’s endorsement, caused Martinez’s candidacy to peak at the right time – two weeks before Election Day – and led Weh to up the rhetoric and hint that he might also be ready to go negative. In a Sunday news release about the poll, Weh called Martinez a “government lawyer” and “career politician.”
In a fundraising e-mail sent out Monday, Martinez accused Weh of taking the first shot with that news release.
“This is unfortunate, but not at all surprising. Weh’s negative campaign has been in the works for quite some time,” Martinez wrote. The TV ad followed hours later.
Weh’s campaign had been preparing for the possibility of going negative. Weeks ago it filed a records request with Martinez’s district attorney office similar to one filed in January by the state Democratic Party. And the campaign recently tested negative messages against Martinez in phone calls with potential voters.
But to say Weh went negative first because he called Martinez a “government lawyer” is a stretch.
Martinez isn’t the only one exaggerating the facts. Weh responded to the Journal poll by claiming in a news release that he “is in the lead and positioned to win the GOP nomination” because of his one-point lead that was well within the poll’s margin of error.
Cheshire (a former columnist for NMPolitics.net) claimed in the same news release that “internal polling shows Weh has a much larger lead than was published in the Albuquerque Journal.” But Cheshire and Communications Director Christopher Sanchez ignored an e-mail from me requesting that internal polling data.
‘We will defend ourselves’
After Martinez’s ad started airing on Monday, Weh accused her of breaking a promise to run a clean campaign.
“Breaking Ronald Reagan’s so-called 11th Commandment not to attack a fellow Republican, Susana Martinez – true to form as a career politician – broke her word today when she initiated the first false, negative and desperate attack ad against a fellow Republican in the New Mexico GOP primary election for governor,” a Weh news release stated.
The news release was referring to Martinez saying on KKOB’s Jim Villanucci show in April that she would “definitely not be getting into that negativity in the primary.”
“True to form as a career politician, Susana Martinez thinks she can say one thing and do another – just like they do in Santa Fe,” Cheshire said in the release.
The response from some analysts? Right, as if Weh wasn’t also planning his own negative assault.
Now Weh is going to hit back.
“We are disappointed Susana Martinez has decided to tear down a fellow Republican and take this campaign down the tired, old road of political deception,” Cheshire said. “Let the record now clearly show that Susana Martinez has decided to take a negative turn in this race, and we will defend ourselves in an appropriate fashion.”
The bottom line
Here’s the bottom line: Both campaigns have been planning negative assaults. Convinced Weh was about to attack first, Martinez decided on a pre-emptive strike. Both are spinning the facts, and just like that the race has degraded into the sort of nasty, tiring mess that turns off many voters.
As it stands today, Martinez has a slight lead in the race thanks to her weekend boost, but she and Weh will spend the next two weeks trying to tear each other down. What will Weh hit her on? The fact that she used to be a Democrat? It will be interesting to see.
Weh has the ability to pump more of his own money into the campaign – he’s already given $1 million – and he can probably neutralize Martinez’s advantage with another sizable contribution. We’ll know on May 27, when the final finance reports before the June 1 primary are filed.
Martinez has been taking a tough stance on immigration, and her new ad will help instill in many Republican primary voters a negative opinion of Weh and a positive opinion of her on that topic. But Weh’s ads to date have been impressive too, so his coming attack on Martinez will probably be equally effective.
This race is going down to the wire.