Heath Haussamen
When state GOP Chairman Harvey Yates called out Republican gubernatorial candidate Allen Weh for running dishonest ads, he was only scratching the surface of a systemic problem that has plagued the Weh campaign from the start.
Weh has made a number of misleading claims and allegations he could not back up in news releases, public statements and advertisements.
The first one I caught came in September, when Weh claimed he was taking on his own party in trying to get former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias fired.
Is it really taking on your party when the leader of the effort to oust Iglesias was then-U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, and when Weh also counted others, including prominent Republican attorney Pat Rogers, as allies in the effort?
Not quite.
Making serious accusations without providing proof
Then in February, when a New Mexico State professor and his government class conducted a poll that showed Pete Domenici Jr. in the lead and Susana Martinez a very distant second in the GOP gubernatorial primary, Weh publicly accused the professor of misusing university resources and taking advantage of his students to manipulate the poll to favor Martinez.
I never wrote about Weh’s claim in this instance, because I asked the campaign for evidence to back up that very serious allegation and was given none.
In April, Weh began running a TV ad accusing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Diane Denish of spending federal stimulus money to take a plane flight to Gallup for a parade. The problem? The trip was paid for with state general fund money, not federal stimulus money.
When I wrote that the ad’s claim was false, Weh’s spokesman tried to divert me to a totally separate issue: A new claim that Denish flew a state plane to Farmington, using federal stimulus money, to attend a campaign fundraiser for U.S. Sen. Tom Udall.
But again, there was a problem with that claim. The only document the Weh campaign cited as proof was a sticky note on the official flight log for the trip that mentioned the fundraiser. The note doesn’t say Denish attended the fundraiser.
Now, one possibility is that the note was there because Denish was attending the fundraiser. But there are other possibilities. Denish claimed the note was an FYI about other events happening in the area while she was there to attend to state business. She also trotted out the fundraiser’s host, who said she didn’t attend.
Weh would have been on solid ground if he had said the sticky note raised questions and called for an investigation. Instead, once again, Weh made a leap by claiming Denish had done something improper without having proof.
Dishonest ads and an overinflated endorsement
Which brings us to the past week. Weh’s TV and radio ads accusing Martinez of failing to pay taxes are based on an audit finding that said her office should have paid some workers as employees instead of contractors – which would have subjected her office to more federal tax.
But instead of talking about the contractor/employee situation, the ad implies one of two things – that Martinez failed to pay personal taxes, or that her office’s failure to pay taxes somehow involved “extravagant dinners, luxury hotels, dinner at Hooters – even iPods” – when neither is supported by documents provided by the Weh campaign.
This is the ad Yates has said is dishonest.
Finally, Weh put out a news release last week stating that the “head of NM Tea Party” had endorsed him. This is a more minor example than the others, but there is no such thing as the New Mexico Tea Party. There are local tea party organizations throughout the state. Some are loosely affiliated. Others are not.
Weh overinflated the endorsement in a way that was misleading.