Susana Martinez (left, courtesy photo) and Diane Denish (Photo by Heath Haussamen)
The fighting between the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor and the spinning of the facts continued on Thursday, this time in an offer of a truce from Republican Susana Martinez and a sharp rejection from Democrat Diane Denish.
The latest back-and-forth started with an e-mail from Martinez Campaign Manager Adam Deguire to Denish Campaign Manager Oren Shur.
“With so much at stake, Susana Martinez believes that New Mexicans deserve a substantive debate about the most important issues confronting our state,” Deguire’s e-mail states. “… Unfortunately, your campaign began attacking Susana the day after the primary election concluded with a negative ad, which has been proven to be false. We are setting the record straight on the crime issue and will never allow false attacks to go unanswered.”
Deguire went on to propose that the campaigns “commit to only positive advertising through at least the end of July. There will be plenty of time to have a healthy debate about the differences between the candidates this fall.”
Shur was quick to reply with his own e-mail.
“First, this stunt is blatantly disingenuous given that Susana Martinez has been attacking Diane Denish’s record and character nearly every day for the past six months,” he wrote. “In addition, the timing is ironic given that just yesterday you launched a negative ad that a reporter has appropriately called ‘misleading’ and ‘quite a leap.’”
Shur went on to write that Denish has been offering substantive proposals while Martinez was attacking, and said it’s “remarkably hypocritical for you to suggest that voters don’t also deserve to know about the candidates’ records. Ms. Martinez may not want New Mexicans to know the truth about her record, but that hasn’t stopped her from attacking Diane Denish each and every day.”
Cutting through the spin
Now some facts. Shur is right that Martinez has been criticizing Denish for months. She’s done it on this site more than once, with her first critical guest column coming in September. But Martinez has also been talking about substantive issues. In guest columns on this site, she talked in detail about energy policy and law enforcement.
And while Denish has also been talking about substantive issues like cutting government, opposing the food tax and ethics reform, her party has been lobbing bombs at Martinez since before she was the GOP nominee for governor (here and here are examples).
Deguire’s e-mail implies that Denish started the fight after Martinez won the primary, but the reality is that it’s been going on long before that. Martinez probably did start it months ago. And while Deguire states that “We are setting the record straight on the crime issue and will never allow false attacks to go unanswered,” he fails to mention that the Martinez campaign has done more than respond to false attacks since the primary – it’s launched its own misleading attack against Denish.
Shur’s e-mail states that the timing of Deguire’s offer is “ironic” because it comes after “a reporter” – he’s referring to me – called Martinez’s new ad “quite a leap.” What Shur failed to mention is that, in the article he’s referring to, I called out Martinez and Denish both for misleading spin.
Both campaigns have made misleading statements. Both are contributing to the fighting. It doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon.