Heath Haussamen
Sometimes you try to do the right thing and still end up making mistakes.
It’s called being human. And Gov. Susana Martinez’s staffers recently admitted making a very human mistake.
They let a Hollywood production crew use the state aircraft to scout locations for a TV show in violation of regulations.
“No, it was not an appropriate use of state aircraft,” Ed Burckle, secretary of the General Services Department, was quoted by KRQE-TV’s Larry Barker as saying. “We allowed unauthorized passengers to fly in that airplane.”
“(In) hindsight, had we known everything at the time, that request would have been denied by the governor’s office,” Martinez Chief of Staff Keith Gardner was quoted as saying. “These are the kinds of things that keep people like me up at night.”
It’s great to hear that Gardner is concerned about complying with state regulations. The problem for Martinez, however, is that she was quite unforgiving when her opponent in last year’s gubernatorial race, then-Lt. Gov. Diane Denish, was found to have used state aircraft in violation of regulations more than three dozen times.
“Diane Denish, rules for us are below her,” said the narrator of one Martinez TV ad. “Denish told schools to cut energy use 10 percent, but used the state’s luxury jet as an air taxi for her family and friends, wasting $367,000 in tax money, and breaking state regulations 39 times.”
Maybe Martinez, and all of us, should learn from this
In politics, the norm is, unfortunately, to try to convince the public to believe the worst about your opponent. As a former prosecutor, Martinez does this well.
However, we don’t have any proof that Denish’s violations were anything more than what Martinez’s apparently was – a mistake. And in both cases, it appears that the violations weren’t identified – and the behavior corrected – until the media came calling.
There’s one important difference: Martinez was much quicker to admit her mistake than Denish. Martinez gets points for that. But the fact still remains that she let a Hollywood crew fly around Northern New Mexico in a state-owned plane.
So what are we to think now, based on Martinez’s own logic? That rules for us are “below her?”
Martinez looks hypocritical. Maybe she should learn from this experience.
Perhaps all of us who spend time around the cesspool that is politics should learn from this situation. Maybe the gotcha games should be toned down. Maybe politics doesn’t have to be such a cesspool.
This article has been updated for clarity.