Heath Haussamen
Attorney General Gary King attempted to damage my credibility and intimidate me into silence last week by suggesting that I colluded with Republicans to deflect criticism away from the governor and onto him. I don’t collude with politicians, and I won’t be silenced.
Attorney General Gary King doesn’t like being questioned. He has a thin skin and has repeatedly taken offense at criticism.
Last week, he directed his indignation at me in what I consider an attempt to intimidate me for expressing my First Amendment right to free speech and doing my job as a journalist.
You may recall me writing an Oct. 12 column criticizing King for accepting a $15,000 campaign contribution months after a law capping donations at $5,000 took effect. My bottom line:
“New Mexico was supposed to be done with an era in which voters had to consider whether large contributions were affecting the decisions of their elected officials. King’s office even stated, in the fiscal impact report for the bill that eventually became the new contribution limit law, that ‘placing limits on political contributions is the most effective vehicle for addressing the current ‘pay to play’ scandals.’
“Legalities aside, of all the statewide elected officials to not think about the appearance this donation would create, our top crime fighter, the man charged with rooting out corruption, the official who should be the most conscientious about leading by example on ethical issues, is doing the opposite.”
I don’t know whether King’s acceptance of the contribution is legal. Secretary of State Dianna Duran is investigating. Her office’s general counsel, Thomas Dow, sent King a letter on Oct. 13 asking him to justify the donation.
The letter also asked King to address why his spokesman, Phil Sisneros, used his government e-mail account to send me a message defending the campaign contribution, given that government and campaign issues must be kept separate.
Dow was aware of Sisneros’ e-mail to me because I forwarded it to officials in the Secretary of State’s Office in seeking comment from them on the matter. I wanted them to know what King’s response was. That’s standard in the process of reporting.
AG suggests ‘collusion between Mr. Haussamen” and the SOS
But King used my standard news-gathering to suggest, in his Oct. 25 response to Dow, that I was conspiring with Republicans against him.
He wrote that Dow’s letter asking him to address Sisneros’ e-mail “appears, in fact, to indicate some sort of collusion between Mr. Haussamen and your office to generate a baseless claim of ethical violation against the office of the Attorney General.”
King wrote that my request that Sisneros explain why the contribution was legal “is not unusual to the Office of Attorney General” and that the office “has a policy of answering questions of the press honestly and forthrightly when such questions are presented and the employee of the office is aware of the answer.”
That’s generally not been my experience when I’m asking for a legal interpretation, but that’s another issue.
King went on to request a copy of my “formal complaint” against him if I filed one (I did not), and wrote that if I did not file a complaint, he “would like to know what information was exchanged between Mr. Haussamen and your office prior to sending the October 13th letter.”
Then the whopper of an allegation:
“I am concerned that a response to a press question in the normal course of business has been blown up into an allegation of ethical misbehavior and would like to know whether this allegation was first posited by Mr. Haussamen, by your office or by some third party. It seems more than coincidental that such a ‘red herring’ allegation is raised at a time when a great deal of press scrutiny was being focused on significant claims of ethical violation of the Campaign Reporting Act by Governor Martinez for personal expenses not allowed by the act.”
To be clear, King is a Democrat. Martinez and Duran are Republicans. I believe the Martinez controversy to which King was referring related to a trip to California for a political speech.
King has faced lots of criticism
If King wants to see my entire correspondence with Duran’s office on this issue, he can view it all right here. That’s it.
I don’t collude with politicians, but I do criticize them when I believe it’s necessary.
I’m not the only one who has found it necessary to criticize King. People from across the political spectrum have criticized him for a number of issues including his acceptance of the large campaign contribution, his plea bargain with Jerome Block Jr., an apparent violation by his office of the Inspection of Public Records Act, his lawsuit related to the sharing of water between Texas and New Mexico, the way he’s handled corruption cases, his attempt to force nonprofits to register as political committees, and a general sense that he’s playing politics with his job.
Through it all, even when I have joined the criticism, I have published King’s defenses (here, here, here, here and here are examples).
I’ve hammered Duran and criticized Martinez and her administration (examples are here, here, here, here and here). I’ve also praised King and Martinez when I thought it was appropriate.
I’ll keep doing my job
King’s use of the term “‘red herring’ allegation” is interesting. He’s an incredibly smart lawyer and longtime politician who understands the meanings of words and chooses his carefully. I authored two columns criticizing King in the month before he sent his response to Dow. In suggesting I might be conspiring with Republicans to deflect criticism away from Martinez and onto him, I believe King intended to damage my credibility as a journalist and intimidate me into silence.
In short, it was King who tried to distract from the real issue.
Considering that King prides himself on being the drafter of the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act, and that, as AG, he’s the enforcer of open-government laws, I find it incredibly offensive that King is attempting to intimidate me into silence because I exercised my First Amendment right to criticize him.
I expect better from my attorney general. Then again, this isn’t the first time he has disappointed.
What sort of chilling effect might the AG’s attempt to intimidate the media have? Well, it won’t silence me.
I’ll keep doing my job, even if that means criticizing King again.