{"id":18948,"date":"2010-06-30T14:06:30","date_gmt":"2010-06-30T20:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=18948"},"modified":"2010-06-30T17:56:24","modified_gmt":"2010-06-30T23:56:24","slug":"denish-senders-of-racist-e-mail-should-lose-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/06\/denish-senders-of-racist-e-mail-should-lose-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"Denish: Senders of racist e-mail should lose jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Diane Denish<\/p><\/div>\n

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Diane Denish<\/a> says if a \u2018racist\u2019 e-mail was sent among employees of her office like the one forwarded by an employee of Republican opponent Susana Martinez\u2019s<\/a> office, those employees would lose their jobs.<\/p>\n

In her first comments about the situation, Denish, the state\u2019s lieutenant governor, said there is \u201cabsolutely nothing funny about the email that was circulated by Susana Martinez\u2019s staff.\u00a0 It is offensive, inexcusable and runs against the fabric of what we stand for as New Mexicans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as I\u2019m concerned, there should be\u00a0zero tolerance\u00a0for racism, and Susana Martinez\u2019s silence on the matter has been disappointing,\u201d Denish said. \u201cNeedless to say, if this happened in my office, the employees responsible would no longer have their jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike most New Mexicans, I value the diversity that makes our state strong and unique,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s disheartening to know that there are still people who find racial stereotypes to be funny. There should be no place for that kind of hate in the District Attorney\u2019s Office or anywhere else in state government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martinez, the Do\u00f1a Ana County district attorney, has reprimanded the employee<\/a> who forwarded the e-mail but has made no public statement about the incident. Instead, she had her chief deputy district attorney explain to the media on Tuesday that the employee had been reprimanded, but Susan Reidel would not go into details.<\/p>\n

The state Administrative Office of the District Attorneys<\/a> says it\u2019s considering what to do about its employee who sent the e-mail to the prosecutor in Martinez\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

The e-mail, which you can read\u00a0here<\/a> courtesy of\u00a0Democracy for New Mexico<\/a>, is undoubtedly inappropriate and offensive. It starts with a Mexican and an Arab in a bar drinking beers (nonalcoholic for the Arab because he\u2019s a Muslim). Both shoot their glasses, with the Mexican describing how cheap glasses are in Mexico and the Arab saying there\u2019s so much sand to make glass where he\u2019s from that he, like the Mexican, never has to drink from the same glass twice.<\/p>\n

Then a New Mexico girl shoots the Mexican and Arab and says, \u201cIn New Mexico, we have so many illegal aliens we don\u2019t have to drink with the same ones twice.\u201d The e-mail ends with the line, \u201cGod bless New Mexico and that particular New Mexican girl.\u201d<\/p>\n

Update, 5:05 p.m.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Martinez campaign and state GOP are calling Denish a hypocrite because of her statement. From the Martinez campaign:<\/p>\n

\u201cDiane Denish\u2019s statement demonstrates breathtaking hypocrisy and desperation.\u00a0Susana Martinez found the forwarded email \u2018joke\u2019 to be unacceptable, and immediately addressed the issue when it was brought to her attention by reprimanding the individual and issuing a statement from her official office to make clear that the email forwarded by one employee did not represent her views, nor the views of the office. The reality is that Denish chairs the Children\u2019s Cabinet, which includes CYFD where over 100 employees repeatedly used government computers to access inappropriate materials, such as pornography, without facing termination.\u00a0In fact, when one employee was fired, he was reinstated by a judge who found the firing was not consistent with the lax treatment of over 100 other employees who engaged in similar misconduct and never faced termination. Diane Denish needs to square her empty rhetoric with her record by explaining why she did not publicly demand the termination of the over 100 employees who improperly used their state computers to access such things as pornography in her own Children\u2019s Cabinet.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The state GOP, meanwhile, hit Denish and the state Democratic Party, whose chairman has called on Martinez to fire the employee<\/a> who forwarded the e-mail. The GOP also cited the situation with the CYFD employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy weren\u2019t Diane Denish and the Democrat Party this vocal when it was exposed that 150 employees from CYFD had been misusing state email accounts and visiting porn sites?\u201d GOP spokeswoman Janel Causey asked. \u201cMaybe it was because Diane Denish was the chair of a cabinet which was charged with oversight of CYFD, or maybe it\u2019s because we are in the middle of campaign season.\u201d<\/p>\n

The details of the situation they\u2019re referring to at the state\u2019s Children, Youth and Families Department are laid out in a 2006 Albuquerque Journal article<\/a>. Essentially, CYFD found 150 employees with inappropriate e-mails, many of them pornographic, on their work computers.<\/p>\n

One employee who was fired for keeping pornography on his computer was reinstated by a judge who, according to the Journal, found that his misconduct warranted discipline but said \u201chis firing was \u2018arbitrary and capricious,\u2019 given CYFD\u2019s unexplained disparate treatment of 150 CYFD employees found with inappropriate materials.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two of those 150 employees were fired, while some 132 were given written warnings and 13 others received more serious reprimands, according to the state GOP.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve not yet received a response from the Denish campaign or state Democratic Party to the new statements from Martinez and the state GOP.<\/p>\n

And as a reminder: I\u2019ve already written about how both Martinez and Denish have exaggerated Denish\u2019s authority over CYFD in her role as head of the New Mexico Children\u2019s Cabinet. Read about that here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Update, 5:55 p.m.<\/strong><\/p>\n

From state Democratic Party spokesman James Hallinan:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people of New Mexico are learning a lot about Susana Martinez this week.\u00a0Instead of showing true leadership in the face of adversity, Martinez is hiding behind spokespeople and trying to distract New Mexicans.\u00a0Her failure to directly condemn a racist email from her DA\u2019s Office speaks volumes to all New Mexicans.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Diane Denish says if a \u2018racist\u2019 e-mail was sent among employees of her office like the one forwarded by an employee of Republican opponent Susana Martinez\u2019s office, those employees would lose their jobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[108,140,143,107],"class_list":["post-18948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-2010-election","tag-border-and-immigration","tag-race-and-ethnicity","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}