{"id":29536,"date":"2011-05-25T11:24:52","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T17:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=29536"},"modified":"2011-05-25T23:44:49","modified_gmt":"2011-05-26T05:44:49","slug":"attack-on-denish-comes-back-to-bite-martinez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2011\/05\/attack-on-denish-comes-back-to-bite-martinez\/","title":{"rendered":"Attack on Denish comes back to bite Martinez"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n

Sometimes you try to do the right thing and still end up making mistakes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s called being human. And Gov. Susana Martinez\u2019s<\/a> staffers recently admitted making a very human mistake.<\/p>\n

They let a Hollywood production crew use the state aircraft to scout locations for a TV show in violation of regulations.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, it was not an appropriate use of state aircraft,\u201d Ed Burckle, secretary of the General Services Department, was quoted by KRQE-TV\u2019s Larry Barker<\/a> as saying. \u201cWe allowed unauthorized passengers to fly in that airplane.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c(In) hindsight, had we known everything at the time, that request would have been denied by the governor\u2019s office,\u201d Martinez Chief of Staff Keith Gardner was quoted as saying. \u201cThese are the kinds of things that keep people like me up at night.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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\u2019s gubernatorial race, then-Lt. Gov. Diane Denish<\/a>, was found to have used state aircraft in violation of regulations more than three dozen times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cDiane Denish, rules for us are below her,\u201d said the narrator of one Martinez TV ad<\/a>. \u201cDenish told schools to cut energy use 10 percent, but used the state\u2019s luxury jet as an air taxi for her family and friends, wasting $367,000 in tax money, and breaking state regulations 39 times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe Martinez, and all of us, should learn from this<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

However, we don\u2019t have any proof that Denish\u2019s violations were anything more than what Martinez\u2019s apparently was \u2013 a mistake. And in both cases, it appears that the violations weren\u2019t identified \u2013 and the behavior corrected \u2013 until the media came calling.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

So what are we to think now, based on Martinez\u2019s own logic? That rules for us are \u201cbelow her?\u201d<\/p>\n

Martinez looks hypocritical. Maybe she should learn from this experience.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t have to be such a cesspool.<\/p>\n

This article has been updated for clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n

Haussamen bio<\/a> \u2502\u00a0Commentary page<\/a> \u2502\u00a0Feed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gov. Susana Martinez was quite unforgiving in her attacks on then-Lt. Gov. Diane Denish last year for violating state aircraft regulations. Now the Martinez administration has violated the very same rules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[108,107],"class_list":["post-29536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-2010-election","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29536","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=29536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}