{"id":33510,"date":"2011-11-02T07:59:34","date_gmt":"2011-11-02T13:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=33510"},"modified":"2011-11-03T06:46:49","modified_gmt":"2011-11-03T12:46:49","slug":"king%e2%80%99s-red-herring-allegation-won%e2%80%99t-silence-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2011\/11\/king%e2%80%99s-red-herring-allegation-won%e2%80%99t-silence-me\/","title":{"rendered":"King\u2019s red-herring allegation won\u2019t silence me"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

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

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\u2019t collude with politicians, and I won\u2019t be silenced.<\/h4>\n

Attorney General Gary King<\/a> doesn\u2019t like being questioned. He has a thin skin and has repeatedly taken offense at criticism.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

You may recall me writing an Oct. 12 column<\/a> criticizing King for accepting a $15,000 campaign contribution months after a law capping donations at $5,000 took effect. My bottom line:<\/p>\n

\u201cNew 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\u2019s office even stated, in\u00a0the fiscal impact report\u00a0for the bill that eventually became the new contribution limit law, that \u2018placing limits on political contributions is the most effective vehicle for addressing the current \u2018pay to play\u2019 scandals.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cLegalities 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.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t know whether King\u2019s acceptance of the contribution is legal. Secretary of State Dianna Duran<\/a> is investigating. Her office\u2019s general counsel, Thomas Dow, sent King a letter<\/a> on Oct. 13 asking him to justify the donation.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Dow was aware of Sisneros\u2019 e-mail to me because I forwarded it to officials in the Secretary of State\u2019s Office in seeking comment from them on the matter. I wanted them to know what King\u2019s response was. That\u2019s standard in the process of reporting.<\/p>\n

AG suggests \u2018collusion between Mr. Haussamen\u201d and the SOS<\/h3>\n

But King used my standard news-gathering to suggest, in his Oct. 25 response to Dow<\/a>, that I was conspiring with Republicans against him.<\/p>\n

He wrote that Dow\u2019s letter asking him to address Sisneros\u2019 e-mail \u201cappears, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

King wrote that my request that Sisneros explain why the contribution was legal \u201cis not unusual to the Office of Attorney General\u201d and that the office \u201chas 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s generally not been my experience when I\u2019m asking for a legal interpretation, but that\u2019s another issue.<\/p>\n

King went on to request a copy of my \u201cformal complaint\u201d against him if I filed one (I did not), and wrote that if I did not file a complaint, he \u201cwould like to know what information was exchanged between Mr. Haussamen and your office prior to sending the October 13th letter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then the whopper of an allegation:<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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 \u2018red herring\u2019 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.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/a> for a political speech.<\/p>\n

King has faced lots of criticism<\/h3>\n

If King wants to see my entire correspondence with Duran\u2019s office on this issue, he can view it all right here<\/a>. That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t collude with politicians, but I do criticize them when I believe it\u2019s necessary.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m 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<\/a>, his plea bargain<\/a> with Jerome Block Jr., an apparent violation<\/a> by his office of the Inspection of Public Records Act, his lawsuit related to the sharing of water<\/a> between Texas and New Mexico, the way he\u2019s handled corruption cases<\/a>, his attempt to force nonprofits to register<\/a> as political committees, and a general sense that he\u2019s playing politics with his job<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Through it all, even when I have joined the criticism, I have published King\u2019s defenses (here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a> are examples).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve hammered Duran and criticized Martinez and her administration (examples are here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>). I\u2019ve also praised King<\/a> and Martinez<\/a> when I thought it was appropriate.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll keep doing my job<\/h3>\n

King\u2019s use of the term \u201c\u2018red herring\u2019 allegation\u201d is interesting. He\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

In short, it was King who tried to distract from the real issue.<\/p>\n

Considering that King prides himself on being the drafter of the state\u2019s Inspection of Public Records Act, and that, as AG, he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

I expect better from my attorney general. Then again, this isn\u2019t the first time he has disappointed.<\/p>\n

What sort of chilling effect might the AG\u2019s attempt to intimidate the media have? Well, it won\u2019t silence me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll keep doing my job, even if that means criticizing King again.<\/p>\n

Haussamen bio<\/a>\u00a0\u2502\u00a0Commentary page<\/a>\u00a0\u2502\u00a0Feed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019t collude with politicians, and I won\u2019t be silenced.<\/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":[223,111,107],"class_list":["post-33510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-campaign-finance","tag-open-government","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33510","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=33510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}