{"id":40374,"date":"2012-05-29T06:47:13","date_gmt":"2012-05-29T12:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=40374"},"modified":"2012-05-30T09:34:32","modified_gmt":"2012-05-30T15:34:32","slug":"scrutinizing-candidates-pasts-is-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2012\/05\/scrutinizing-candidates-pasts-is-important\/","title":{"rendered":"Scrutinizing candidates\u2019 pasts is important"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Heath<\/a>

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

Policy issues are critical, and NMPolitics.net will keep devoting resources to telling you about candidates\u2019 positions. But it\u2019s also important to scrutinize issues like Eric Griego\u2019s arrest warrants and Marty Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s relationship with a woman under indictment.<\/h4>\n

Democratic 1st Congressional District candidate Eric Griego\u2019s campaign manager recently told NMPolitics.net that Griego\u2019s past traffic problems<\/a> \u2013 which include a drunken driving conviction and a number of arrest warrants for failing to appear in court \u2013 aren\u2019t important.<\/p>\n

\u201cThousands of New Mexicans are looking for jobs and worried about who\u2019s going to fight to protect their Social Security and Medicare, and our opponents\u2019 biggest concern is 10-year-old traffic tickets,\u201d Yoon said. \u201cThis is what\u2019s wrong with Washington, and why\u00a0New Mexicans are rallying behind Eric Griego, because he is the one Democrat in this race who would rather talk about the issues that are important to the voters.\u201d<\/p>\n

That sounds pretty similar to what Griego opponent Marty Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s campaign manager, Alan Packman, told NMPolitics.net in March<\/a> in response to questions about his relationship with a woman who is under indictment:<\/p>\n

\u201cMarty believes that candidates should be focused on all of the pressing issues facing New Mexican families right now \u2013 like rebuilding our economy \u2013 and not concerning themselves with making negative, personal attacks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got news for all candidates: Your backgrounds are important. How you handle difficult situations speaks to the type of leader you are. Character matters.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I spent so much time working on articles on the U.S. Senate candidate\u2019s backgrounds<\/a>. I hope those articles help New Mexicans understand who the candidates are and how they became those people. I wish I had found time before the primary to put the same level of work into telling the 1st District candidates\u2019 stories.<\/p>\n

The fact that backgrounds matter is why NMPolitics.net looked into 1st District Democratic candidate Michelle Lujan Grisham\u2019s past as state health secretary<\/a> and how she dealt with problems at Ft. Bayard Medical Center. And it\u2019s why Griego\u2019s traffic problems and Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s relationship are relevant.<\/p>\n

Issues that needed exploring<\/h3>\n

I don\u2019t consider one DWI newsworthy, unless there\u2019s something highly unusual about it. Neither are a handful of traffic tickets. What\u2019s interesting in Griego\u2019s case is the pattern of problems that includes his repeated failure to deal with simple traffic citations before judges issued warrants for his arrest.<\/p>\n

Griego disclosed the issues in a 2005 Albuquerque Journal questionnaire<\/a>, saying, \u201cdue to family issues, including my mother’s death, I missed traffic school for speeding tickets.\u201d Fine. But it happened again after that. Why? These are fair issues to explore, especially for someone who writes and votes on laws in Santa Fe and wants to go do the same thing in Washington.<\/p>\n

Ch\u00e1vez may be nothing more than a victim of circumstance, but his relationship with a woman under indictment in a massive hospital-fraud case still required scrutiny. Among the obvious questions were whether Ch\u00e1vez has been implicated in the alleged crimes in any way (he has not), whether he knew anything about the situation (he says he did not), and whether he might have profited from her alleged embezzlement, through campaign contributions, living expenses or otherwise.<\/p>\n

Loretta Mares has donated $5,000 to Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s campaign. Given that she\u2019s alleged to have embezzled a great deal of money, the question about whether Ch\u00e1vez planned to keep the money was a fair one to ask. His campaign manager told NMPolitics.net he\u2019ll donate it to charity if she\u2019s convicted.<\/p>\n

Policy issues aren\u2019t all that\u2019s important<\/h3>\n

NMPolitics.net has scrutinized these issues not because I or we are trying to sway your vote to or away from a particular candidate, but because our role is to help you make informed decisions. Those decisions are your own.<\/p>\n

Two people honestly trying to find their candidate could learn about Griego\u2019s past traffic problems, for example, and be divided on whether to vote for him, with one saying he would be the best champion for the people in spite of those issues and the other opting for another candidate because he\u2019s concerned that Griego didn\u2019t deal with his citations until judges issued warrants to force him to do so.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s democracy. We all decide who to vote for based on our own prioritizing of what\u2019s important.<\/p>\n

Policy issues are critical. It\u2019s why NMPolitics.net has devoted resources to asking some of the most specific, detailed questions<\/a> of these candidates that any journalist has posed throughout the campaign.<\/p>\n

But policy issues aren\u2019t all that\u2019s important. NMPolitics.net will keep working to give you a more complete understanding of the candidates in the future.<\/p>\n

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

Policy issues are critical, and NMPolitics.net will keep devoting resources to telling you about candidates\u2019 positions. But it\u2019s also important to scrutinize issues like Eric Griego\u2019s arrest warrants and Marty Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s relationship with a woman under indictment.<\/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":[228,156,116],"class_list":["post-40374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-1st-congressional-district-race","tag-2012-election","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40374","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=40374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}