{"id":764,"date":"2006-10-25T07:24:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-25T13:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/10\/herrera-says-its-time-to-punch-back\/"},"modified":"2006-10-25T07:24:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-25T13:24:00","slug":"herrera-says-its-time-to-punch-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/10\/herrera-says-its-time-to-punch-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Herrera says it’s time to ‘punch back’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Democratic secretary of state candidate Mary Herrera says she\u2019s tired of the mudslinging by her opponent and isn\u2019t going to take it any more. <\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Republican Vickie Perea has been constantly tossing allegations at Herrera, the Bernalillo County Clerk, for several weeks. She\u2019s accused the Democrat of sending a campaign e-mail from her government e-mail address, of sitting on a records request for phone and e-mail records for more than five weeks, and of having outgoing phone calls from some phones in the clerk\u2019s office reflect other phone numbers to hide campaign activity that is taking place using government equipment.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

In addition to answering those charges in an interview with me Tuesday night, Herrera wanted to announce that she\u2019s not going to turn the other cheek any longer.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cNow I\u2019m going to punch back,\u201d Herrera said. \u201cIt\u2019s time.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>To start, she questioned the fact that Perea, when she was an Albuquerque<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> city councilor, faced ethics complaints during an unsuccessful run for mayor. Perea was accused, among other things, of improperly using footage of firefighters in her campaign.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Perea maintains that she left her council seat because of her run for mayor, not because of the complaints.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

But Herrera said Perea shouldn\u2019t be attacking others for ethical lapses.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cIt just amazes me that she does this every week, while she was taken to the ethics board when she was a city councilor,\u201d Herrera said.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

In response to the alleged campaign e-mail, Herrera said a friend sent her a copy of a Perea news release and asked her what she thought about it. Herrera responded, using her BlackBerry and government e-mail address, by sharing her thoughts.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

She said she didn\u2019t solicit a vote or campaign in any way.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

And she had this to say about the changing of phone numbers that would be displayed during outgoing calls from some phones in the clerk\u2019s office: Herrera said her office has been in the process of changing phone systems for several months, and many employees, including Herrera, have two phones with different phone numbers on their desks.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

She said she asked that some new phone numbers be programmed to reflect on caller ID devices the same number for outgoing calls as the original phones, to avoid confusion for the public. Other numbers were changed to reflect (505) 000-0000 on caller ID devices, she acknowledged.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

But Herrera said those are numbers that previously displayed \u201cunknown\u201d when outgoing calls were made. That\u2019s common for high-ranking government officials, so members of the public call a main phone number instead of their desk.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Herrera said when she asked for some numbers, including her own, to be programmed so that they would display \u201cunknown\u201d on caller ID devices, Bernalillo County technicians said they could not do that with the new system, but could change to the seven zeroes.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

As for the allegation that Herrera has stalled a records request: Perea requested several weeks ago a host of e-mail and phone records. In a news release Monday, her campaign stated that Herrera \u201chas stalled and delayed requests for public records concerning the extent to which she is campaigning on the taxpayer\u2019s dime for what is now 39 days.\u201d<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

It failed to mention that Herrera provided the requested phone records last week, Herrera said. She added that she has not complied with the e-mail request and won\u2019t until after the election.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

It deals with thousands of e-mails, and many contain social security numbers, details of personnel issues or other sensitive material that will have to be redacted, Herrera said, and she won\u2019t have time to read and redact all of them until after the election she is currently running in Bernalillo County has passed.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

When I asked the Perea campaign about that on Tuesday, campaign Manager Scott Darnell said Herrera is telling a piece of the truth. He said the campaign requested cell phone records from February to mid-September, but was provided only with records through mid-August.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs you know, mid-August begins the heavy campaign season, and maybe the evidence of her campaigning on taxpayer dollars is heaviest beginning then,\u201d Darnell said in an e-mail.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

As for the e-mail request, Darnell said Herrera has not communicated to the campaign what she told me.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOn this matter, we have been entirely ignored,\u201d he said.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

What a nasty race this has become. I\u2019ll say this: Herrera\u2019s explanation for the switching of phone numbers sounds reasonable, given that, when you call the numbers that appear when the phones in question make outgoing calls, you get the clerk\u2019s office. If you were going to change the numbers displayed on caller ID to hide campaign activity by the office, would you have the new numbers take you back to the clerk\u2019s office?<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Though I\u2019m not certain, it may very well be that Herrera\u2019s explanations are true. She said this is the first time she\u2019s responded in-depth to Perea\u2019s attacks. Staying silent in the face of serious allegations is never the best avenue, but it\u2019s what Herrera has done throughout much of this campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democratic secretary of state candidate Mary Herrera says she\u2019s tired of the mudslinging by her opponent and isn\u2019t going to take it any more. Republican Vickie Perea has been constantly tossing allegations at Herrera, the Bernalillo County Clerk, for several weeks. She\u2019s accused the Democrat of sending a campaign e-mail from her government e-mail address, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764","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=764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}