Beware the summer spin from self-serving politicians
Everyone running for public office makes the same appeal when it comes to news coverage. They say something like this: Give me a fair shake, honestly represent my record, and you will never hear a complaint about tough-minded news stories, even if they make me look bad.
That’s not the way it works out.
Candidates who say they want honesty often exaggerate, embellish and make illogical claims that ought to get them laughed off the stage.
Consider the tactics of Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham, who is seeking campaign donations by misrepresenting her standing in the race for governor.
“Last week, tea partier Rep. Steve Pearce — one of the most conservative members of Congress — announced he was running against me for governor,” Lujan Grisham said in an email soliciting contributions.
For starters, Republican Pearce never said he and Lujan Grisham would compete against one another in the general election. Lujan Grisham wants donors to believe she is in a one-on-one race against Pearce, even though she is one of four Democrats running for governor. Her party’s nomination won’t even be decided until June 2018.
A lot can happen between now and then. More candidates could emerge. Lujan Grisham’s campaign could implode.
The Democratic nomination for governor probably is Lujan Grisham’s to lose because she is outworking her opponents. One of them, Joseph Cervantes, hasn’t even updated his campaign website, called cervantes4nm.com. It’s still devoted to his race for the state Senate, which he won last November.
If Cervantes’ heart isn’t in the campaign, Lujan Grisham’s chances of winning the nomination improve by the day.
Even so, Lujan Grisham isn’t going to impress undecided voters by anoint--
ing herself as the nominee. They want to know what she stands for, other than self-promotion.
By presenting herself as the party nominee before a single vote has been cast, Lujan Grisham has invited additional scrutiny of every claim she makes.
Santa Fe City Councilor Joseph Maestas, who’s running for re-election, used a different sort of spin last week in hopes of getting his way on a high-profile issue and appeasing a vocal crowd.
Maestas reintroduced his proposal to implement rankedchoice voting in the city election next March, despite glaring problems that made the idea impractical, even dangerous.
Under the system, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If nobody gets more than 50 percent of the vote to win outright, the second-place votes of the bottom candidate are redistributed to the leading contenders until somebody breaks through.
Santa Fe voters authorized ranked-choice voting in 2008, but it’s never been implemented because of a lack of interest by those in key jobs at City Hall, including elected officials. Advocates of ranked-choice voting filled the council chambers to urge that the change be made now. Maestas was their advocate.
But Santa Fe County Clerk Geraldine Salazar gave the mayor and City Council members a detailed overview of the drawbacks of trying to change the election system only six months before absentee voting begins. Salazar was more than persuasive. The deadline is so tight that the city would run the risk of a botched election.
Maestas wasn’t swayed, though. “Democracy is messy,” he said in asking his council colleagues to vote for his proposal.
Debate over city spending or a tax on sugary drinks might be messy. Elections have to be clean or public trust collapses.
Six councilors made the right decision by voting down Maestas’ proposal. Only Mayor Javier Gonzales and Councilor Renee Villarreal sided with Maestas.
If Gonzales, Villarreal and Maestas were so interested in implementing ranked-choice voting by 2018, why weren’t they working on the issue months ago, when time pressures were less?
It was easy for Maestas to talk in sound bites about democracy and its imperfections. But he was nowhere to be found when the city needed leadership to make sure the arduous work could be completed well before the next election.
He can tell voters he fought for a change they wanted. What they need to know is that Maestas sat on the sidelines until it was too late.
So, while Maestas, Lujan Grisham and many other candidates say they want coverage that’s straight as a string, they’re busy spinning the news to gain an advantage.