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The general election in the gubernatorial race has already been the site of a number of negative ads from candidates Diane Denish and Susana Martinez. This comes after a bruising final few weeks in the Republican primary, which included negative TV ads from Allen Weh and Martinez.
The ads led to Martinez’s campaign to ask for a cease fire.
Martinez’s campaign sent a letter to Denish campaign manager Oren Shur, making sure to put their press list on on the cc line in the e-mail, asking for a temporary cease fire of the negative ads.
Unfortunately, your campaign began attacking Susana the day after the primary election concluded with a negative ad, which has been proven to be false. We are setting the record straight on the crime issue and will never allow false attacks to go unanswered. But, we believe voters deserve an opportunity to hear from each candidate concerning their visions and we propose that both campaigns commit to only positive advertising through at least the end of July. There will be plenty of time to have a healthy debate about the differences between the candidates this fall.
The Denish campaign countered with their own letter, again also sent to the press, which said that Martinez had begun attacking Denish before the general election even started.
In fact, Denish was a big part of the Republican gubernatorial primary by all the candidates. Here is an excerpt from Denish’s letter:
We agree this campaign needs to focus on the issues most important to New Mexico families. While Susana Martinez was busy launching negative ads against her primary opponent, Diane Denish put forward substantive proposals to create jobs at New Mexico’s small businesses and to save the taxpayers $450 million through cost-saving reforms. For the better part of this campaign, Diane has been the only candidate talking about the issues.
In other words: Don’t hold your breath.
The Independent Insider podcast touched on the negative TV ads Thursday afternoon.
NMPolitics.net’s Heath Haussamen wrote on Twitter, “I don’t get it. Denish and the Dems are promoting my latest article, even though it calls out Martinez AND Denish for misleading spin…”
Haussamen is referring to this analysis where he says that both candidates spun the facts in relation to a recent ad by Martinez.
Here is a short history of these negative ads in the first week and a half of the general election:
The general election kicked off with a bang when Denish aired her first general election ad, which has since been removed from YouTube, that accused Martinez of “broken promises” and “putting criminals back on the street.”
Denish’s second ad continued the attack on DWI plea bargains; Martinez had promised not to plea bargain DWI cases when running for district attorney, but had done so.
Martinez joined the general election TV ad game with an attack on Denish that many likened to the infamous Willie Horton ad against Michael Dukakis by George H.W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election.
And it’s only June.
