Thursday, June 10, 2010

An Olive Branch in the Governor's Race?

The Susana Martinez campaign just sent this email to Diane Denish's campaign manager, Oren Shur regarding the negative ads that have marked the first days of the campaign:

Oren,

With so much at stake, Susana Martinez believes that New Mexicans deserve a substantive debate about the most important issues confronting our state and voters have earned the opportunity to review and analyze the visions and plans each candidate offers.

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.

We ask that you give serious consideration to this proposal. I look forward to your response, so we can change the tone of this campaign. Following this agreement, I look forward to meeting with you to build a mutually agreeable general election debate schedule.
I'll blog it when and if the Denish camp responds.

UPDATE 3:32 p.m.

The Denish campaign responds. Ceasefire outlook ... not so good.

Adam,

First, this stunt is blatantly disingenuous given that Susana Martinez has been attacking Diane Denish’s record and character nearly every day for the past six months. In addition, the timing is ironic given that just yesterday you launched a negative ad that a reporter has appropriately called “misleading” and “quite a leap.”

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.

New Mexicans deserve a thoughtful debate on the issues, but it’s remarkably hypocritical for you to suggest that voters don’t also deserve to know about the candidates’ records. Ms. Martinez may not want New Mexicans to know the truth about her record, but that hasn’t stopped her from attacking Diane Denish each and every day.

I’ve now sent you three emails asking for a date when we can discuss a debate schedule. I hope we can have that meeting soon.