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GOP chairman calls out Weh over ‘misleading’ ads
Allen Weh
The chairman of the Republican Party of New Mexico says he can’t ignore dishonesty in his own party any more than he can in the Democratic Party, and that’s why he’s calling out GOP gubernatorial candidate Allen Weh for running misleading ads attacking opponent Susana Martinez.
The criticism – a highly unusual step for a party chair – comes a little more than a week before the primary and as the race has degraded into a nasty battle between Martinez and Weh.
Citing the fact that the party has spent months asking voters to restore honesty and ethics in Santa Fe by electing Republican candidates, GOP Chairman Harvey E. Yates said Sunday in an interview that he had no choice but to call out Weh after Weh refused to stop airing false attack ads on radio and TV against Martinez.
“If we can’t get this message through that we’re going to stand for honesty, then why have we been talking about it?” Yates asked.
The chairman said he called a committee of three people – including himself – to examine complaints about negative ads Martinez and Weh were running. The committee asked both campaigns for supporting evidence for their ads. After reviewing the documentation, the committee found Martinez’s ad – which accused Weh of supporting amnesty – to be “reasonably supported” by the documentation Martinez provided, a news release from Yates said.
But Weh’s ads, which accuse Martinez of not paying taxes, were different. From Yates’ news release:
“In Mr. Weh’s ad he suggests that Ms. Martinez has not paid her taxes. No support for that was found in the documents. Mr. Weh’s ads imply that Ms. Martinez has misused public funds in a variety of ways. Yet, an examination of the documents not only did not substantiate that claim, the examination results suggest that Ms. Martinez has handled public funds properly. In short, the effort undertaken revealed that Mr. Weh’s recent radio and TV ads are misleading.”
Yates’ release was sent from his personal e-mail account, not a state GOP address.
Yates said in the release that the tax claim was especially concerning.
“I note that when Mr. Weh accuses Ms. Martinez of failure to pay her taxes, this can be taken as suggesting possible felonious conduct on the part of Ms. Martinez. This suggestion by Mr. Weh, without clear evidence, is inappropriate,” Yates said.
“Republicans expect honesty in government,” he said. “How likely is that result if dishonesty in campaigning is tolerated in those we elect to run government?”
Weh accuses Yates of being ‘biased’
Weh was harsh in his response, which came from Campaign Manager Whitney Cheshire.
“Instead of letting rank-and-file Republicans think and speak for themselves, which thankfully will occur on Election Day, a group of self-appointed party insiders has wrongly and inexplicably decided to give Susana Martinez a free pass when it comes to keeping her word about running a negative campaign,” Cheshire said in a news release.
“The chairman’s biased interference in a primary contest is harmful to the Republican Party and wrong for our state,” said Cheshire, a former columnist for this site. “We stand by our ad’s accuracy. Mrs. Martinez’s multiple ads falsely accusing Allen Weh of supporting amnesty are fundamentally dishonest and misleading.”
Debunking Weh’s TV ad
Weh’s TV ad states that Martinez “failed to pay taxes.” That statement is prefaced by a claim that auditors “caught her red handed,” and then the ad goes on to say, “Look how Martinez spends our tax dollars: extravagant dinners, luxury hotels, dinner at Hooters – even iPods. Wasting money, breaking the rules. Career politician Susana Martinez. A false campaign, unpaid taxes, bad judgment.”
To back up the claims in its TV and radio ads, the Weh campaign provided me with a fact sheet, the 3rd Judicial District Attorney’s 2008 audit report and receipts documenting travel expenses for the 3rd District office. I assume these are the same documents that were provided to Yates.
The audit report found that Martinez’s office paid some people to destroy old documents as contractors when they should have been paid as employees. Paying them as employees would have required that Martinez’s office pay Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax. That’s the basis for the “unpaid taxes” claim.
But instead of explaining that, the ads present the tax issue as either a claim that Martinez avoided personal taxes, or that her office’s failure to pay taxes somehow involved “extravagant dinners, luxury hotels, dinner at Hooters – even iPods.” Neither is supported by documents provided by the Weh campaign.
Susana Martinez
The Martinez campaign said hiring contractors to destroy records was approved by the state Department of Finance and Administration two years in a row before an auditor determined they should have been paid as employees.
As for the travel expenses, Martinez noted that DFA also approved those reimbursements, which all fell within allowable costs. No alcohol costs were reimbursed. The iPods, Martinez said, “are used for listening to witness and defendant statements and jail phone calls,” and listening to such audio recordings has helped lead to convictions.
Though Martinez attacked first, she has been on the warpath since Weh started airing his negative ads, decrying them as false and challenging Weh to release his taxes to prove he’s paid them – a challenge Weh has ignored. Martinez released hers to prove Weh’s ads wrong.
‘We’ve got to be honest’
In the interview, Yates said he knows his statements could be used against Weh and Republicans in the general election if Weh wins the primary.
“That is a very difficult thing. You’re up against a wall and you have a decision to make,” he said. “Do you stand up for honesty and say you’ve got to be honest, or do you back off because there may be some adverse impact on the Republican Party?”
“My view is that we’ve got to take a longer view. We’ve got to be honest, and we’ve got to insist that the Democrats are,” he said. “I would just urge everybody to move toward doing things that are clearly honest. Let’s win our elections – whichever side – by stating facts honestly and letting the people decide.”
Yates said the committee started out by asking Weh to stop airing the false ads. The Weh campaign made “a suggestion” it would stop airing the ads, Yates said, but Weh failed to provide evidence that it had told TV stations to stop airing the ads and a written pledge to not air misleading ads in the future.
Weh campaign spokesman Christopher Sanchez hasn’t responded to an e-mail asking if Weh had agreed to take down the ads.
Yates said the campaign’s failure to provide proof it was stopping the ads and a written pledge that it wouldn’t air more dishonest ads led him to make his public statement. But he said his criticism of Weh isn’t an endorsement of Martinez – or a statement of opposition to Weh’s candidacy.
“We are not going in this case against Allen Weh,” he said. “We are just saying use honest ads, and if this had been Susana Martinez we would have done the same thing, or anyone else. … If people were going to vote for Allen Weh, they need to go on and do that, and we’re certainly not endorsing other candidates.”
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KEMVrba wrote “… If anyone thinks that, after putting over a million dollars of his own money into this race, only to have it turn on favoritism of the party leadership to another candidate, he is going to collect his marbles and go home and play nice, then they don’t know Allen Weh. The more likely scenario is that given his public perception, he is going to seek some revenge, and the retribution is going to be very public and very ugly. …” That’s sure another reason not to vote for the man.
And BTW the “little town of Las Cruces” is the second largest city in our state.
I don’t have an axe to grind one way or the other in this dispute other than to hope that neither one of these two political opportunists ever take up residence in the Governor’s Mansion of this wonderful State, but it is hard to figure out why the Republicans keep shooting themselves in the foot.
The party bosses have no business injecting themselves into the middle of a contentious primary by playing referee and arbitrarily deciding what’s in good taste and what isn’t. Those interpretations should be left to the voters. I assume that these are all mature individuals participating in this race, and quite capable of fighting their own battles and defending themselves. If the party chairman has to step in and defend one candidate against another, then no matter how much he may deny that the action was not an endorsement, the public perception could well be that this race is going to decided by the strong arm of the “party bosses”, if it hasn’t already. Chicago politics has emerged in New Mexico, perhaps?
I agree with “Transparency” when he suggests that this act on the part of the State Party Chairman, calls into question the entire nominating process. Just how much influence did Mr. Yates and his cohorts strong arm the delegates to vote for Martinez? If I was Messrs. Turner and Domenici, or Ms. Arnold-Jones, I’d be asking some questions about the fairness of the entire process. It becomes even more curious or perhaps now understandable why the oil and gas industry literally financed more than half of the campaign of a little known DA from the little town of Las Cruces. What did the party bosses promise them in return for their very generous contributions, given that it was obvious from the beginning that there was no way that Martinez could ever match the bottomless Weh money pit? That entire situation is more than a little curious. When the campaign finance reports go public this week, will their be several hundred thousand more dollars from this special interest group show up in Martinez’s report, or will it be held back until after June 1st?
It goes without saying that if Martinez wins the Primary, the attacks by Weh will appear very mild compared to what the Denish campaign is going to throw at her in the general. If Ms. Martinez needs to be shielded from any kind of negative attack ads, she doesn’t belong in the race.
I hope the Republican Party is ready for a nice big long drawn out expensive lawsuit if Weh should lose this race. If anyone thinks that, after putting over a million dollars of his own money into this race, only to have it turn on favoritism of the party leadership to another candidate, he is going to collect his marbles and go home and play nice, then they don’t know Allen Weh. The more likely scenario is that given his public perception, he is going to seek some revenge, and the retribution is going to be very public and very ugly. The Party battle, no doubt, will come immediately after the primary, especially if Martinez is the victor, and continue during the entire duration of general campaign just at the time that Republicans are trying to make inroads and convince the voters they are the Party of unity and civility. Like I said, Republicans just can’t help from shooting themselves in the foot.
For Weh to say that Yates is being divisive is laughable. Weh was the most divisive Chairman of the NM Republican party that I have ever seen. He was a bully as chairman and ruled with an iron fist, more like a dictator than a chairman. As chairman he thought he should be the one to determine what republican candidates ran for office, not the voters. I really dislike negative campaign ads, especially between individuals in the same party, but his ads are just totally misleading and inaccurate and just reinforce the type of person that he is.
I would truly hate to see Denish win this election, especially because I really feel there are some great Republican candidates running, excluding Weh. If Weh wins the primary, I just cannot and will not vote for him for that man and I am sure I am not the only one that feels that way!
Bottom line is, if party boss Yates was going to do anything to intercede in the negative attacks, the ONLY permissible thing to have done was to call the two children into the room, scold them for misbehaving, get them to vow to knock it off and THEN release to the public that he has issued an edict to stop the negative campaigning. PERIOD!
To attempt to decipher the ads with an unnamed committee of three and publicly comment on them was not appropriate especially because the outcome smacks of favoritism for Susana. It now brings into question anything Yates has been involved with as chairman to date. For Susana to come from nowhere and end up the dominant vote getter at the pre-primary convention is now in question. It begs the question: Who did Yates lean on to vote for her since he is making it clear this was his favorite? This is a terrible act on his part and brings the Republican party into further disarray than it already was. People are sick of this stuff.
You can only gain trust through respect and you lose it through disrespect. The responders who speak favorably about Janice Arnold-Jones are correct. She earns trust through respect. She is way above the fray. She is the best candidate in the field and is the ONLY one who can beat Denish.
Weh? Martinez? Yates? All ‘Politics as usual.’
@Astute Observer
Yes, Weh and several hundreds of thousands of soldiers have fought for our country valiantly and I commend them on their service. Most don’t go around rubbing it our faces as to how just because they served, they should be elected to office. Those that do show no respect for their comrades, especially those who gave the ultimate sacrifice and were unable to come back and flaunt their war record. Shame on Allen Weh for even going there.
… and Heath – ya need to take Ksparks comment off the site. Clearly – Weh, for all of his faults, was a decent combat leader – I’ve read some of the reports from men who served with him – unedited, prior to the campaign tweaking them and he was a good company commander who took care of his men while accomplishing the mission. New Mexico isn’t Vietnam, however and those skills don’t necesarily translate to leading the state. Shame on Ksparks … bad.
What is dissapointing about this is the downright dishonesty exhibited by Weh’s campaign. Please get your facts straight! Your campaign manager should really check facts before anything is put on the air. These tactics are uneccesary and have led to possible fissures within the party. Remember the Dems? Wedum59 is pretty dead set on the idea that Denish is unbeatable. He (or she) has another thing coming if Republicans can stick to the issues and prepare to take Denish on.
Well, I’ve said for months that with the “winning personality” of Allen Weh’s that when he was in Vietnam and all those other battlefronts he boasts of that he probably had troops shooting at him from both sides. Here’s proof because they definitely are shooting at him from both sides here. Guess he’ll be the only former Marine to be taken out by friendly fire.
The voters on June 1 will be ignoring both Weh’s lies and Susana’s attack ads, and voting for someone who has been sticking to the issues – issues she knows backwards and forwards after seven years in the state legislature fiercely fighting for New Mexico’s taxpayers: Janice Arnold-Jones.
Good on you Mr. Yates. Thank you for taking a stand.
Weh, you should be ashamed of yourself. After hearing all of this, I am ashamed of you and to be of the same party as you. Run on your own record, not the one you’re making up for other candidates.
Better yet, save some face for the party and drop out and re-register as a Democrat… they’ll accept what you’re doing to be just part of the process!
You just can’t buy love Mr. Weh. You think we can see your tax returns? I wish Weh and Martinez could stick to the facts. The Best candidate appears to be the one who really knows whats going on in state government….Janice!
Good for Mr. Yates for having the courage to go against Weh. Allen Weh is a bully and will do anything to win as is demonstrated by his ads against Ms. Martinez and his claiming the Tea Party endorsed him. He has people bending the party rules in order to endorse him and seek votes on his behalf. When he ran for party chairman, he made personal phone calls to State central committee members trashing his opponents. If Allen Weh wins the pimary, I will decline to vote for governor.
I had no idea who Weh was before these ads and his rhetoric. Now that I do, it is obvious this man has no abilities, values, or character qualities that would qualify him for public office. He and his campaign team are outrageous. How in the world did they think they could operate like this?
While I think that neither Martinez or Weh can beat Denish, if Martinez is the GOP candidate we will have a more civil, factual, issue-oriented campaign. Weh is as bad as the swiftboaters.