Commentary:
Does the state Republican Party figure New Mexicans are terminally stupid?
State party mailers used in many legislative races state things like “Joy Garratt – Best friends with pedophiles and sex offenders.” “Nathan Small: putting pedophiles first. Leaving us behind.” Is there a grownup in the county who thinks any local candidate of any party would “put pedophiles first?” The mailer continues, “Nathan Small doesn’t care about you. He only cares about criminals.”
These mailers cite 2021 HB 114, providing that an elderly prisoner who’s terminally ill or debilitated by a stroke “and does not constitute a danger to the person’s own self or to society . . . may seek parole consideration upon written application.” This humane measure passed 37-4 in the Senate. If voting for it constitutes “putting pedophiles first,” then many Republican state senators did just that. (The mailer cites rejection of an amendment excepting people guilty of sex crimes.) This is not intelligent political discourse.
Worse, one mailer doctored a stock image of a barber’s fingers cutting a blonde child’s hair, turning the fingers dark brown, suggesting children being preyed upon. Republicans wanted so evoke menace, and made the fingers brown to scare folks more. Their best defense so far? The brown was grey, meant to evoke the Grim Reaper.
Meanwhile, many Republican candidates refuse to answer newspapers’ basic candidate questionnaires or be interviewed! We read, “[Kimberly] Skaggs did not respond to multiple interview requests from the Sun-News.” Ditto Sandy Hammack (opposing Tara Jaramillo in the redrawn House District 38). Hammack apparently was so scared of being interviewed that once, when she answered her phone to a reporter’s call, she cried out, "Oh shoot!" and hung up.
Hidden behind the nonsense are real issues – some crazy and some on which reasonable people could disagree.
Among the loonier ones? Our political leaders are not a vicious cabal of pederasts. The 2020 election was not decided by a huge conspiracy to defraud the electorate. (Even in a judiciary influenced strongly by Donald Trump, no judge, including Trump-appointed judges, found a hint of real evidence supporting Trump’s fraud allegations.)
As for serious issues: How do we balance the importance of confronting Putin’s aggression against Ukraine with our needs to maintain a reasonable economy, confront global weirdness, and avoid nuclear catastrophe? As always, how do we minimize crime without destroying either our civil liberties or our economy? How can our state improve education? How can we balance oil income with environmental health and minimizing global weirdness? How can we continue to minimize pandemic deaths and illnesses without sacrificing too much economically and educationally? These questions deserve discussion. We get idiotic flyers.
Relying on easily disproved stupidities and ducking newspapers won’t persuade voters the Republicans have the fortitude to help us negotiate dangerous shoals.
I’d bet even a few local Republican candidates are embarrassed by these ads. (I should note an exception to the Republican candidates’ cowardice: County Commissioner Shannon Reynolds and challenger Susie Kimble are running a civil, courteous, and apparently truthful campaign, each claiming to be the better candidate for the county, without insulting or libeling each other. Asked about Trump’s claim he won the 2020 election, Kimble recounted voting for Trump in 2016, based on his conservative rhetoric, then seeing how woefully unsuited he was for the U.S. Presidency.
But mostly we see misleading, even racist ads and mailers, and evasiveness.
In effect, one party hasn’t even shown up for this election.