Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Martinez Campaign Blows Off Interview Request


Since my syndicated newspaper column appears every other week, I can’t worry much about the daily tit-for-tat in the governor’s race. Instead, I had this idea. Interview each candidate, write two columns about the interview and then post the interview transcript here, assuming my recorder behaves properly. Nine papers around the state subscribe to the column through New Mexico News Service. The nine go to perhaps 40% of New Mexico’s two million people

After a few days, the Denish campaign responded with a time and place.

But after 19 days of dithering, including sloughing the request to a 25 (or so) year old campaign gofer, yesterday Susana Martinez campaign manager Ryan Cangiolosi (photo at right) emailed, “Unfortunately, I regret to inform you that a sit down interview with Susana is not possible at this time. As you well know, the last few months of a campaign are very rigorous, with many requests.”

One can get semantic here and I’ll do that a little.

Does Cangiolosi really “regret” informing me that he is blowing off the interview request? I doubt it. Is it “unfortunate” that he regrets informing me?

And, overall, if Mr. Cangiolosi and the Martinez campaign wanted to talk to the 40% of New Mexicans that read these newspapers, then the one hour I requested would be easily available.

The plan at this point is that after I write the columns about the interview with Ms. Denish, I will write a column posing the questions I planned for Ms. Martinez. Such as. This guy from Texas who gave you the several hundred thousand dollars, have you met him? What is the connection between the Texas guy and your campaign consultant who, with John Dendahl, gave us John Sanchez in 2002? Why are you running? What, really, do you plan to do about the state spending saga? Why are you wasting our time talking about the death penalty? Etc.

Mark Bralley photo

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