Diane Denish Launches Website for 2010 Gubernatorial Run

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Approximately 17 months before election day 2010, Lt. Governor Diane Denish has launched a campaign website with lots of bells and whisles at for her run for New Mexico Governor. Two announced GOP contenders also have campaign websites up and running to varying degrees. Clearly, it's gonna be a long, long 2010 election season -- at least for the state's top slot.

Today, the Denish campaign announced the launch of the site in a press release. Excerpt:

Today we are unveiling our new website at . This site will be our virtual campaign headquarters, where we can share information about the campaign, discuss policy ideas, organize volunteers, raise money, and more. I hope you will take a few moments to explore the site, and urge your friends to do the same.

If you have not already, please sign up to become a Friend of Diane. We are recruiting Friends of Diane in every corner of New Mexico as we build a statewide organization that is prepared to compete in every county of our state. Over the course of the summer, Friends of Diane will be hosting house parties, organizing grassroots fundraisers, participating in planning and training sessions and demonstrating support for my campaign in their local communities.

The website contains a section on What Others Are Saying about Lt. Gov. Denish that provides flattering quotes from a variety of prominent and not-so-prominent New Mexicans. They include Gov. Bill Richardson, Senate Majority Whip Mary Jane Garcia, Senate Pro-Tem Tim Jennings (referred to as a State Senator only), Patricia Roybal, who is VP of the LULAC Council in Albuquerque and Viola Florez, who is Dean of the UNM College of Education, as well as a couple of positive statements from the now-defunct Albuquerque Tribune.

The issues section contains short statements on protecting and creating jobs, educating tomorrow's workforce, building safer communities and an open and honest government -- representing the four areas the Denish campaign will no doubt focus on.

From the website: Meet Diane Denish

No Blog, No FaceBook, No Twitter? The bio video above and a set of photos from an Albuquerque campaign stop last year by now President Obama at a town hall on working women at the Flying Star Commissary are the current contents of the multimedia section. Unfortunately, I don't see any indication of a blog on the Denish site, which tells me there's a danger of the content getting stagnant. Although the site links to Denish accounts on Flickr and YouTube, there's no mention of FaceBook or Twitter -- the interactive social media sites that have become so vital to most net users. I hope that changes, don't you?

As for the GOP gubernatorial contenders, Greg Zanetti has the most developed campaign website, that contains the first of what will probably be many Video Missives. The first one is about swine flu, the Mexican government budget and the need for increased border security. The top three issues on his website are state government and personal safety, the economy and education, with a variety of "other issues of interest" below those. The site includes a transcript of the speech Zanetti gave during the teabagger demonstrations in April.

Current state party GOP chair Allen Weh also has a campaign website, but it's in the barebones stage at this point. Although he's posted no position statements, Weh's front page (Think Different) lists seven issues he apparently thinks are important: government corruption, New Mexico's budget, public safety priority, encourage business, NM's education system, healthcare costs and implement photo ID. Meanwhile, former NM-01 Rep. Heather Wilson and former NM-02 Rep. Steve Pearce remain mum on a possible run for governor from the R side.