Guest Blog by Helen Laura López: Will It Be the Name or the Accomplishments in Denish v. Martinez?

This is a guest blog by Helen Laura López, who was born and raised in Albuquerque and earned her law degree from the University of California-Berkeley. She served for two terms as chair of the Democratic Party of Taos County, and is currently the third CD Vice Chair of the Democratic Party of NM. She lives and works in Taos County and Santa Fe, in private practice representing disabled people on social security appeals.

Race, ethnicity and gender play a large part in how Americans vote. Two years ago, people were saying Hispanic people would not vote for an African American for president and that was proven wrong.

In my little precinct of Llano San Juan in Taos County, 98 percent in our classic Northern New Mexico Hispanic village voted for Barak Obama. Now Hispanos are presented with a question of voting for an Anglo woman or an Hispanic woman. On its face it is a hard decision for many.

This is a time when we have to look closely at the first Hispanic woman to be nominated by a major party. First we have to get beyond the rhetoric. I recently saw a post on Facebook calling Susana Martinez “evil.”

Then there is the big deal about her being born a few miles beyond the N.M. border. That is not helpful. Susana Martinez is an attractive candidate, being an Hispanic woman, an accomplished lawyer and an elected district attorney in southern New Mexico. She is also deceptive about many things. She said until recently only that she is from the Rio Grande Valley and she is, but on the Texas side.

It does not matter where she is from -- many of our fine governors were born beyond our borders -- but to Susana it did matter, so she covered it up. She broke all campaign records when she accepted $450,000 from a Texan who financed the swift boat campaign full of lies against John Kerry. There is a lot more Texas money in her war chest and more than half of her contributions are from outside of New Mexico. When she says in her ad, “It’s our state and we can take it back,” what “we” is she talking about? Texas?

She won’t say how her grandparents got to El Paso but she did say that she supports the Arizona law on illegal immigrants -- the law that a federal judge has put a hold on because it violates the Constitution. You will remember that under that law we all had to have proof of citizenship in Arizona and if we get stopped for a broken tail light and don’t have papers to satisfy Sheriff Arpaio, it was off to jail until your mom comes up with a birth certificate.

Contrary to all scientific evidence, she has her doubts in the role humans play in global warming. She has no experience in making education policy or budgeting, yet those are top issues in our state. When she was in a position to create jobs with a grant of $447,000 to beef up her district attorney staff, she paid out $228,000 in lump sum bonuses.

She drops words like corruption and cronyism against Democrats, but in her small world as a prosecutor, she gave a no-bid contract to her friend and employee to purchase $60,000 of office equipment. She sounds tough when she says she successfully prosecuted a horrific crime against a baby. She is stooping low to use that tragic crime to tap the emotion of the public while it says nothing of her talent as a prosecutor.

The crime was so outrageous, a first-year law student could have convicted the family that committed the atrocities. As the seventh Hispanic woman to receive a license to practice law in the state of New Mexico in 1977, right behind Supreme Court Justice Petra Maes and former Attorney General Patricia Madrid, I would love to see an Hispana governor.

But I don’t want one there who will fail us. I don’t want one there who will take marching orders from a Texas billionaire, her supporter Sarah Palin, or the GOP in Washington. I would love to vote for a Martinez, but in this case, the beautiful name is hollow. To my Hispanic Norteño friends who support her: She says she is one of us, pero no es. With Lt. Governor Diane Denish, we know what we get.

She knows New Mexicans from east to west, north to south. She knows education is failing in New Mexico. Most of the schools in Taos County are failing -- they are in the bottom half in the state education Annual Yearly Progress report (AYP) and they have drop out rates hovering around 50 percent. She has the will and the political skills to attack the problem head on.

She knows that Northern New Mexico is losing jobs and in fact has never had the number of jobs it needs for viable communities. Diane comes with ideas on creation of jobs and reducing the jobs lost in the recession. The lieutenant governor has held 25 small business forums throughout the state to connect businesses with public and private programs.

She has successfully pushed for programs that provide microloans and other forms of capital to businesses. She brokered an agreement on new payday lending regulations and reform of the Regional Housing Authority.

She led the effort to provide home loan protection that has helped consumers avoid high-cost mortgages. In Northern New Mexico, so much is about families and yet families are breaking down with the infusion of drugs, gangs and poverty. Lt. Gov. Denish has a proven history of working on issues concerning families for a long time and she will do far more as governor.

It means a lot when 90 percent of Diane Denish’s contributions are from New Mexicans. That is why I support Lt. Gov. Diane Denish for governor.

This is a guest blog by Helen Laura López. It has also appeared in The Taos News and on the DPNM blog.

If you'd like to submit a piece for consideration as a guest blog, contact me by clicking on the Email Me link at the upper left-hand corner of the page.