Guv Debate: Martinez Shows Her True Colors on Predatory Loans, Child Care

Denish produces invitation to Martinez fundraiser by predatory payday loan backers

There were two very telling exchanges in the final debate  between New Mexico's gubernatorial candidates that aired live last night on KOB-TV. Both were instructive in revealing Republican Susana Martinez's true political priorities --  a willingness to side with moneyed corporate interests and to sacrifice vital services that support working families and children in order to serve them. (Click for video of entire debate.)

Martinez Backs Predatory Payday Loan Industry
At one point in the debate, Democrat produced a fundraising invitation from backers of the payday lending industry that explicitly says Susana Martinez will be a governor on the side of these powerful interests that rip off New Mexico families. The email invitation is from Hal Stratton, a prominent Republican who is a former New Mexico legislator and attorney general. Stratton later served in the Bush administration and was also was a partner in a law firm with Mickey Barnett -- a former Republican National committeeman and former state senator. It says:

As you know we have a governor's race here in New Mexico. The Democrat, Diane Denish, is out to end consumer lending. The Republican, Susana Martinez, we are assured is not for ending or further limiting consumer lending. Fortunately, Susana is ahead and is going to win.

We are having a meet and greet for Susana on October 20, at the Albuquerque Country Club. We would welcome having you there if it is of interest. I've included articles and the invite along with my complete contact information.

The invitation itself is to a fundraiser for Martinez hosted by both Hal Stratton and Mickey Barnett.

In the late 1980s, Hal Stratton and Mickey Barnett introduced legislation that led to a repeal of New Mexico's interest rate caps. According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, “New Mexico and most other states did have usury laws until the late 1970s and 1980s, when many of those measures were repealed ... Stratton, along with another Republican representative, Mickey Barnett, introduced legislation that led to a repeal of the state’s interest rates caps.” [Santa Fe New Mexican, 11/19/95]

Later, Barnett was a lobbyist for the payday loan industry -- which often charges outrageous interest rates on loans -- at the New Mexico legislature. The rates are often so high, and escalate so rapidly that it's almost impossible for those receiving the loans to pay them off in any reasonable amount of time. A consumer can end up paying thousands of dollars for a loan for that was originally for one thousand dollars, for instance.

Confronted with the invitation, Martinez failed to respond to the charge that she supports predatory lending and instead changed the subject and charged that Denish had broken the rules of the debate by bringing in the invitation. Martinez refused to deny she supports the often shady characters who operate the payday lending industry -- to the detriment of New Mexico's working families -- because she obviously does. And as the fundraiser demonstrates, Martinez benefits from their campaign contributions. Denish responded:

There you have it. She is going to stay on the side of those predatory lenders.

In a statement released after the debate Denish said,

The predatory lenders and their lobbyists are raising money for Susana Martinez because she promised to let them continue ripping off our most vulnerable families. I’ll put predatory lenders out of business. Why? Because they trap our families in never-ending cycles of debt, forcing folks to lose their homes or cars. With each passing day, Susana Martinez makes it clearer that she’ll side with the powerful corporations. I’ll side with New Mexico families.

Affordable Child Care
In another telling exchange, the candidates discussed subsidies to hard-working low-income families to help them pay for child care during the work day. Martinez equated the subsidies to welfare and emphasized that they should be temporary, saying:

We have to get New Mexican's back to work, and sometimes they are not able to get a full-time job at a salary that allows them to pay for child care that sometimes can be expensive for a family; and sometimes we have single moms out there that don't get any kind of child support and they are needing that assistance. But it's meant to be a temporary fix.

It certainly is true that lots of folks in New Mexico don't have jobs that pay enough to make decent child care affordable! However, Martinez apparently believes the types of jobs that pay enough to allow working families to cover such child care costs on their own are a dime a dozen, easily obtained if folks just keep at it. Just another example of Susana being out of touch with the realities of ordinary working people in New Mexico.

Denish, on the other hand, stated her strong support for helping families to afford decent child care from licensed, reputable providers. "When a family or single mother loses their day care, they can't go to work, they lose their jobs," Denish said.

What Would Martinez Chop in Cutting Budget by Half?
Sure sounds like New Mexico's child care program to help working families would be on the chopping block if Martinez manages to win the election -- just another example of Martinez's intent to balance the state's budget on the backs of working people in order to protect moneyed interests that are funding her campaign. Susana is obviously more intent, for instance, on protecting the corporate tax loophole that gives big out-of-state corporations tax breaks at the expense of New Mexico's families and small businesses than in ensuring that families have access to quality child care. She again refused to agree with Denish's plan to close the loophole.

Denish also accused Martinez of planning to cut the state budget in half -- which would make it virtually impossible to avoid deep cuts in education and Medicaid, among other things. Her campaign produced a video of Martinez's running mate, John Sanchez, saying just that at a September 11 forum in Bernalillo:

In his eight years in office, from 1995 to 2003, former Republican Governor Gary Johnson gutted the state budget and vetoed hundreds of bills aimed at restoring funding to critical budget components like education and Medicaid. Clearly, a Martinez administration would have a very similar goal, despite Susana's rhetoric in debates aimed at hiding that fact by failing to provide any detailed information on how she'd balance the budget, and offering a conflicting jumble of statements about her intent. As Denish said:

My opponent, her numbers just don't add up. She's been going around telling everybody she's going to cut New Mexico's budget by 50 percent.

You could say Martinez isn't very honest about the numbers, generally. She again claimed that New Mexico "is ranked 13th in the nation in total taxes paid by individuals per capita in this state." While technically true, that statement is only valid if you ignore the often very large property taxes paid in other states, which are used to fund public schools. When those are added in, New Mexico's individual tax ranking drops to 39th in the nation according to the AP.

Martinez Launches Bogus Attack on Brian Colón
Susana also attacked Dem lieutenant governor candidate during the debate, accusing his law firm of getting some kind of sweetheart contract for $4 million from the state. According to information in today's Albuquerque Journal, the claim is entirely off base:

Effective July 1, an Albuquerque law firm in which Colón is a partner, Robles, Rael & Anaya, was one of about 60 New Mexico law firms awarded a state Risk Management Division contract to defend unspecified legal claims brought against the state, The contract was a renewal of an earlier contract, The same law firm had a Risk Management contract before Colón joined it four years ago.

In other words, Colón's firm and FIFTY-NINE others in the state have long shared the burden of risk management defense duties via state contracts. Further, Colón's membership in his current firm was not in any way a determining factor in their getting their contract renewed. Grasping at straws, Susana. 

Families vs. Moneyed Interests
In the end, this final debate between the candidates served to underline the fact that Diane Denish would work every day to create jobs, help New Mexico families, improve education and protect vital government services, while seeking out other ways to save money. On the other hand, Susana -- with hundreds of thousands of dollars in large campaign donations from the same Texans who crafted, funded and directed Bush's rise to governor and president -- would almost always come down on the side of those interests.

If Martinez were really so into "fighting corruption," as she always says, she' be staying as far away from that bunch as she could. Instead, she's obviously in bed with them. In essence, if Martinez becomes governor, we'll have the worst political machine in the West -- the very Texans who created this awful economy to begin with -- running New Mexico and using Susana to do it.

Do New Mexicans really think it's a good idea to elect a governor beholden to the likes of shady characters like Texan and Swiftboat perpetrator Bob Perry, with ties to George Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney? Do people remember that this same bunch was behind many of the horrible rip offs like Enron, also based in Texas? We can't let that same bunch buy their way into power here. Not ever.