Democrats across the country and in New Mexico have railed against the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court allowing corporations and unions to spend as much money as they want in political campaigns, saying the rise of “Super PACs” is ”allowing our elections to be taken over by billionaires” state Rep. Mimi Stewart (D-Albuquerque) says.
As we hit the final few days before party primaries on June 5, a number of liberal political action committees and unions are buying advertising time over the airwaves and printing attack fliers. But the negative campaigning isn’t targeted against Republican candidates but against other Democrats.
The irony is not lost on some of the targets.
“A lot of people condemn these things on the one hand and then solicit support on the other,” state Sen. John Arthur Smith (D-Deming) told Capitol Report New Mexico from the campaign trail Wednesday (May 30). “It’s a little schizophrenic.”
Sen. Smith is trying to get elected to a seveth term in his sprawling district that covers three large counties in the southwestern part of the state but his opponent, Larry Martinez of Lordsburg, has received at least $3,000 in this election cycle from the American Federation of Teachers union because the New Mexico chapter disagrees with Smith’s support for education policies such as retaining third grade students who cannot read proficiently.
In the fierce, three-way race for the Democratic Party nomination in Albuquerque’s Congressional District 1, Michelle Lujan Grisham is hopping mad over this 30-second attack ad running on area radio stations that is sponsored by Progressive Kick, a liberal PAC based out of Oakland, Calif.:
Lujan Grisham is battling Marty Chavez and Eric Griego for the Democratic Party nomination. Between Chavez and Griego, Griego — who spoke at an Occupy movement rally on the first day of this past legislative session and decried the Citizens United case, telling the crowd that “corporations are not people” — is considered the more liberal but the head of Progressive Kick told the Albuquerque Journal the $21,000 ad buy is not co-ordinated with the Griego campaign and there is no evidence to indicate as much.
That’s the way third-party ads work — they cannot come out and endorse a particular candidate. The ads are considered “educational” and the courts have upheld the rights of such committees to air those ads, not just in the Supreme Court’s decision on Citizens United but here in New Mexico when a judge ruled that registering political non-profits through the Secretary of State’s Office violated their First Amendment rights.
“Yes there are Democrats that are squeamish about” these tactics, Michael Corwin of Independent Source PAC told us last month, adding that “information is a critical tool for voters.”
Corwin says he’s a liberal who actually agreed with the Citizens United decision as a matter of free speech and his group made headlines in early May when it sent out fliers attacking a campaign consultant for Democrat Cara Valente-Compton, who’s running against longtime Roundhouse veteran and Democrat Sheryl Williams Stapleton.
Independent Source PAC has come out in strong support of Stapleton’s re-election, calling the sometimes controversial lawmaker “a critical vote” for progressives while insisting the PAC’s actions never coordinated with the Stapleton campaign. “We do what we think is best for the progressive cause,” Corwin said.
According to the reporting group the Sunlight Foundation, Independent Source PAC has received contributions totalling $190,000 in the last two years from the Communications Workers of America union.
And another organization called “Concerned Citizens for Honest Debate” weighed in this week with radio spots in the state House District 46 race without even filing with the Secretary of State’s Office.
In that race between two Democrats, Carl Trujillo is battling Santa Fe Mayor David Coss to take the seat that’s been held by the retiring Speaker of the House Ben Luján.
As reported in the Santa Fe New Mexican:
The 30-second spot … is airing on KSWV AM. Because the expenditure was less than $500 — the group paid $440 plus tax, KSWV manager Pat Gonzales said Wednesday — nothing had to be filed with the government.
The ad is harsh on Trujillo …
Meanwhile, Coss has been attacked by a the New Mexico Business Coalition, a conservative political group based in Albuquerque, in mailers that were sent out this week.
In state Senate races, an environmental PAC called Verde Voters Political Action Committee has spent $30,000 in an effort to oust Democratic Party incumbents Sen. David Ulibarri of Grants and Sen. Phil Griego of San Jose for what the committee says is a lax green agenda on the senators’ parts.
The Verde Voters PAC, which is funded by Conservation Voters New Mexico, was particularly harsh on Ulibarri, which landed the 6-year veteran of the Roundhouse on the “Dirty Dozen” list of the national League of Conservation Voters.
“Being named to the Dirty Dozen should put Senator Ulibarri on notice,” Conservation Voters New Mexico executive director Sandy Buffett told Milan Simonich of the Texas-New Mexico Newspapers Partnership.
Ulibarri is in a four-way fight in his primary race while Griego is in a three-candidate race in Senate District 39.
Griego has also been attacked this spring by the well-known liberal organization the Southwest Organization Project (SWOP) for being, in its view, too friendly to corportations.
There are some Republicans going after one another in GOP primaries (the Angie Spears-Pat Woods state Senate race has seen plenty of back and forth) but the harshest ads this primary season have come from liberal groups attacking Democrats for not adhering to the base of the political left.
“You can’t fight with one hand tied behind your back,” Indpendent Source PAC’s Corwin said.
But House candidate Valente-Compton thinks the Dem-on-Dem political rhetoric may backfire in the minds of voters.
“It’s evidence of that toxic political climate that turns so many people off,” she said Thursday (May 31). “How do you do this to someone within your own party? It’s something I wouldn’t want to do to a Republican. I just don’t think it’s what the voters want. It’s just poisonous.”
But it seems one person’s “poison” is another one’s “educational” information.
