An Unfortunate Introduction

In marketing one acknowledged form of advertising is differentiation from the competition. This can be done in two ways, by stating the benefits of the advertised brand as being superior to another for the given purpose or by identifying shortcomings of the other. In politics it’s the latter tactic that is most often utilized. In many campaigns no one really knows anything about the real, actual stances of a candidate, just that their hobbies include clubbing baby seals while farting pure carbon into the fragile atmosphere and laughing. Personally I find this kind of campaign annoying because I abhor irrelevant gossip and because of the prevalence of these kinds of ads it’s incredibly difficult to really feel comfortable with any candidate.

With US Senator Jeff Bingaman retiring there are already two mostly-officially announced candidates from the Republican side with more likely coming. In a perfect world I think that the more candidates the better because it provides for a wide range of experience and opinions and can ensure that the best candidate will win and is well prepared for the general election. Unfortunately, because much of candidate advertising is negative it’s usually the candidate who is most unobjectionable to the majority of undecided voters, and it seems they don’t really care about policy and are too often swayed by gossip.

My preference at this time is for the fire-breathing former gubernatorial candidate Doug Turner to run, but he isn’t at this time and I have no objections to the current candidate and former US Representative Heather Wilson. Already though I find myself irked by candidate Lt. Governor John Sanchez.

The Lt. Governor was in D.C. recently to discuss his “likely” candidacy and was featured in an article on the D.C. Caller titled “New Mexico’s John Sanchez: The Next Marco Rubio?” For those in Tierra Amarilla, Rubio is the freshmen senator from Florida who was the speaker of the Florida assembly and is a frequent writer in which he illustrates very conservative ideals. He’s awesome, basically.

In this article, the only thing about Sanchez that is considered similar to Senator Rubio is their Hispanic sounding last names. Other than that it is basically an attack on Heather Wilson. In it, Sanchez is quoted as saying that Wilson represents “the politics of the past” and then cites her record in congress as being “moderate”.

Most people don’t really know John Sanchez yet. Yes he is the Lt. Governor and had run for Governor in the past but likening yourself to a high profile conservative based on delightfully pronounced last names and assailing a political opponent because they’re a known quantity is not the way to introduce oneself. Who are you and why should I vote for you Mr. Lt. Governor? Why are you picking on former Representative Wilson instead of telling me what you would do besides using generic terminology? That’s what I want to know. It’s neat that you are an accomplished Hispanic (I consider myself in that same category) but it’s irrelevant.