good. now back to politics... GOP bushwhack
abqtrib.com
"It's politics at its worst," one observer says as the Bush re-election campaign snubbed the state party leader.
By Shea Andersen
Tribune Reporter
Republicans want to win New Mexico for President Bush so badly they're willing to push one of their own aside to do it.
The re-election effort for Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney has swept New Mexico Republican Party Chairwoman Ramsay Gorham aside and could tap a former state official to be the campaign's in-state director in her place.
And one of Gorham's most prominent supporters, U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, an Albuquerque Republican, said Gorham should let the split proceed.
"It's a mess. It's politics at its worst," said Seth Heath, secretary to the New Mexico GOP and a Gorham supporter.
Despite the fracture, Gorham, a state senator from Albuquerque, said she plans to work hard on state-level campaigns while maintaining her chairmanship.
"I think people in Washington who don't live here need to understand that our state's voters chose me," she said.
Republican Party regulars awarded Gorham the chairmanship in May after a bitter campaign against then-Chairman John Dendahl. But it was Dendahl - not Gorham - who attended a strategy meeting in Albuquerque on Monday led by former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, general chairman of the Bush re-election effort.
Dendahl said splitting the national campaign from the state party would set a precedent.
"To the best of my knowledge, that has never happened," he said.
Several reasons were cited for Gorham's missing invitation.
Republican National Committee officials would not comment, but Dendahl said the split was explained to him as a way to keep the party clear of conflicts with new elections laws.
But Gorham said the RNC wouldn't give her the legal cover she wanted as part of the re-election effort.
"They would not give me any protection against any debt or any possible criminal activity that could have been committed by the national campaign," Gorham said.
That criminal activity, she said, involves violations of election laws that govern who does what.
"There are just tons of rules," Gorham said. "Those violations can be considered criminal."
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