In 2002, Gary King made his first run for governor. In the Democratic Party’s preprimary convention, he garnered a bit over 19 percent of the vote, just shy of the 20 percent he needed for an automatic place on the ballot. His failure was due to a typically scorched-earth campaign by Bill Richardson to garner massive support at the convention and prevent any opponent form getting easy access to the Democratic primary ballot for governor.
Afterwards, he expressed bitterness for unnecessary piling on. Big Bill could have let him get on the ballot, King remarked, but instead he pulled out all the stops to prevent any Democratic opposition.
King immediately dropped out of the race.
Twelve years later, King proved he had learned the lesson of that bitter experience. Again running for governor, he didn’t count on support from this year’s preprimary convention, and he didn’t get it. Of five candidates for governor, he came in fifth, with only 10 percent of convention votes—half of what he garnered in 2002. But this time King was prepared. Even before the convention, he had collected enough petition signatures to assure him a place on the ballot no matter what the conventioneers said.
And so it happened that King’s name did appear on the ballot, albeit in fifth place. With name recognition and his own money, he waged a successful although typically low-key campaign. He won with 35 percent of the vote, substantially higher than political polling had predicted and a bit higher than just about any political insider and expected. Moreover, the turnout at the Democratic primary was 130,000, tens of thousands higher than had generally been anticipated—perhaps because of the presence on the ballot of the well-known King.
There are a couple of interesting messages in all of this. One is that King learned valuable lessons from when he crashed and burdened in 2002. He can’t count on support from the Democratic establishment, but he can count on support from the friends and supporters he had earned over 20 years of public service, 12 in the state House of Representatives and nearly eight as attorney general.
He can also count on the loyalty built up by his late father, Bruce King, during a long political career that included three terms as governor. Not all politicians are educable. Many refuse to learn from failure. The successful ones, like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, do.
The other lesson from recent history is that it is a mistake to write off a politician as intelligent and experienced as King. A guy with both a law degree and a doctorate in organic chemistry, and careers in private law practice and environmental science (for both business and the federal government) is no slouch. Add to that a large fortune. Top it off with his family’s deep connections with Anglo ranchers as well as with Hispanics in northern and central New Mexico and you have a potentially formidable political coalition.
The obstacles King faces in winning the general election over incumbent Gov. Susana Martinez are as high as he confronted in the Democratic primary. Some of the governor’s political operatives have been putting out the story that they wanted King to win the Democratic primary because they rated him as the weakest candidate. That may or not be true; in any case, it is clearly self-serving to deride your opponent as weak.
To try and buttress the narrative of weakness, national Republicans are already going on the air with commercials attacking the just-nominated King. It is a classic political stunt: define your opponent in negative terms before he has a chance to define himself in positive terms. The strategy usually is effective; certainly it was in President Bush’s 2004 re-election victory over John Kerry.
This time, however, the maneuver may misfire. The problem for Republicans is that they are not running against an unknown, as the other four Democratic candidates were, but against a man whose family name is a legend in New Mexico. If anything, Gary King may be a name that is more familiar to the public than that of Susana Martinez herself. As the primary vote shows, a lot of voters have already made up their mind about King, and done so in a positive way.
Whatever the initial fireworks fired by Martinez’s nearly $5 million bank account buttressed by substantial national Republican and unaccountable private donations, the campaign has a long way to go. The stage in June doesn’t necessarily dictate the final act in November.
Despite a bunch of negative analyses of King’s chances, I suspect this is going to be a real horse race. Events in New Mexico are not going Martinez’s way. The state is plunging ever deeper into recession, businesses are closing, people are leaving, the federal government is cutting back and New Mexico’s most important manufacturer, Intel, seems to be preparing to shut down in 2016.
Even the rare good news has a bad-news subtext. Recently, the governor gloated over a report showing New Mexico had the nation’s highest rate of improvement in high school graduation rates; but the subtext was that the rest of the nation was also improving, leaving New Mexico 44th in the country.
Meanwhile, there are a number of lawsuits pending against Martinez and her political operatives, and several national magazines, newspapers and websites are investigating her. Gossip (which she denies) that she is eyeing the vice presidential slot on the national Republican ticket in 2016 has made her fair game for the national media. Mother Jones has already dumped two loads of embarrassing confidential emails and may come up with a third. The state police are proving an embarrassment as are the departments of Economic Development, Health, Human Services, Children, Youth and Families, and Education (whose blunder in first disallowing and then approving the closure of two Moriarty Edgewood District schools typifies its ham handedness).
Most of the inside dope on problems within the Martinez administration, especially the confidential emails and political skullduggery over the Downs of Albuquerque’s racetrack and casino licenses, has actually come from her own disillusioned supporters.
All of this gives Gary King quite a bit to talk about. He has shown himself to be a man who can seldom find an opponent’s jugular. He has been called too nice to succeed. However, just as King learned from his failure in 2002, he is also capable of learning from more recent missteps. But will he in fact do so?
We shall see. As one who has known and liked the modest, temperate, rational, balanced, and empathetic King for many years, I think he has a real chance to pull an upset.
(Photo by Steve Terrell)
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