My favorite governor outside of CA Governor Gavin Newsom has a "MeToo" scandal. I have heard from one person who has known both the gov and accuser how the accuser is a volatile fellow, and may not get along well with others. On the other hand, I have heard our governor can be a tough person with people, too. The accuser initially broke his story on Twitter, which was fine, but said he would not give interviews to anyone other than a particular political reporter from the AP (see his Tweet from December 25 within the right wing journal's link, where the accuser said "I declined a lot of interviews today for various reasons...I'll only speak with the @AP's @RussContrerras about her horrific sexual assaults of me and others staffers. There are so many more victims than me.") A day later, he went to a right wing political online journal to give his story, and then to a local television station known to promote right wing views in New Mexico. I don't mind, but I wonder what the AP reporter said to him or if the reporter even responded to him.
In my time here since mid 2017, the state has seen two claims of sexual harassment against prominent men, a politician, Carl Trujillo, and a labor leader (and a friend of The Wife and mine) Jon Hendry, where the accuser refused to testify, claiming she did not want to name others who could substantiate her claims (as in Trujillo's case) or where two accusers sued, but then refused to substantiate their accusations in either any written discovery answers or in deposition, and have been sanctioned by the Court for refusing to submit answers under oath (Hendry's case). Still, both men were driven from their offices before the cracks in the accusations began to emerge. People may also recall I was initially concerned about the legitimacy of the accusations against Kavanaugh as one person's accusation should not be accepted as the complete truth without context and further information.
Here, it is hard to say what happened yet. The article says Governor Lujan-Grisham is a "prankster," which I have found troubling when it was George HW Bush and so many others who have wealth or power (the junior Bush, George W. Bush, was also a towel-snapping prankster, and liked to bestow sometimes awful nicknames on people who did not seek them, a separate form of power abuse arising from having personal wealth and power). I have never liked "pranksters" because, often, the pranks end up being cruel to people who are reasonably sensitive, and there is almost always a bullying aspect to the pranks. On the other hand, I winced at the accuser's claim he has suffered emotional distress over the episode, as I often find claims of emotional distress from players (and this fellow is likely a player), regardless of politics, to be at least one where their word alone will not substantiate the claim. However, I can potentially believe the retaliation part, but withhold judgment--as what I have also seen in New Mexico politics in my relatively brief time here is its insularity and cliques that remind me of the late 1980s film, "Heathers," without the actual murders, of course.
If the governor's accuser sues the governor in a civil court claim, and the witnesses in the room are placed under oath, we may expect to learn more about the allegation. We may also learn if the governor behaved in this manner with others, as the accuser alleges in one sentence in his tweet. In addition, in the accuser's interview with the right wing political journal, the accuser claims the governor had affairs with two other men in the recent past, which may also get an airing. But I have tried to be consistent about extramarital affairs, and say, isn't that really something between spouses, not the electorate? The only difference with Trump in the Stormy Daniels and Playboy Playmate relationships was the campaign contribution part of at least the Stormy Daniels affair. That is a legitimate political problem, as it was for John Edwards, whose career was ended, after having his mistress on the payroll for supposedly video services, but largely, it turned out, for, ahem, other services.
Oh well. We shall see what we shall see. The sad part about this is how corporate media love these types of prurient scandals, and this may cause the governor to lose the necessary moral capital to fight for legitimate public policies, starting with using the Permanent Funds (New Mexico has $25 billion in its so-called rainy day funds) for education, free public college tuition, repealing anti-abortion laws, and further infrastructure funding.
