By Denise Tessier

If it weren’t for the glut of photos that accompanied it, one might have thought that governor’s race was over, judging from the literally over-the-top play a candidate-poll story received on the front page of this week’s Sunday Journal.

Splayed across the entire top half of the front-page news hole – above 72-point headline type normally reserved for only the biggest of stories – were the photos of the five Republican gubernatorial candidates and their popularity rankings as captured by a recent poll.

Granted, Democratic candidate Diane Denish has no opposition in the fast-approaching June primary, but she is nowhere to be found on this front-page GOP-fest. An out-of-town visitor reading the Journal would have to wonder until the story jumps to page A-8 whether a Democratic candidate was in the race.

And while it’s interesting to see how the chips have fallen so far among the five Republicans running for governor, the play of the Journal-commissioned poll’s results also points up something about how New Mexico’s only statewide daily generally has framed this race. That is, polls and sound bites get space and attention, rather than the candidates’ individual policies and platforms.

Journal coverage leans heavily on numbers – both poll and fundraising. And yes, the candidates are trotted out for sound bites on pressing issues. Last month, all six candidates were queried for their views on the controversial immigration law recently passed in Arizona. In February, they were asked whether, if elected, they would sign a domestic partnership bill. (No link could be found for their answers to that last question, which ran Feb. 4.) In both cases, Denish was included for comments, and listed last.

But what about their platforms? Back in March, Heath Haussamen posted on NMpolitics.net a story saying Denish had released a comprehensive gubernatorial platform she claimed would save New Mexico taxpayers $450 million over the next five years. Haussamen not only reported the platform’s release, but included a link to the initiative as posted on Denish’s Web site.

Perhaps political coverage policy has changed in recent years in light of the Journal’s smaller staff. But when candidate Bill Richardson, accompanied by Rick Homans, visited the Journal Editorial Board on September 3, 2002 — an inch-thick book entitled “Bill Richardson’s Plan To Save Taxpayers $90 Million” in tow — a story with an almost identical headline ran in the Journal the next day. (The link to that 2002 story appears missing, but the headline “Richardson Pushes $90 Million in Savings” appears in the Campaign Trail section of the story list for that day.

This is not to say that Denish in any way is copying Richardson. (In fact, when detractors try to characterize Denish as a potential repeat of the Richardson administration, one could point out at least one time when she was acting governor and Richardson hadn’t even informed her he was leaving the state.)

The point is that the Journal has covered campaign platforms in the past, but has yet to do so in this election.

Not only did the Journal refrain from running Denish’s platform, the day the story conceivably would have run (March 24) the Journal instead ran a story headlined, “Weh Sues State Over Redacted Denish Files.” That story, which to the casual reader might seem negative in terms of Denish, is actually an account of GOP candidate Allen Weh claiming the state Department of Finance and Administration (not Denish) was illegally altering or leaving out records he had requested relating to Denish’s office.

Perhaps the Journal is waiting until the run-up to the general election in November to start running candidate platforms. Let’s hope it does. No doubt the candidates will post platforms on their Web sites, as Denish has done. But platforms deserve news coverage so that they can be critiqued and discussed. Voters need more than “he said-she said” scandal allegations, poll scores, fundraising numbers and sound bites on which to make an educated choice.