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PrintOctober 31, 2010
A real 'Yellow Dog' Congressman
It appears New Mexico 2d District, first-term incumbent, Harry Teague, has given added meaning to the term, Yellow dog Democrat.
Apparently acknowledging that he has been hurting himself in televised debates with former 2d District Congressman, Steve Pearce, who is seeking to regain his old job, Teague cut and ran from a Thursday night debate televised throughout the state on KOB-TV, Albuquerque.
According to Rob Nikolewski at New Mexico Watchdog, Teague may have forfeited the election by failing to show, even after being warned by station management that his opponent still would be given thirty minutes of evening prime time to present his side. As Nikolewski summed up the effect,
It's widely acknowledged that Teague is uncomfortable in a debate format but to simply forfeit 30 minutes of airtime to your opponent in a closely-contested race seems to be border-line politically suicidal.
Teague, a country-boy, oil patch millionaire and one of the wealthiest members of congress, got creamed in earlier debates by the better-groomed, better-educated and more articulate former Air Force pilot, Pearce. But even if Teague recognized that his über-folksy manner and uncertain, stammering presentation, delivered in a whiny, quavering treble, was only hurting his cause, he still owed a duty to the voters to show up. While the earlier debates demonstrated that Pearce not only has a better command of the issues but also can more coherently voice his constituents' positions on those issues in Washington, this latest failure by Teague demonstrates that he lacks political courage. Of course, we already knew this from Hideout Harry's ducking town halls.
I must confess to a bit of relief though. It was both painful and horrifying to watch the debates and realize that this is how our district has been represented in congress for the past two years. It suddenly became clear why Teague was one of the first incumbents dumped by the Democrats in their reallocation of advertising funds to what they see to be winnable races.
We won't know until Tuesday if Nikolewski is right about the forfeiture issue, but Teague's constituents don't have to wait another second to know we have a Yellow dog congressman.
