Gov. to Fox News: No Thoughts on Presidency

The national media are already fixing their gaze on Gov. Susana Martinez as a possible GOP presidential candidate in 2016.

So what was the guv’s answer to Fox News when asked recently for her thoughts about a White House run?

“No thoughts on that,” Martinez told Greta Van Susteren, adding that she is focused on her duties in New Mexico and her re-election campaign in 2014.

A Fox News crew spent a day with Martinez, the nation’s first Hispanic female governor, last weekend in El Paso and Las Cruces. El Paso is her home town and Las Cruces was her home base during her career as a prosecutor.

In addition to the possibility of a presidential campaign, Martinez discussed more familiar topics with Fox News, including balancing the state budget and her push to repeal the 2003 laws that allow illegal immigrants to obtain New Mexico driver’s licenses.

Martinez, who was also touted as a possible Republican vice presidential candidate this year, is seen as a rising star in the GOP, especially after her prime-time address in August at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.

Appeal dropped: Former state Corrections Department employee Larry Flynn has dropped his wrongful termination appeal against the agency.

Flynn had claimed the Governor’s Office wrongly influenced his firing, since he was a classified employee who could only be fired for cause.

Several of Martinez’s top-ranking staffers were ordered to testify in the case, which also played a role in fueling a controversy over the use of private email accounts by public officials.

In part, that was because one of Martinez’s deputy chiefs of staff forwarded a State Police report on Flynn to the governor’s personal account. However, Martinez claimed in July she never received the message because the account had been hijacked.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office has since confirmed it is investigating the Governor’s Office’s complaint.

Flynn was fired in December 2011, several months after an incident in which he allegedly shot at rattlesnakes outside the house on state penitentiary grounds in which he and his fianceé, then-Corrections Secretary Lupe Martinez, lived.

Flynn decided to drop his appeal based on personal matters, including a new job, said his attorney, Sam Bregman.

Journal Capitol Bureau reporter Dan Boyd can be reached at dboyd@abqjournal.com
— This article appeared on page C1 of the Albuquerque Journal