Phill Casaus: The debate question: Who's playing not to lose?
Oct. 2—The hardest thing in the world is to play with a lead.
You see it in competition all the time. Football, basketball, tennis, tiddlywinks, Xbox. Doesn't matter.
The favorite, the defending champ, gets tentative. Starts thinking. Begins sneaking glances at the clock, silently begging it to move faster. The sweat starts, the reflexive becomes contrived, and before you know it, a hungry if outgunned opponent is right there.
In your face. In your head. In your spot.
Politics, the ultimate contact sport, has the same dynamic.
The gubernatorial incumbent who easily won control of the Roundhouse four years ago with a two-touchdown (well, 14 percentage point) margin now has a rival who won't give up or give in. Instead of playing defense, the challenger is employing a gimmick offense, trotting out a 42-year-old strategy he saw the Gipper win with on a crackly VCR tape.
The scoreboard doesn't show it yet, but this game is getting closer.
Friday night's debate between Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Republican challenger Mark Ronchetti wasn't of Lincoln-Douglas quality or Nixon-Kennedy drama, but it probably proved this race has a long way to go before it's over.
Lujan Grisham, a seasoned debater, committed few real mistakes after a sluggish, almost uncertain, start.
Ronchetti, who's made his living and his career on TV before getting into politics and has an undeniable connection with a viewer, let his facial expressions do the talking (careful, there's a meme in the making). On the other hand, he wasn't intimidated, let alone paralyzed, when entering the governor's favored lair, the Policy Discussion Room.
So what to make of it — and the race?
This baby is going to get very interesting very soon.
Know this: Ronchetti will continue to press, push and annoy Lujan Grisham. That looks to be his strategy when he sees the governor on the debating circuit — there's one more to go, in 10 days — and on the campaign trail.
Why not? He's playing with house money. He was the underdog after winning the Republicans' June primary; the early fall polls said he was still the underdog; he'll likely be trailing, at least by a bit, in the final weeks.
If he loses on Nov. 8 — beaten twice in two years for the two biggest political prizes the state has to offer; the U.S. Senate and the Governor's Office — Ronchetti's political career is likely over. So, yeah, he can shoot the moon.
If Ronchetti edges within three, four, five percentage points by late October, usually the polls' margin of error, then all bets are off.
That's momentum. That's opportunity.
For the governor, a Ronchetti with momentum means she has a decision to make. Does she still campaign as the governor — the politician with a lead to hold, rolling out ads extolling leadership, compassion, long-range thinking? Or does she revert to the Michelle Lujan Grisham of 2018 — chin out, gloves up, all-ahead-full?
Because that's what was missing Friday night. Lujan Grisham was measured, but not mesmerizing. She parried Ronchetti's attacks on crime and education, her likely weak spots, but didn't throw haymakers on what could have been real opportunities, including the challenger's views on a constitutional amendment that would affect the Land Grant Permanent Fund and commit money to early educational initiatives.
A pre-COVID Governor Go would never have whiffed on that chance.
As the debate progressed, Lujan Grisham began to pick up the pace. Her line on tax relief — "He says he proposes it, I already did it" — was a flash to the candidate who overwhelmed Steve Pearce four years ago. But somewhere between this weekend and Nov. 8, she and her advisers need to figure out a way to counter Ronchetti's most consistent theme, a ripoff of the old Reagan line: Are you better off now than you were before?
Ronchetti voiced it over and over Friday night. It almost certainly will become his mantra for the next five weeks.
It's an effective question because it puts any incumbent on the defensive, and also takes the focus from what could be his two biggest vulnerabilities — his stance (whatever it is) on abortion and an equally unknown ability to deal with a persnickety club called the New Mexico Legislature, dominated by Democrats who might see him not as former TV weatherman but well-dressed tackling dummy.
Ronchetti seemed to brush aside the political realities of the Capitol on Friday night. Challengers can do that because they don't know what they are until they sit at the head of the conference table.
Lujan Grisham, of course, sports the bruises that come with four years of having a lead — and now, having to answer for every point scored and mistake made.
The clock is ticking; the end of the game is now in sight. For Ronchetti and Lujan Grisham, the question for the next five-plus weeks is this: Who's going to play with nothing to lose?
Phill Casaus is editor of The New Mexican.
