A police recording made public this week reveals a police sergeant and a hotel security guard discussing whether New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez was “inebriated” at a holiday party earlier this month.
The recording, obtained by CNN affiliate KOAT and other outlets, raises questions about what happened at a raucous holiday party in Santa Fe and how Martinez, once a rising GOP star, handled a police inquiry into a noise complaint at the hotel.
Police arrived at the El Dorado hotel late on December 12 after it was claimed that bottles were being thrown from a fourth-floor balcony, KOAT reported. Martinez herself is captured on Santa Fe Police Sgt. Anthony Tapia’s body recorder, telling the officer about the bottles.
“Five hours ago, there was somebody that we said, ‘Get out of the room. Do not be doing what you’re doing.’ There were bottles being thrown over. We said, ‘Get the hell out and stop,'” Martinez tells Tapia.
That contradicts a statement the governor’s office put out last week about the incident, in which her office said snowballs, not bottles, had been thrown over.
In response to a neighbor’s noise complaint, Martinez, who can be heard carefully enunciating her words in the recording, then testily apologies for talking too loudly in her hotel room.
“Oh I’m so sorry. I didn’t know we could not talk in our own hotel room,” Martinez says before walking off.
After Martinez leaves, the recording captures Tapia and a hotel guard discussing the incident.
“Obviously, we’re not going to be able to move her,” Tapia can be heard saying, adding, “What can we do to resolve this?”
“Honestly, you know, I’ve only been working here for like a month and a half, so this is actually my first run-in with this sort of thing,” the guard says. “It’s never been the governor. I would never expect the first time to be the governor. I really don’t know what to do in this situation, because I can tell that she’s, that she’s kind of –“
“Inebriated,” the sergeant responds.
In a statement to KOAT, Martinez spokesman Chris Sanchez reiterated that none of the governor’s associates that night threw bottles, saying she only was repeating what hotel staff had claimed.
“The governor is simply repeating the claim that was made to the front desk,” he said. “The governor later learned that they were snowballs.”
Santa Fe police said they did not find any bottles outside the hotel, KOAT reported.
In earlier recordings that surfaced last week, Martinez had told dispatchers that there was no need for them to send police officers to her party, and she demanded to know who had logged the noise complaint that triggered their eventual arrival. Martinez told KOAT last week that she only had one cocktail at the event.
“I’m the governor of the state of New Mexico,” she said in one 911 call obtained by KOAT last week. “We’re all in a room eating pizza.”
As the first Latina elected governor in the U.S., Republicans have celebrated Martinez, giving her a high-profile speaking role at the Republican National Convention in 2012. Marco Rubio mentioned her as a possible vice-presidential candidate just one month ago.
