Labor Day weekend's behind us — and ahead lie two months of bitter campaigning for the dubious honor of governing New Mexico.

During prosperous times, it truly is an honor; just ask the incumbent, Bill Richardson, who for most of his eight-year tenure presided over a state rolling in money he was able to invest in public education and other long-neglected social advances.

Now, nationally and statewide, the party's over — and whoever succeeds Richardson faces a long slog through a dark fiscal tunnel.

But both Lt. Gov. Diane Denish and Doña Ana County District Attorney Susana Martínez think the job is to die — or kill — for, politically speaking: The two have been heaving mud at each other all summer, and chances are the flow will increase in the days to come.

To their credit, both candidates are paying lip service to the budget shortfall one of them and the New Mexico Legislature must confront in January since Richardson has refused to call another special session.

To their discredit, neither one shows any real knowledge of what our state's up against. Last week, Barry Massey of The Associated Press analyzed what Martínez and Denish have been saying about the fiscal challenge. His report makes it clear they're ducking it.

Both have declared there'll be no further budget cuts for our schools. Both said they would spare Medicaid any cutbacks. And both promised that they won't raise taxes.

Wow — a fiscal miracle, no matter whether the front-running Martínez or Denish, hot on her heels, is sworn in on New Year's Day? Or two candidates, likely to face a quarter-billion-dollar deficit next fiscal year, treating it in Scarlett O'Hara fashion: I'll think about it tomorrow ...

Someone's in for a rude awakening, says the chairman of the state Senate's Finance Committee; John Arthur Smith of Deming warns that they can't have it both ways, with no spending cuts and no tax increases. As our state's leading fiscal hawk put it to the AP's Massey, one or the other will "have to break 50 percent of their campaign promise."

That's enough to make us wish Smith were on the gubernatorial ballot.

He's well aware that the only way New Mexico is sliding into this fiscal year relatively unscathed is that Uncle Sugar has come to our rescue time and again. Federal stimulus money isn't likely to reappear next year, so he and his fellow legislators are certain to challenge the governor with either spending cuts — including education, which, counting lower grades and our horde of colleges and universities, uses up most of the budget. Or what? New taxes, claro.

Denish says she has a plan to cut $90 million in spending. That's little more than a third of what's needed. Martínez has yet to offer a figure; she probably figures voters will trust her, as champion of the purported party of fiscal responsibility, to march in and eliminate vast amounts of government. Lots of luck to either self-proclaimed budget-cutter.

Santa Fe's Sen. Peter Wirth, as stout an advocate there is for public education, noted in the wake of this year's regular and special legislative sessions that our state's educators were bracing for budget cuts and seeking creative ways of doing it — but added, "I think what they don't realize is the serious surgery is coming down the road."

Education cuts could really hurt our backward state. We salute both candidates for realizing that. But to hear both reprise the "read my lips; no new taxes" line from the first President Bush raises a din over anything else they'll be claiming between now and Nov. 2.