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Rove played role in Iglesias dismissal

By Michael Gisick
Monday, March 12, 2007

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As controversy over the ousting of U.S. attorneys galloped on this weekend, local Republicans insisted that their discontent with former U.S. attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias was a response to his job performance, not part of some grand political machination.

Mentioning Karl Rove's name might not have been the best way to make that case.

Rove, the presidential adviser who many Democrats view as the evil brain of the Bush administration, appeared as a central character in an anecdote related by state Republican Party Chairman Allen Weh to the McClatchy Newspapers late last week.

Weh said he became so upset by Iglesias' handling of voter fraud complaints stemming from the 2004 election that, in 2005, he told a regional political liaison with Rove's office that Iglesias needed to go. Weh told The Tribune on Sunday that he followed up that conversation in December, when he asked Rove at a White House function whether anything was going to be done about Iglesias.

Rove told him Iglesias was "gone," Weh said.

That story was likely meant to illustrate that Weh, like other New Mexico Republicans who have spoken out in recent days, had long before grown disenchanted with Iglesias - a first-term Bush appointee - and that U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici wasn't the only one to call for Iglesias' dismissal.

But Weh's account also raises new questions about the Justice Department's contention that Iglesias and other U.S. attorneys were fired for personnel reasons related to performance, not personal reasons related to politics, as Iglesias and many Democrats have alleged.

Weh acknowledged Sunday that the point he was trying to make had gotten lost.

"This isn't about Karl Rove," he said. "Karl Rove has nothing to do with this. This is about an incompetent U.S. attorney in New Mexico who wasn't doing his job."

Iglesias, who couldn't be reached for comment, hasn't spoken to the local media since he testified last week that Domenici and U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson called him ahead of last year's election and asked about an ongoing corruption probe.

Iglesias testified to two congressional panels that he felt pressured by the two Albuquerque Republicans and believed he lost his job because he wouldn't rush indictments of Democrats that could have helped Wilson, then trailing in polls.

Those allegations set off a tempest. Domenici - who, like Wilson, has denied pressuring Iglesias - is now the subject of an ethics inquiry and has retained a lawyer. U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, called Sunday for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, citing the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys as evidence that politics had trumped law enforcement under Gonzales' watch.

Several of the fired attorneys had prosecuted or were investigating Republicans. Most, like Iglesias, had received positive evaluations. The Justice Department has acknowledged that a U.S. attorney in Arkansas was let go for no other reason than to make room for a former Rove aide.

But that's there, not here, said local Republicans.

Weh joined other Republicans in tracing serious dissatisfaction with Iglesias to his handling of voter fraud allegations during the 2004 presidential campaign, when New Mexico was a key battleground state.

Iglesias had launched a task force to investigate those complaints, which centered on a left-leaning nonprofit that registered 35,000 new voters ahead of the election.

An employee for the nonprofit, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was fired after she successfully registered a 13-year-old boy to vote. The group, which paid its employees according to how many people they registered, said the employee was fired for altering forms to get credit for other people's work.

Former Bernalillo County Clerk Mary Herrera said she had received nearly 3,000 questionable voter registration forms, some of which she turned over to the U.S. attorney's task force. The task force received more than 100 complaints.

Though Democrats said the complaints were, at worst, isolated incidents that didn't come close to an organized attempt at election fraud, Iglesias said he was taking them seriously.

"It appears that mischief is afoot, and questions are lurking in the shadows," Iglesias said during a September 2004 news conference.

But by January 2005, the U.S. Attorney's Office said most of the complaints were deemed "not criminally prosecutable," and no charges were ever filed.

"That's where the unhappiness came about," Weh said. "You had these rampant instances of voter fraud and nothing was being done about it."

Weh said he met with Iglesias for coffee that January after Iglesias suggested the two have lunch. Weh said Iglesias asked if he'd lost his political support.

"I told him that there were well-known instances of voter fraud, and people expect them to be prosecuted," Weh said.

Iglesias responded by saying he lacked resources to investigate the complaints and said the FBI had declined to investigate, Weh said.

"I was shocked. If you're the U.S. attorney, you should be able to get the cooperation of the FBI. It was clear to me that this guy failed that test. He was hopeless. That was it," Weh said.

"The next time I saw that (Rove) staffer, I said, `Man, you guys need to get a new U.S. attorney. This guy is hopeless.' "

Whitney Cheshire, a political blogger and former Republican Party spokeswoman, said the voter fraud complaints were a major issue for Republicans, who have long said state officials do little to investigate election problems.

Referring to the woman who registered the 13-year-old, Cheshire said:

"The U.S. Attorney's Office knew who it was. ACORN had owned up to it. There were trash bags full of questionable voter registration cards. If they had investigated, who knows what else they would have found."