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Mayor orchestrated critical ad blitz, Albuquerque city councilors say
Dirty tricks?
As Tuesday's City Council election approaches, last-minute campaign tactics are beginning to surface. Here are two that arose Wednesday:
District 9
The issue: City Councilor Don Harris, facing a recall election, joined nine residents of the Four Hills Mobile Home Park who claimed their signatures were forged on ballot petitions. Harris said he plans to seek criminal prosecution in the case and suspects there were more forged signatures.
"It just shows that these recall people will do anything," Harris said.
The response: Jim Lowe, chairman of New Mexicans for Democracy which orchestrated the recall effort, said the forgery claim is a way to distract voters from the $2,500 fine Harris received Monday for campaign finance violations.
"Let me try to be absolutely clear: I don't think there were any fraudulent signatures," Lowe said. "Our personal opinion is this is nothing more than a personal smokescreen by Mr. Harris."
District 6
The issue: Rey Garduño, one of four candidates vying to replace outgoing Councilor Martin Heinrich, is asking opponent Joanie Griffin to apologize for a telephone push-poll her campaign conducted.
Garduño said callers declined to disclose who they worked for and asked potential voters if they were aware that he once was charged with shoplifting - and failed to disclose it on newspaper questionnaires.
The response: Griffin owned up to ordering the phone poll but said there is nothing wrong with letting voters know of Garduño's misdemeanor charge. She also denied that callers failed to identify themselves, saying a campaign disclaimer is on the script given to the callers.
"I don't think my competition likes the fact we're out publicizing his shoplifting record," Griffin said. "There's nothing we're saying that's untrue."
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Two city councilors are claiming that members of Mayor Martin Chavez's administration violated ethics rules by using city e-mail and cell phones to orchestrate a campaign against them.
Councilors Brad Winter and Don Harris on Wednesday accused Barry Bitzer, the mayor's chief of staff, and Transit Director Greg Payne of playing a role in a May campaign criticizing the councilors for voting to delay a Chavez tax cut.
The claims come in reaction to a column in The Tribune on Wednesday by independent political journalist Heath Haussamen that questions whether Chavez and his employees were "waging a behind-the-scenes campaign to unseat his council opponents."
Using city e-mail records, Haussamen found that Bitzer and Payne had copies of the scripts for radio ads and robo-calls criticizing Harris and Winter four days before the formation of a political action group that paid for the ads.
City cell phone records showed that Payne and Bitzer also spoke several times in the same time period to Roger Mickelson, who became the committee's spokesman, Haussamen found.
The ads in question criticize Winter and Harris for voting to delay Chavez's plan for an -cent gross receipts tax cut in order to help pay for operation of the Metropolitan Detention Center.
Bitzer at the time said the Chavez administration had no role in the campaign and called the group sponsoring it "a grass-roots movement."
Both Bitzer and Payne have explained the phone exchanges with Mickelson, saying they had to do with city business.
In an interview Tuesday, Mickelson backed up those stories.
Mickelson also maintains that the Chavez administration played no role in the radio and telephone campaign. He said it might have been himself who sent the ad scripts to Bitzer, whom he met at various political lunches and called "a pretty astute political sort of guy."
"I don't recall if I did send it to him or not. It wouldn't be unlikely. He's a very helpful sort of guy," Mickelson said. "I thought I sent one of the mailing things to Barry, but it may have been a radio script.
"Candidly, you ask people who have experience for their advice."
Reacting Wednesday, Harris and Winter said they see a smoking gun.
"This is what we've been saying all along - these so-called grass-roots attempts to change the City Council have been directly and illegally orchestrated by the mayor," Harris said. "He's using his highly paid, at-will directors to engage in political activity rather than government business."
The councilors said they believe Bitzer and Payne violated city ethics rules, and Winter said he would consider filing a complaint.
"This shows and this proves that there are some ethics violations, and that it was coming out of the 11th floor," Winter said, referring to the mayor's City Hall office. "I think Barry Bitzer and Greg Payne need to be held accountable for this."
Chavez was out of town and could not be reached.
Bitzer said Wednesday he didn't hear the actual radio ads and couldn't be sure the script that came into his possession was the same that aired. He also said he couldn't recall who e-mailed the script to him.
"I come into possession of things all the time and forward them all the time, just like everyone else," Bitzer said. "I get my news, and I forward it by e-mail."
He stands by his earlier statements that the Committee for Responsible Budgets is a grass-roots organization and the administration had no involvement in its advertisements.
"It sounds to me like Councilor Harris and Councilor Winter are running scared, because this is a really bad time for the fact that they opposed the mayor's tax cut proposal to be brought up again," Bitzer said.
Payne, when reached Wednesday, denied any involvement with the tax-cut campaign. He said the contents of his personal e-mail account "has never been and will never be anyone else's business but my own."
Payne also took a shot at Harris, who on Monday was fined $2,500 by the city's Board of Ethics and Campaign Practices for a series of campaign finance violations.
"Of course, some might argue if anyone's an expert on ethics violations it's Councilor Harris," Payne said.
Payne defended his calls with Mickelson, saying not only were the conversations about transit issues, but that one call lasted only one minute and the other call was two minutes.
"You're talking about a very, very brief exchange," Payne said. "If we were coordinating some kind of grand conspiracy against Councilors Winter and Harris, I'd like to think there would have been more time-involved."
