Albuquerque Journal fails miserably again

Journal can't be trusted to deliver a story on time or accurately

New Mexico's largest news operation took 16 days to cover this hot story

Another journalistic disgrace


By Dennis Domrzalski

The Albuquerque Journal today proved once again why it can't be trusted to inform the public.

Today the paper finally published a story about the allegations of vote buying at the mid-February Bernalillo County Republican Party's pre-nominating conventions. And what a lame, disgraceful story it was. Read this stupid lead:

A registration fee for rank-and-file Republicans to attend their county convention— a fee candidates sometimes pick up— might be the root of a behind-the-scenes political flap in Bernalillo County.

Naaah! Really? A registration fee might be the root of a behind-the-scenes political flap?

How about allegations of criminal vote buying are ripping the party apart? That would be more accurate. How about this story has been raging in the national blogosphere for weeks and has contributed to a massive swell of anti-Heather Wilson venom? How about former KKOB Radio afternoon drive time news anchor Laura MacCallum broke the stories in late February and resigned in early March when her idiot news editor killed them because bloggers hadn't picked them up? How about this blog broke the MacCallum resignation story and put the vote-buying allegations on the Internet on March 3, more than two weeks ago?

You'll never read about those things in the Journal because they're the truth and that paper is incapable of telling it.

This is typical Journal arrogance, though. If they're too lazy or too stupid or too biased to break a story, then, in their minds, it isn't a story. It doesn't become a story until they say so.

At The Albuquerque Tribune years ago we routinely beat the Journal on big stories. When it could, the idiot paper ignored the story for a week or two. Then it published its own version and pretended like it had found the news. The Trib, which is now gone, was by far the better newspaper.

The Journal's not-so-ace political reporter Jeff Jones failed to mention an even bigger issue in the state GOP: The threats that were made to at least three people who once considered running for the First Congressional District seat being vacated by Congresswoman Heather Wilson.

Jones quoted New Mexico Attorney General's Office spokesman Phil Sisneros as saying the AG's Office wasn't investigating the vote-buying allegations because political party conventions are private affairs that aren't subject to the New Mexico Election Code. Sisneros told us that last week. But we at least found a part of the election code that contradicts Sisnersos' logic. Here's the law:

1-7-1. Political parties; conditions for use of ballot. (1969)
All nominations of candidates for public office in New Mexico made by political parties shall be made pursuant to the Election Code [ 1-1-1 NMSA 1978]. No political party shall be permitted to have the names of its candidates printed on any election ballot unless and until it has qualified as provided in the Election Code.

Other sections of the election law say it's a fourth-degree felony to buy a vote or to accept a bribe to vote a certain way. Jones didn't bother to include that in his story either.

This isn't the first, nor will it be the last time the Journal has failed and will fail to fully inform its readers. It buried its story about MacCallum's resignation.

There might be one bright side to the Journal's finally running the vote-buying story. Two lame bloggers might finally recognize the story as news. Heath Haussaman and Mario Burgos both Republican Party apologists, said the vote-buying scandal was never a story. Now that the Journal has declared it news, these two might finally see a story.

You can read the Journal's story here. But why waste your time?

NM AG Might Have Gotten Law Wrong

NM law says that political parties have to abide by the election code when nominating candidates


Former NM Gov. Dave Cargo says law is clear; AG got it wrong

By Dennis Domrzalski and
Mark Bralley

The New Mexico Attorney General’s Office might have gotten it wrong this morning in saying it can’t investigate allegations of vote-buying at the recent Bernalillo County Republican Party ward conventions because political party nominating conventions aren’t subject to the state’s election code.
New Mexico Attorney General Gary King--Photo by Mark Bralley

According to the New Mexico election code, political parties have to abide by the code when determining which candidates get on ballots. Here’s the relevant part of the election law:

1-7-1. Political parties; conditions for use of ballot. (1969)
All nominations of candidates for public office in New Mexico made by political parties shall be made pursuant to the Election Code [ 1-1-1 NMSA 1978]. No political party shall be permitted to have the names of its candidates printed on any election ballot unless and until it has qualified as provided in the Election Code.

Other sections of the election code say it’s a fourth-degree felony to pay for a vote and to take money to vote a certain way:

1-20-11. Offering a bribe. (1969)
Offering a bribe consists of willfully advancing, paying, or causing to be paid, or promising, directly or indirectly, any money or other valuable consideration, office or employment, to any person for the following purposes connected with or incidental to any election:
A. to induce such person, if a voter, to vote or refrain from voting for or against any candidate, proposition, question or constitutional amendment;
B. to induce such person, if a precinct board member or other election official, to mark, alter, suppress or otherwise change any ballot that has been cast, any election return, or any certificate of election; or
C. to induce such person to use such payment or promise to bribe others for the purposes specified in this section.
Whoever offers a bribe is guilty of a fourth degree felony.

1-20-12. Accepting a bribe. (1969)
Accepting a bribe consists of knowingly accepting any payment or promise of payment, directly or indirectly, of money, valuable consideration, office or employment for the unlawful purposes specified in Section 1-20-11 NMSA 1978.
Whoever accepts a bribe is guilty of a fourth degree felony.

Former New Mexico Gov. Dave Cargo brought the vote-buying allegations to the news media. He said that certain campaigns paid the registration fees of some attendees to the Bernalillo County GOP’s March 17 pre-primary nominating convention. The delegates elected at the pre-primary nominating convention will determine which candidates will appear on the Republican Party’s June primary election ballot. Those include candidates for the U.S Senate and the House of Representatives.
Dave Cargo and Gary King--Photo by Mark Bralley


Congresswoman Heather Wilson’s U.S. Senate campaign has admitted that it paid the $30 registration fees for five convention attendees.
The 79-year-old Cargo said this morning that he was “appalled” when he heard of the AG’s decision to not investigate the vote-buying allegations.

“It’s as clear as a bell. They (political parties) have to abide by the law,” Cargo said. “Otherwise, how do they control expenditures, accounting, reporting and all kinds of other things. There is nothing private about a public election. You talk about a plain reading of the statute, how could it be any clearer?”

Cargo has argued that the Republican pre-primary convention is subject to the election code because it was the first step in the process to officially name party candidates for federal, state and local offices.

Another section of the election code also appears to support Cargo’s argument:

1-7-2. Qualification; removal; requalification. (1995)
A. To qualify as a political party in New Mexico, each political party through its governing body shall adopt rules and regulations providing for the organization and government of that party and shall file the rules and regulations with the secretary of state. Uniform rules and regulations shall be adopted throughout the state by the county organizations of that party, where a county organization exists, and shall be filed with the county clerks. At the same time the rules and regulations are filed with the secretary of state, the governing body of the political party shall also file with the secretary of state a petition containing the hand-printed names, signatures, addresses of residence and counties of residence of at least one-half of one percent of the total votes cast for the office of governor or president at the preceding general election who declare by their signatures on such petition that they are voters of New Mexico and that they desire the party to be a qualified political party in New Mexico.
B. Each county political party organization may adopt such supplementary rules and regulations insofar as they do not conflict with the uniform state rules and regulations or do not abridge the lawful political rights of any person (Emphasis mine).)Such supplementary rules shall be filed with the county clerk and the secretary of state in the same manner as other rules are filed.

Heather Wilson Vote-buying Scandal Paper Trail

NM Secretary of State Marry Herrera is racing to complete the probe into the state GOP's vote-buying scandal

Herrera said she's never heard of campaigns paying for people to attend party conventions; calls the practice "very odd."

Exclusive interview with Herrera!

The paper trail: Copies of the checks that Wilson's campaign wrote to convention attendees are headed to the AG's Office.

Those checks might be the reason Wilson's Senate campaign fessed up to paying


By Dennis Domrzalski

New Mexico Secretary of State Mary Herrera said her office is working closely and quickly with the state Attorney General’s Office to finish the investigation into the state Republican Party’s vote-buying scandal.

The agencies want the investigation completed before the state GOP’s statewide convention on Saturday, Herrera said late Tuesday in an exclusive interview with this blog.

Herrera also said she was troubled by the allegations that the
campaigns—including Congresswoman Heather Wilson’s U.S. Senate campaign—had paid people to attend the Bernalillo County GOP’s ward conventions on Feb. 17 and vote for certain delegates.

“It’s something new—people being paid to get to conventions. I’ve never heard of it. I’ve been attending (Democratic Party) ward and state conventions since I’ve been 18 and I’ve never heard of anything like this. Now we have paying people to do it. It sees very odd,” Herrera said during the face-to-face interview in Albuquerque.

And new evidence emerged in the case that offers a reason why Wilson’s campaign suddenly admitted to paying for five people to attend the conventions after initially refusing to comment on the allegations of vote buying at the Feb. 17 Bernalillo County GOP’s ward conventions: a paper trail.

Wilson’s campaign paid at least four people with checks. Those checks went to four people to attend conventions in Bernalillo County wards 31, 23 and 24.

The AG’s office is expected to get copies of those checks today.

“We are working fast because their convention is Saturday, and we are working closely with the Attorney General’s office,” Herrera said.

GOP Party Chair Confirms Investigation

Bernalillo County Republican Party Chairman Fernando C. de Baca confirmed that he had been called by the Secretary of State’s office on Tuesday morning about the vote-buying allegations and that he talked to Bureau of Elections chief Daniel Miera for more than an hour about the issue.

“I was called by the head of the Bureau of Elections. He asked me about the convention procedures and asked if I had seen any checks written by Heather Wilson’s campaign and if the checks had any names,” C. de Baca said.

“I told him that there were four checks, that they were made out to the Bernalillo County Republican Party and that they had no names. He told me he would need copies of them, that he would be meeting with representatives of the Attorney General’s Office and that they were conducting an investigation.

“I informed this party’s executive board about the allegations and that there was an ongoing investigation of the matter by Secretary of State’s Office.”

Wilson’s Campaign Checks

Copies of the checks written by Wilson’s Senate campaign exist because the Bernalillo County GOP keeps meticulous records of all money it receives. All checks the party receives, as well as all large amounts of cash—are photocopied. That’s right; the party even photocopies large bills and records their serial numbers! In most cases, the party can trace specific bills to specific donors.

The investigators have asked for all the county party’s convention records so they can try to match Wilson’s check numbers to specific attendees. The party’s records include lists of all convention attendees, if they paid, and how they paid—whether by check or cash. So it shouldn’t take long for investigators to match the checks with names.

Wilson’s checks were written to the county GOP. Each one was for $30, which was the convention registration fee, and none mentioned that the purpose of the money was to pay for people to attend the conventions.

Two checks were received from Ward 31 in Albuquerque’s Northeast Heights, and one each came in from Wards 23 and 24.

The checks were the large, business-type design. The check from Ward 24 was numbered 7291, while the one from Ward 23 was numbered 7292—which shows they were written in sequence. The two from Ward 31 were numbered 7254 and 7263. That interruption in sequence could lead investigators to ask whether Wilson’s campaign wrote checks to convention attendees in other counties. It’s not clear if the checks were written on the day of the convention. If they were written days before the convention, investigators might start looking at just how premeditated the vote-buying effort was.

Dave Cargo Vindicated

The Wilson campaign checks vindicate former New Mexico Governor Dave Cargo, whom the state GOP has tried to smear in recent days as a disloyal Republican who was angry because he wasn’t elected a delegate to the March 15 convention.

Dave Cargo and his wife, Ida Jo (left)--photo by Mark Bralley

The 31^st Ward is where the controversy over the vote-buying scandal erupted. Cargo was the ward’s chairman, and he’s the one who went to the news media with allegations that certain campaigns had paid people’s registration fees for the conventions, which were held to nominate delegates to the state GOP’s March 15 statewide nominating convention. Those delegates to the statewide convention will vote on which candidates will be on the party’s June primary election ballot. Cargo also said he heard people at his ward convention say they had been paid by certain campaigns $35-an-hour to attend the function.

State GOP officials blasted the 79-year-old Cargo after he made the allegations. And, when then-KKOB Radio afternoon drive time news anchor Laura MacCallum aired stories about Cargo’s complaints and the alleged vote-buying scheme, state party officials and Wilson campaign operatives called the station to complain that Cargo was a disgruntled loser who had no credibility.

KKOB News Director Pat Allen eventually killed MacCallum’s stories on the subject, saying in a bizarre memo that the stories weren’t valid because other news outlets and bloggers had not picked them up.

MacCallum resigned in protest.

Cargo has also said that the vote-buying scheme is a fourth-degree felony under New Mexico law. The law says it's a crime for someone to over a bribe for a vote and to accept a bribe to vote a certain way.

Cargo said the checks vindicate his allegations and prove that state Republican Party operatives "are a closed little group who operate on the basis of hate."

"This happened right in my ward, which is what I said," Cargo added. "They pait me as being disloyal and they were the ones doing the corrputing. Instead of admitting what they did, they tried to smear me."

And the Ward 24 caucus was where state Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones, R-Albuquerque, said she had that people had been paid by certain campaigns to attend.

State GOP officials have said that the convention fees were legitimate charges because they paid to rent a ballroom at the Albuquerque Marriott where the conventions were held.

Checks Could Cause Wilson Reporting Problems

How Wilson’s campaign reports the checks on its campaign finance reports to the Federal Elections Commission could eventually be of some interest. Will it call them donations to the Bernalillo County Republican Party, or will it be honest and say the money was paid for people to attend ward conventions and vote a certain way?

Cargo says that in the eys of the FEC, "buying votes is not a legitimate campaign expense."

Investigators might eventually be looking at that, as well.

Analysis

Heather Wilson's Campaign PR Ineptitude

Abusive Tactics Gave Vote-buying Story Legs

Photos by Mark Bralley


By Dennis Domrzalski

It was a horrible week for Heather Wilson’s U.S. Senate campaign.

Stories about the campaign’s alleged effort to buy votes and delegates at the state Republican Party’s pre-primary Bernalillo County conventions exploded across the Internet. So-called liberal bloggers picked up the story and spread it around the world.

The anti-Wilson venom spewed from Maine to Australia. And it was intense. In New Mexico the Wilson haters recalled her every misstep, from the heavy-handed attempt to pressure former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias into indicting Democrats before the 2006 November election, to her acting like a spoiled brat and throwing a fit when she was moved from the front of the New Mexico State Fair parade to a position further back.

It was vicious. Swept up in the damage were KKOB Radio and the state Republican Party. The station was blasted for caving to pressure from Wilson’s campaign and killing the vote-buying stories being aired by drive-time news anchor Laura MacCallum.

MacCallum resigned in protest. KKOB News Director Pat Allen became the laughingstock of the blogosphere, and probably the entire news world, when his memo to MacCallum on why he killed the stories hit the Internet on this blog. The memo suggested that MacCallum’s stories weren’t valid because bloggers hadn’t picked them up. One of the state’s biggest alleged news operation had ceded the news initiative to bloggers.

The state GOP looked stupid and corrupt for refusing to concede that it was wrong for campaigns to pay for people to show up at the conventions and vote for certain delegates to the party’s March 15 statewide nominating convention.

It was ugly, vicious, and for Wilson’s campaign, awful. She was smeared, attacked and ridiculed, while her opponent for the Republican nomination, U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-NM, sat back and laughed. You could almost see people racing to vote for Pearce.

It was a disaster.

But the real disaster of it for Wilson’s campaign—the stunning disaster—is that it was all the campaign’s fault. It needn’t have happened. The tsunami of negative publicity that cashed into the campaign, the radio station and the party was all self-inflicted. It was the result of one of the biggest political PR blunders in the state’s history.

MacCallum’s stories, which were broadcast more than a week after the GOP conventions, weren’t going anywhere. They ran on Tuesday and Wednesday the week after the conventions. No one had picked them up—not print journalist, not TV talking heads, not bloggers. By Thursday of that week they would have ended and almost no one would have known that Wilson’s senate and Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White's campaigns were being accused of trying to buy votes and delegates.

Dave Cargo's Republican credentials--U.S. Rep. Manual Jr., R-NM, (left) and President Richard Nixon

But Wilson campaign spokeswoman Whitney Cheshire was too dumb to see it. Instead of letting a story fade into inconsequentiality, Cheshire resorted to ham-handed, abusive tactics. She called Allen to screech that the allegations made by former New Mexico Governor Dave Cargo weren’t true and that the stories had to be killed. State GOP flackster Scott Darnell also called the station to yell.

Allen caved, MacCallum quit, and the vote-buying story that would have faded away and that everyone would have forgotten became a huge story.

The ineptitude didn’t stop there. I called Cheshire to ask about Cargo’s allegations. I just needed a simple yes or no answer as to whether the campaign paid people to show up at the conventions. Her response was ridiculous and insulting. She said she needed a video or tape recording of Cargo before they would respond.

Whitney Cheshire behind Darren White

I explained Cargo’s allegations and asked again if they had paid people to attend the conventions—a simple question—and the response was the same. No comment would be made unless the campaign had a recording of Cargo making the allegations.

For a reporter, that was an outright refusal to answer the question. And when somebody refuses to answer a simple question, it says they’re guilty as charged.

Cheshire’s refusal to answer the simple question and Allen’s nutty memo spread over the Internet. The negative press poured in. The self-inflicted disaster ensued.

The carnage didn’t stop there. Rather than making a case that the payments were some kind of noble deed—Republicans scooping poor people off the streets and giving them a chance to participate in Democracy—GOP operatives tried to smear and destroy Cargo, who is a true New Mexico hero. Read it again: Dave Cargo is a New Mexico hero. There is no one in this state who has battled longer and harder to expose corruption. No one!

Rather than admitting they were wrong, party operatives, with the help of lapdog KKOB Radio Operations Manager Pat Frisch, tried to slime Cargo. Instead of answering the questions and talking about the sleaziness of letting campaigns pay for people to attend the nominating conventions, the GOP smearmeisters screamed that Cargo was once seen in the presence of Bill Clinton and that he had had his picture taken with the former president.

They pretty much accused the former governor of high treason for showing up at Hillary Clinton’s recent book signing in Albuquerque. The GOP ass-kissing Frisch refused to let Cargo talk when the 76-year-old former governor called into his talk show on Thursday. The way he treated Cargo was despicable and disgraceful.

On Friday, during the taping of the Eye on New Mexico TV talk show, Republican attorney Pat Rogers produced a magical invoice that said a party operative had paid Cargo’s $20 registration fee in 2004--four years earlier! The invoice was dated March 7, the day of the taping. Rogers also tried to smear Cargo with having attended Hillary’s book signing.

Rather than honestly addressing the issue, the state GOP—the club, the party, the gang, the would-be empire—tried to kill the messenger.

It didn’t work.

By the week’s end, Wilson’s campaign admitted that it had paid the convention entrance fees for five people. But it was too late. They had already shot themselves in the head.

The would-be empire and Wilson’s campaign behaved like the power-obsessed elitists they are, and it backfired. The blogosphere hit back. The gatekeepers in the traditional media were blown away.

It isn’t all bad, though, for the non-answering Cheshire and the GOP smear-job operatives. With their abusive, sleazy and self-destructive tactics they’ve proven themselves worthy.

Worthy of jobs in Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

GOP Vote-buying Investigated

AG, Secretary of State Looking at Republican Vote Buying Allegations



By Dennis Domrzalski

The New Mexico Secretary of State and the Attorney General’s offices are looking into allegations of vote buying at the state Republican Party’s Feb. 17 delegate nominating conventions in Bernalillo County.

Former New Mexico Gov. Dave Cargo and state Sen. Joe Carraro, R-Albuquerque, said they have been talking to investigators from both offices. Carraro, who has also alleged that Republic Party insiders threatened to wage a smear campaign against him if he sought the party’s nomination for the First Congressional District seat, talked with Secretary of State officials on Tuesday to tell them what he knew about the alleged vote-buying efforts.

Cargo, who served as governor from 1967 to 1971, said he talked for about an hour on Tuesday with an AG’s Office investigator. The AG’s office is the lawyer for the Secretary of State.

AG’s Office spokesman Phil Sisneros confirmed that the office is taking a preliminary look at the allegations.

The vote buying complaints stem from the Bernalillo County Republican Party ward conventions on Feb. 17. The conventions were held so party members could elect delegates to the state party’s March 15 statewide convention. Those delegates will determine which candidates will be on the ballot for the GOP’s June primary election.

There are two hot GOP races. In the First Congressional District, Carraro trying to challenge party insider favorite Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White. The two are hoping to run for the seat that is being vacated by Congresswoman Heather Wilson, R-NM.

Wilson is locked in a battle for the opportunity to run for the U.S. Senate seat that is being vacated by U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, a Republican who has been in office for nearly 36 years. Domenici announced last year that he is leaving the senate because of degenerative brain disease.

Carraro said that party insiders and White’s campaign are waging a battle to keep him off the June ballot.

Cargo said he heard convention attendees say that they had been paid $35-an-hour by their campaigns to show up and vote for certain delegates.

Cargo also said that several attendees told him that the White and Wilson campaigns had paid their $30 registration fees.

The former governor says that under New Mexico law it’s a fourth-degree felony to bribe someone to vote, and to accept a bribe to vote. He says that paying people to show up at the convention amounted to a bribe under the law.

A source in White’s campaign denied the vote buying allegations. The source said the campaign paid no one to attend the conventions.

Wilson campaign spokeswoman Whitney Cheshire refused to comment on the allegations. She refused to answer our questions as to whether the campaign paid people to show up at the conventions.

Radio Station Caves to Heather Wilson's Campaign

KKOB Radio News Anchor Laura MacCallum Quits After Station Pulls Stories About Alleged Republican Vote-Buying Efforts

Ex-anchor Says Station Caved to Pressure From Heather Wilson’s Senate Campaign

Station Says Story Had No Legs

By Dennis Domrzalski

KKOB Radio afternoon drive time news anchor Laura MacCallum quit her job last Thursday after the station’s news director pulled her stories about alleged vote-buying efforts at the recent Bernalillo County Republican Party delegate nominating conventions.

MacCallum, a 32-year radio and TV news veteran who has worked in Chicago, Denver and Los Angeles, said the station caved to complaints from Congresswoman Heather Wilson’s Senate campaign about the stories. Wilson campaign spokeswoman Whitney Cheshire called the station to argue the unfairness of stories alleging that many delegates to the ward conventions were paid by Wilson’s and other campaigns to show up and cast their votes for certain delegates.

Critics of the alleged vote-buying effort say it was an unfair scheme to lock out any challengers to Wilson’s senate and Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White’s congressional campaigns

KKOB News Director Pat Allen said the stories were pulled, not because of the campaign’s complaints, but because he felt they lacked corroboration and that a source in some of MacCallum’s stories, former New Mexico Governor Dave Cargo, was bitter because he wasn’t elected as a delegate to the upcoming state Republican Party nominating convention.

“I talked to Heather Wilson’s campaign and they expressed concerns that the stories had no basis in fact,” Allen said, adding that he also talked to sate a Republican Party official about MacCallum’s stories, which were broadcast last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

MacCallum was outraged by the situation.

“I had an ethical problem with the stories being pulled because Heather Wilson’s campaign put pressure on newsroom management,” MacCallum said. “They allowed political pressure to dictate the news. As journalists we can’t do that. The news has to stand alone. That a political candidate can inject herself into news department management is just mind blowing. Should we just be doing the Heather Wilson news? And as soon as we make her angry she’s going to call and start giving everybody trouble?

“If a political campaign can bring pressure on a news department to change how they cover the news, that is a disservice to everyone who listens. We are not there to make everybody happy; we are there to do the news. And if we don’t do that if we are serving as the biggest PR agency in the state of New Mexico and we are not doing our jobs.”

Flabbergasted by Memo; Bloggers Didn’t Have the Story

MacCallum was also flabbergasted by a memo she got from News Director Allen on Thursday morning before she quit. The memo said that because there were no official investigations of criminal wrongdoing into the matter, the story would go nowhere. It also suggested that the story wasn’t valid because bloggers and other news outlets hadn’t picked it up. Here’s Allen’s memo:

“From: "Pat Allen" <pat.allen@mail.citcomm.com>
Reply-To: <pat.allen@mail.citcomm.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 09:22:27 -0800

laura,

i pulled the cargo stories. i'm troubled by his motivation as he was not selected as a delegate. unless there is an official investigation of criminal wrongdoing related to these meetings then the story is going nowhere.
it's also a very inside politics story that i don't think has much importance to our listeners.

also, don't you think if there was anything to it the bloggers would have picked this up, let alone other news agencies?
this is the kind of story that has to be fully developed and verified before it can air.

pat allen news director 770 kkob radio, Albuquerque”

“We’ve billed ourselves as the news leader, and now we can’t do stories unless other news outlets and bloggers do them? That’s not right,” MacCallum said. MacCallum wrote her resignation letter after reading Allen’s memo.

Allegations of Vote Buying

The allegations of vote buying stem from the Bernalillo County Republican Party ward conventions on February 17. The conventions were held to nominate delegates to the state party’s March 15 statewide convention. At that convention, the delegates who were who were elected on Feb. 17 will select candidates to be on the GOP’s June primary election ballot.

Cargo says he noticed something different when 59 people showed up at the Albuquerque Marriott to elect delegates from the 31^st ward in Albuquerque.

“This is probably the biggest ward in the city, by far. Normally we have between 9 and 15 people show up,” Cargo said. “And so along comes the convention on Sunday and 59 people show up.”

Cargo began passing around a signup sheet. “I said ‘I’m going to pass around notebook and would like to have you write down your names and address and phone number so I can call you and put you to work for the party,’” Cargo said. “Then one gal got up and said, ‘We aren’t working for any party; we’re here only this one time and we won’t be back.’”

Cargo said that over the course of the meeting many of the participants said they were from Wilson’s senate campaign and from Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White’s congressional campaign. Several people told him they were being paid $35-an-hour (for two hours) by their campaigns and that the campaigns had also paid their $30 registration fees.

“I told them that this was known as vote buying, that it was illegal and that it was fourth-degree felony,” Cargo said. “I said, ‘You can’t buy votes. We’re not in Chicago or St. Louis.’ They just blinked and looked at me. They didn’t see anything wrong with it.”

MacCallum attended Cargo’s convention and said she heard many participants say that they had been paid to show up and vote for a specific slate of candidates. Cargo ran for a delegate spot, but didn’t get enough votes.

State Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones, R-Albuquerque, said she saw the same thing in the 24^th Ward’s convention. Many of the participants said they had been paid to attend and vote for certain delegates, she said.

“They were free about telling us why they were there and what they were trying to do,” Arnold-Jones added. “Some people said they had been paid to participate in the convention. It was clear that some of them had no stake in the process and that they were not coming back for the convention.”

Denials and Non-answers

White is running for the First Congressional District seat that is being vacated by Wilson. A source in his campaign flatly denied paying campaign workers to attend the conventions and vote for certain candidates.

Wilson’s spokeswoman Cheshire refused to answer our questions about the issue.

“I’m not going to respond to anything Dave Cargo says unless you have a tape recording of him. I’m not going to have any comment on this until Mr. Cargo puts his complaints in writing to the Republican Party,” Cheshire said.

For Cargo, the affair smells of vote buying and constitutes a fourth-degree felony. Two portions of the state’s election code apply, he says. They are:

“1-20-11. Offering a bribe. (1969)

Offering a bribe consists of willfully advancing, paying, or causing to be paid, or promising, directly or indirectly, any money or other valuable consideration, office or employment, to any person for the following purposes connected with or incidental to any election:

A. to induce such person, if a voter, to vote or refrain from voting for or against any candidate, proposition, question or constitutional amendment;

B. to induce such person, if a precinct board member or other election official, to mark, alter, suppress or otherwise change any ballot that has been cast, any election return, or any certificate of election; or

C. to induce such person to use such payment or promise to bribe others for the purposes specified in this section.

Whoever offers a bribe is guilty of a fourth degree felony,” and:

“1-20-12. Accepting a bribe. (1969)

Accepting a bribe consists of knowingly accepting any payment or promise of payment, directly or indirectly, of money, valuable consideration, office or employment for the unlawful purposes specified in Section 1-20-11 NMSA 1978.

Whoever accepts a bribe is guilty of a fourth degree felony.”

Cargo said that Wilson’s and White’s campaigns strong-armed the conventions in an attempt to lock out challengers come March 15:

“Of the 14 delegates elected from my ward, only two are active in the party. They shut everybody out and they will never be back. This is no way to run a democracy; it’s a raw deal.”