Gov. Bill Richardson raised almost $200,000 for his campaigns and political action committees from people doing business with state investment funds, Bloomberg is reporting.
The news organization analyzed Richardson’s fundraising reports and found that he “received at least $102,300 from brokers hired by money managers seeking to handle $11.7 billion of state trust funds.”
He also “received at least $95,000 from the state trusts’ outside money managers.”
The second includes $20,000 from former Quadrangle Group managing partner Steven Rattner, who I’ve already written about. The state opted to invest $20 million with Quadrangle. And it also includes, according to Bloomberg, $50,381 from Leo Hindery, founder of InterMedia Advisors LLC. The state opted to invest $30 million with InterMedia.
“There’s an appearance of pay-to-play,” Bloomberg qouted Steven Robert Allen, executive director of Common Cause New Mexico, as saying about the campaign contributions. “Whether there’s a quid pro quo or not, it raises questions in people’s minds, and that’s not good for a democracy to have those sorts of questions being raised about the most powerful elected official in our state.”
To top it off, I’ve already written about ties between some New Mexico investment deals and Hank Morris, who is under indictment in New York for soliciting kickbacks in exchange for business with that state’s pension fund. What I haven’t reported is that Morris’ political consulting firm, Morris Carrick & Guma, gave $52,972 to the Democratic Party of New Mexico in February 2001, according to Bloomberg.
Here’s what New Mexico’s State Investment Council had to say to Bloomberg:
“Campaign contributions should not and do not play any role whatsoever in investments made by the State Investment Council,” spokesman Charles Wollman said.
Bloomberg was working off a list of 42 brokers released by the SIC. According to the news organization, nine of those brokers contributed to Richardson campaigns and PACs. Two of them, Guy Riordan and Alfred Jackson, were officers in one of Richardson’s PACs.
This article has been updated for clarity.