Eric Griego
Griego’s campaign manager says candidate would ‘rather talk about the issues that are important to the voters’ than past DWI and arrest warrants for failing to deal with traffic citations.
Democratic 1st Congressional District candidate Eric Griego has a driving history that includes a drunken driving conviction and a number of arrest warrants being issued because he failed to appear in court to deal with speeding and other traffic citations.
The Albuquerque Journal scrutinized the situation on Wednesday in an article:
“At least 11 arrest warrants were issued for Griego by Metropolitan Court judges between 2000 and 2007, records show. The warrants were for failing to appear at scheduled court hearings or missing court-ordered driver school programs for traffic citations, such as speeding.
“Three of the arrest warrants were issued while Griego was an Albuquerque city councilor, between 2001 and 2005. The most recent warrant came in 2007, one year before Griego, now 46, was elected to the state Senate.
“Griego paid $100 in court fees each time a warrant was issued, according to court records. The fees cleared the bench warrants before they resulted in an arrest.”
As for the DWI, Griego disclosed it and other traffic issues in a 2005 Albuquerque Journal questionnaire while he was a candidate for mayor:
“In 1997, I received a DUI in Dallas. I deeply regret this mistake. I am an advocate for tougher DUI laws. Also, due to family issues, including my mother’s death, I missed traffic school for speeding tickets.”
The Daily Caller featured the situation today:
“A Griego campaign mailer attacks the ‘predatory lending.’ of Wall Street bankers. ‘No one should be above the law,’ it says.
“But court records show that the state legislator has a history of failing to appear in court and failing to report to traffic school following his traffic violations.”
Griego’s campaign manager, Ed Yoon, said this to NMPolitics.net about the situation:
“Thousands of New Mexicans are looking for jobs and worried about who’s going to fight to protect their Social Security and Medicare, and our opponents’ biggest concern is 10-year-old traffic tickets. This is what’s wrong with Washington, and why New Mexicans are rallying behind Eric Griego, because he is the one Democrat in this race who would rather talk about the issues that are important to the voters.”
Since I hadn’t seen Griego’s opponents bring up the traffic problems, I asked Yoon what they had done. He said Michelle Lujan Grisham had “tested this message in her latest poll.”