{"id":1980,"date":"2007-07-16T12:14:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-16T18:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2007\/07\/abq-council-candidate-needs-new-e-mail-address\/"},"modified":"2007-07-16T12:14:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-16T18:14:00","slug":"abq-council-candidate-needs-new-e-mail-address","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2007\/07\/abq-council-candidate-needs-new-e-mail-address\/","title":{"rendered":"ABQ council candidate needs new e-mail address"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rey Gardu\u00f1o<\/a> is running an Albuquerque City Council campaign based on clean elections and ethical government.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The Democrat is running for the District 6<\/a> seat in the state\u2019s largest city \u2013 a seat being vacated by congressional candidate Martin Heinrich<\/a>. He has the support of many who are fighting for good government in New Mexico<\/st1:state> and Albuquerque<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

But Gardu\u00f1o\u2019s latest misstep is cause for concern that the man who is running a campaign based on ethical government may not know how to avoid the appearance of impropriety.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

It\u2019s one thing to use a government e-mail address to campaign \u2013 which he\u2019s doing. It\u2019s another completely to defend that action and say critics of it are ignorant \u2013 which he did in an interview with the Albuquerque Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

He told the newspaper there\u2019s nothing wrong with his use of a University of New Mexico<\/a> e-mail account for his campaign because he is retired, not a current employee, and because his use of the e-mail carries no real cost for the university.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

He\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t matter if he\u2019s no longer on the payroll at UNM. Even though he\u2019s granted the account for life, he\u2019s still using state resources for his campaign. The cost might be minimal, but it\u2019s not nothing. His e-mail account takes up state government server space, and maintenance and other costs for the system are attributable to every account on the system.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Another UNM employee recently used her school account to send out an invitation to a fundraiser for Gov. Bill Richardson\u2019s<\/a> presidential campaign, and she had to reimburse the school $25 for the cost.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Is this the biggest ethical lapse out there? Not even close. But if a candidate is going to run a campaign based on ethical, clean government, he needs to prove he understands what is and what is not ethical. Instead, Gardu\u00f1o criticized the \u201cignorance\u201d of his critics in the Journal interview.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

How hard would it be to get a free e-mail account through one of countless sites on the Internet that offer them and avoid even the remotest appearance of impropriety?<\/p>\n

\n

A prior version of this posting misspelled Gardu\u00f1o\u2019s name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rey Gardu\u00f1o is running an Albuquerque City Council campaign based on clean elections and ethical government. The Democrat is running for the District 6 seat in the state\u2019s largest city \u2013 a seat being vacated by congressional candidate Martin Heinrich. He has the support of many who are fighting for good government in New Mexico […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}