{"id":4236,"date":"2009-02-12T16:28:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-12T22:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/02\/article-detailing-guvs-descent-contains-some-errors\/"},"modified":"2009-02-12T16:28:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-12T22:28:00","slug":"article-detailing-guvs-descent-contains-some-errors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/02\/article-detailing-guvs-descent-contains-some-errors\/","title":{"rendered":"Article detailing guv’s ‘descent’ contains some errors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cA breathtaking descent\u201d is how one national news publication is describing Gov. Bill Richardson\u2019s<\/a> fall from being Barack Obama\u2019s<\/a> commerce secretary-designate to a \u201clate-night punch line\u201d because of controversy plaguing his administration.<\/p>\n

In the article from The Politico, which you can read by clicking here<\/a>, reporter Andy Barr writes that, since withdrawing his nomination in January because of a federal grand jury investigation into allegations of pay to play in his administration, Richardson, who was \u201conce unmatched in his power and popularity in Santa Fe,\u201d has \u201cseen his political fortunes crater.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s had a pretty rough go of it since he withdrew,\u201d Senate President Pro Tem Tim Jennings<\/a> was quoted by The Politico as saying. \u201cHis popularity has really declined in the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the pay-to-play controversies and the jokes that have come from David Letterman<\/a> and Jay Leno<\/a>, the article cites a recent New Mexico Independent story<\/a> about an auditing firm headed by a man with ties to the governor that has seen a boom in government contracts since Richardson became governor.<\/p>\n

While the tone of the Politico article is probably fair — Richardson\u2019s political reality has changed drastically in the last couple of months — there are a few errors in the article that should be pointed out.<\/p>\n

\u2022 For starters, the article doesn\u2019t quite get right the money involved in the pay-to-play case the grand jury is investigating. It states that the grand jury wants to know whether CDR Financial Services<\/a> gave \u201cmore than $100,000\u201d to Moving America Forward, a Richardson PAC, in order to win a state bond contract. What\u2019s accurate is that exactly $100,000 was split between to two Richardson PACs — one of them being Moving America Forward — and another $10,000 went to the governor\u2019s 2006 re-election campaign.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The article claims that, \u201cSeveral other financial firms and banks, including UBS, are also accused of contributing to the PAC in order to gain contracts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bloomberg<\/a> has highlighted connections between people tied to other banks, including UBS, and the bond contract. It\u2019s also true that UBS and other banks gave money to a Richardson PAC, but it\u2019s the other PAC under investigation — \u00a1Si Se Puede! Boston 2004 — not Moving America Forward. And nothing revealed publicly indicates that the probe focuses on any company other than CDR or that any other company has been accused of any crime related to the pay-to-play controversy. If The Politico has a source making that allegation, it didn\u2019t cite the source in its article.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The article says the state Senate was \u201conce stacked with Richardson allies.\u201d And it states that the Senate \u201chas rejected the governor\u2019s attempt to push through tax rebates and health care reform this year.\u201d The Senate has rejected such proposals from the governor in previous years, but not this year. And the Senate was quite unfriendly to Richardson long before 2009 arrived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cA breathtaking descent\u201d is how one national news publication is describing Gov. Bill Richardson\u2019s fall from being Barack Obama\u2019s commerce secretary-designate to a \u201clate-night punch line\u201d because of controversy plaguing his administration. In the article from The Politico, which you can read by clicking here, reporter Andy Barr writes that, since withdrawing his nomination in […]<\/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-4236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4236","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=4236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}