{"id":625826,"date":"2018-09-14T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2018-09-14T18:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=625826"},"modified":"2018-09-17T10:23:15","modified_gmt":"2018-09-17T16:23:15","slug":"the-trust-krahling-earned-makes-his-betrayal-more-devastating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/09\/the-trust-krahling-earned-makes-his-betrayal-more-devastating\/","title":{"rendered":"The trust Krahling earned makes his betrayal more devastating"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Scott

Heath Haussamen \/ NMPolitics.net<\/p>

Do\u00f1a Ana County Clerk Scott Krahling speaks with students at Chaparral High School about the importance of voting on April 30.<\/p><\/div>\n

COMMENTARY:\u00a0<\/strong>I remember interviewing former Do\u00f1a Ana County Clerk Scott Krahling in April about his office\u2019s work to increase voting and civic engagement<\/a>, which was fairly visionary.<\/p>\n

Krahling spoke about expanding the work of county clerks to include coordinating community-wide partnerships to encourage participation. He expressed a deep trust in systems \u2013 though always needing improvement, they\u2019re generally forces that empower people, he said.<\/p>\n

Krahling talked about his efforts to improve elections systems. And he expressed dismay that a large percentage of Americans don\u2019t trust elections. As someone who administered voting, he told me, \u201cI know that people should have confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

That statement, which was essentially a plea to trust him, makes Krahling\u2019s betrayal of the public trust even more devastating.<\/p>\n

\"Heath

Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n

Krahling resigned last week<\/a> after an internal county investigation<\/a> determined that his \u201cintimate relationship\u201d with an employee over nearly two years violated county policies and had a \u201cnegative impact\u201d on the office, creating \u201cthe perception among some employees of favoritism and preferential treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The open secret, and Rose Ann Vasquez\u2019s promotions and salary increases, created the perception, at least, that a willingness to have sex with the boss got you special treatment. While Krahling was being publicly praised for empowering voters, behind the scenes he was creating a disempowering work environment<\/a> for the employees he supervised.<\/p>\n

I admired Krahling\u2019s ability to earn bipartisan trust in his work. And I devote a lot of time to reporting on voter turnout, which is why, earlier this year, I profiled his efforts to increase voting<\/a> and spoke about them during a lengthy radio interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So I was devastated to get a call a couple of weeks after that article published from someone who told me what Krahling had done.<\/p>\n

I began digging and reporting. As I asked around, I learned that lots of people knew long before me and had done nothing. When I obtained a public record that confirmed the county was investigating the situation, I told Krahling\u2019s attorney I was writing a story. Krahling submitted his resignation that day<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve been up at night lately wondering if I could have done something sooner. Did I miss signs while reporting about the efforts to increase voting? I also have questions about why the county investigation moved so slowly. It appears to have stagnated from March until about the time I began asking about it in August. Then it was suddenly completed within a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

I know this: The system was way too slow to protect employees in the Clerk\u2019s Office from Krahling\u2019s actions. Once again, a man got away, for too long, with mistreating people over whom he had power.<\/p>\n

That many people knew and were silent furthered the perception among some of Krahling\u2019s employees that they were trapped and powerless.<\/p>\n

The situation impacted those employees\u2019 work. The office has a high vacancy rate, which is no surprise given what we know now. I\u2019m hearing about other problems, including a backlog in mailing out voter registration cards. Voters who put Krahling in office have also been impacted.<\/p>\n

Krahling\u2019s efforts to increase voting were worthy of attention. I\u2019m glad I wrote that article. But that good work makes the way he simultaneously treated his employees even more egregious. I worry that the damage done by the hypocrisy of it all will spread a greater distrust of government \u2013 the very thing Krahling was publicly working to combat.<\/p>\n

And I want to know how we\u2019re going to address these abuses of power more quickly in the future. We can\u2019t keep letting people in power act this way.<\/p>\n

Heath Haussamen<\/a>\u00a0is NMPolitics.net\u2019s editor and publisher.\u00a0Agree with his opinion? Disagree? NMPolitics.net welcomes your views. Learn about submitting your own commentary\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While Scott Krahling was being publicly praised for empowering voters, behind the scenes he was creating a disempowering work environment for the employees he supervised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":620162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[2238,115,3670],"class_list":["post-625826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-2018-election","tag-dona-ana-county","tag-scott-krahling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625826","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=625826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}