Incumbency advantage powers early support for ABQ Mayor Chavez

Some of the books used to collect campaign contributions for ABQ Mayor Martin Chavez's reelection bid (Photo by Marjorie Childress)

ALBUQUERQUE — After Mayor Martin Chavez turned in over 5,000 contributions of $5 each on March 6 to qualify his mayoral campaign for public financing, his unofficial campaign manager, Mark Fleisher, touted the speed with which Chavez collected the contributions as a sign of the mayor’s “reach.”

“He has that kind of reach,” Fleisher told NMI, “built from both statewide and local politics. We set a goal to do it quickly — to show his strength. Richardson could do it, Denish could do it, Udall could do, and Marty did it.”

What he didn’t say was that just over half of the contribution books turned in to qualify were collected by city employees — making much of that reach into city Hall itself.

Chavez collected all the contributions he needed in the first couple of weeks of the six week qualifying period, which began February 17, without raising any seed money or publicly declaring his candidacy.

By contrast, a couple of prominent candidates — City Councilors Michael Cadigan and Debbie O’Malley — dropped out mid-way to the March 31 deadline, citing the difficulty of raising the contributions.

Two others — former New Mexico Senate President Pro Tem Richard Romero and state Rep. Richard Berry–were collecting the contributions right up to the deadline.

When Cadigan dropped out of the race, he described to the Independent how difficult it was to collect the signatures.

“We found it to be incredibly difficult,” Cadigan explained. “We attended a lot of community events, went door to door, held house parties, but if you think about it… not only do people often not have cash or checkbooks on them these days, but many also don’t know about the system, so you have to spend a lot of time with them.”

Cadigan further speculated that Chavez may have relied on city employees to help meet his goal. “How on earth could he have done it otherwise?” he asked.

Fleisher said he couldn’t confirm the extent to which city employees contributed to the mayor’s fundraising.

“We don’t ask volunteers those kinds of questions,” he said. “Some probably were city employees, but no way would it be a majority. Go check for yourself.”

The Independent did look, reviewing 295 contribution books turned into the city clerk by the Chavez campaign, the total of which were only made available after the qualifying period ended.

The review showed that city employees were responsible for filling just over 50 percent of those books.

Each book contained 25 contribution forms. The bottom of each form had the name of the person who collected the contribution, and some listed multiple collectors.

In all, the review tallied 245 people who collected at least one contribution for the mayor, and of those, 104 were confirmed to be city employees through a combination of searching the city’s Web site, matching names with city e-mail addresses, and telephone calls.

A handful of names that matched city emails were so common that they were left out of the set when they couldn’t be confirmed by phone.

The confirmed city employees constitute 42 percent of the volunteer base used to collect the qualifying donations, making Fleisher correct in that respect. But those employees collected more than their share of the contributions. The review shows that 152 of the 295 books, or 52 percent, were used by city employees to qualify the mayor for public financing.

For example, the city’s employee relations manager, Lawrence Torres — who is the administration’s liaison with the city’s unionized workers — collected 10 books for the mayor, which was the largest group of books collected by one individual. Torres confirmed he collected the contributions, but declined to discuss how he did it, or why he participated in the drive.

Along with Torres, many of the city’s department directors — who are appointed by the mayor — collected contributions, as did many of their department managers plus the mayor’s own staff.

ABQ Mayor Martin Chavez (Illustration by Keith Lewis)

Directors names such as Nick Bakas, director of the city’s Aviation Department, Jeannine Patterson, director of the Animal Welfare Department, Tanda Meadors, director of the Finance and Administrative Services Department, Jay Lee Evans, director of the Parks and Recreation Department, and Michael Riordan, acting director of the Municipal Development Department — to name a few — are liberally sprinkled through the list.

University of New Mexico political scientist Tim Krebs, who specializes in urban policy and politics, said these numbers aren’t surprising. Rather they reflect the “incumbency advantage” of a strong executive mayor, he said.

“I’d say it’s pretty typical for Chavez — a strong executive mayor — to use the executive branch as his political organization,” Krebs said, “That is his organization — he runs it. As long as what he’s doing is within the law, which means city employees weren’t collecting on city time, then I’m not really surprised by these numbers.”

At the same time, Krebs said, large numbers of city employees working for the mayor’s re-election does open him up to criticism.

“It is a risk,” Krebs explained. “It leaves him open to criticism from his challengers-that he’s leaning on people who rely on or owe him. But he can come back with the argument that it’s a reflection of his support rather than his incumbency.”

NMI asked the Chavez administration if its appropriate for city employees to work on the re-election campaign of their boss to such an extent. In a prepared statement transmitted by Chief Public Information Officer Deborah James, Chavez said the process enacted by the City Council is being carried out by his administration and any individual who wants to participate in that process certainly can during their personal or free time.

Most of the city employees called by the Independent were reluctant to speak about their off-duty activities to support the mayor.

A few, though, spoke to us without hesitation. Al Benavidez, supervisor in the Solid Waste Department, said he’s been a supporter of Chavez since his first term in office. Barbara Taylor, capital planning manager, said it was a “no-brainer” that she would help him gather the contributions.

“All of it was done on my own time,” Taylor said. “I’ve been a supporter of the mayor his entire political career and was pleased to do it.”

Benavidez said a copy of the city ordinance that says city employees can’t do political work on city property or when on city time was distributed by the campaign with the contribution books.

And he also said the campaign asked volunteers to gather the contributions in two weeks, echoing what Fleisher had said previously.

“They said they wanted to get the job done quickly, to show the strength of the mayor,” he said.