Mayor Chavez scrimps on campaign staff

Mayor Martin Chavez announcing his reelection bid on July 12.

ALBUQUERQUE — One thing that leaps out when looking over the campaign reports of Albuquerque’s mayoral candidates is the minimal amount of money incumbent Mayor Martin Chavez is using for campaign staff compared to the other two candidates in the race, Richard Romero and Richard Berry.

According to Chavez campaign spokesperson Joanie Griffin, this is because the mayor has just two professional campaign staffers: herself and campaign manager Mark Fleisher. And they’re both working just very part time.

“Mark is working part time, just a couple hours a day at most. I’m similar, putting in just an hour or two a day, or not at all,” she said.

Chavez has only reported campaign expenses for the July 17 and August 14 reporting periods. The three-term mayor hadn’t formally announced his reelection bid prior to those reporting periods.

The July 17 reporting period began April 1 and ended the day prior to the report. After July 17, reports are required to be filed with increasing frequency leading up to the election.

For the July 17 and August 14 periods combined, Chavez reported a total of $9,207 for campaign staff.

By contrast, for the same time period, the campaign of Berry, a two-term state representative, reported $27,140 for his campaign manager alone.

The campaign of Romero, former president pro tem of the New Mexico Senate, reported $17,917 for his campaign manager for the July 17 reporting period, and has since restructured his staff to eliminate a full-time campaign manager and instead rely on several different staffers to manage day-to-day operations.

Each of the publicly financed candidates in the mayor’s race are allowed up to $32,800 of in-kind contributions on top of the $328,000 distribution they received from the city. Otherwise, they are barred from raising more money.

City election rules say that professional services rendered to a campaign have to be valued at fair market value and either paid for by the campaign, or counted as in-kind contributions.

Fleisher is a professional campaign consultant who was on the mayor’s campaign staff almost continuously from Chavez’s 2005 re-election campaign through 2006 and 2007 when Chavez was actively exploring a run for governor or when he briefly ran for the U.S. Senate in the fall of 2007. Fleisher is also a registered lobbyist with both the city and state; his clients include some of the largest companies operating in the city, such as SunCal Corporation, Mesa del Sol and Hunt Development Corporation.

Fleisher’s historic pay rate for campaign management during an actual campaign period can be approximated by looking at the payments he received for that task in 2005. In that year, he made about $32,890 for the final three-month period of the mayoral campaign, in which he replaced Bridget Cusick as campaign manager.

The total amount of available funds used by the Chavez campaign for Fleisher’s services so far this year is $8,353. Chavez’s July 17 report shows a payment of $3,000 and a $2,000 in-kind contribution by Fleisher to the campaign. For the one month period ending on Aug. 14, he reported Fleisher was paid $2,352 and that Fleisher made another $1,000 in-kind contribution to the campaign.

Prior to the July 17 reporting period this year, Fleisher actively helped coordinate the drive to get Chavez qualified for public financing, which occurred back in February and March. He told the Independent back then that he was just volunteering his time.

He then took a break from the campaign for a number of months, Griffin told the Independent. He resumed his duties in the month leading up to Chavez’s official reelection announcement on July 12. Chavez has been in full-blown campaign mode throughout the August 14 reporting period, with Fleisher as campaign manager.

Griffin owns a public relations company, and worked on Chavez’s 2005 campaign as a communications professional. She is also a city contractor. She has only shown up once this year so far, on the Aug. 14 report, making an in-kind contribution of $855 to the campaign. Back in 2005, Griffin was paid $2,045 for the Sept. 9 through Sept. 30 reporting period.

According to Griffin, both she and Fleisher are at most putting in a couple hours a day and allocating some of that time as in-kind contributions because the public financing system forces the campaign to be frugal. They need to have enough advertising dollars left for the final stretch of the campaign, she said.

She added that this is also why the mayor’s race this year seems quiet. With fewer dollars in play, the advertising is starting much later than in prior years.

“With public financing, we have a smaller budget than we did last time [when both she and Fleisher worked the same jobs on Chavez’s 2005 re-election campaign],” she said, “so it does change the campaign.”

“Four years ago, advertising was already up,” she continued, “but now with smaller budgets, it won’t be until around Labor Day probably.”

Griffin said the Chavez campaign has “done it before,” citing campaign experience as the key to making the hours she and Fleisher are putting in today sufficient.

Otherwise, the Chavez campaign has no paid staff, she said.