I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Former state elections director A.J. Salazar tells Heath Haussamen over at NMpolitics.net today that he doesn’t share his attorney’s sentiment that New Mexico Attorney General Gary King is playing election-year politics.
On Thursday, Salazar’s attorney, Rudy Martin of Española, told The Independent that Salazar spoke to the FBI two weeks ago after turning over telephone numbers and potential witnesses to state Attorney General (AG) investigators five months ago, about the time he quit as Herrera’s state elections director and alleged wrongdoing in a resignation letter.
“Gary tried to play politics and swept everything under the rug” to help Secretary of State Mary Herrera and other Democrats in an election year, Martin told The Independent on Thursday.
On Monday Salazar told Haussamen, “That was not a statement I made and it was not a sentiment I had expressed.”
Salazar said he had “simply been trying – unsuccessfully – to get an update on the status of the investigation” after going to King’s office with allegations of criminal activity in Herrera’s office five months ago. “He said he just wants to know that his complaint is being thoroughly investigated,” Haussamen writes of Salazar.
Salazar quit as elections director under Herrera months ago, creating a a brief maelstrom of negative press for Herrera when he alleged wrongdoing in the agency in a lengthy resignation letter.
Despite Salazar’s kinder, gentler words about King, a spokesman for King ”lashed out in a very personal way” against Salazar on Monday, Haussamen tells us.
Phil Sisneros, a spokesman for the Attorney General, is quoted as saying:
“Salazar has run unsuccessfully for district attorney in Santa Fe and, while Salazar was working for House Speaker Ben Lujan, Sisneros said Salazar ‘repeatedly asked Gary for a job at the Attorney General’s Office, which he didn’t get for reasons that I really don’t need to go into, but apparently Gary did not feel he met the criteria for an AGO attorney.’”
Then Sisneros does something he rarely has done with this reporter. He opened a window into how the AG’s investigation of Salazar’s allegations are proceeding.
Sisneros acknowledges the length of time the AG has been investigating Salazar’s allegations and then tells Haussamen “Oftentimes when it takes a little bit longer I think experience tells me that we’re having a hard time corroborating things.”
Sisneros’s statement appears in contrast to Salazar’s contention that the AG’s office has not updated him on the investigations’ progress or lack thereof.
Sisneros is pretty consistent in telling reporters he can’t discuss an active investigation, at least in this reporter’s experience.
Stay tuned, folks. I’ve got a feeling that this controversy is likely to get hotter before it cools down.
