This Guy

The Albuquerque Journal did a story Sunday on the fact that one of my opponents dropped out of the Land Commissioner race in January and endorsed me. Leroy Garcia, a San Miguel County Commissioner took a job with the Richardson administration and decided not to run after having collected most of the required signatures for his nominating petitions. I had called him when I decided to run during Christmas week just to let him know I was in the race. He said at that time he wasn't sure he was going to run and would call me. He said he was considering returning to work for the state. The Albuquerque Journal saw his eventual withdrawl and getting that job as a conspiracy between the Governor, Commissioner Garcia and myself. It just isn't true.

I am sure that someone, my opponents or others, fed the Journal this stuff. Commissioner Garcia told me Ray Powell, my opponent in the race had called him after he endorsed me asking him to stay in the race or switch his endoresement to him. Well, thats okay and comes with the territory. These kinds of things that appear in the paper always have unintended consequences. Sunday morning while I was grocery shopping this guy came up to me and said he saw my picture in the paper and the story. He said he hadn't realized I entered the race and he and his family would be sure to vote for me.

We started the publicity, we started moving in the same direction with them, and then the devil came in and just turned that right around. Solomon Burke