Manny and Ken

Every blogger is talking about this today. So will I. First, The enormity of the money involved in Manny Aragon's and Ken Shultz's corruption case was staggering. Over $4 million siphoned off from the Metro Court House Project is mind blowing. Unbelievable!

I first came into contact with these players when I ran for Mayor back in 1985. Shultz beat me by 2000 votes after an especially nasty campaign engineered by him and the Aragon family. They were spreading rumors that my wife and children didn't have my name because they were ashamed it was a Hispanic name. This stuff just killed my campaign in the last weekend. They distributed stuff on windshields at all the Catholic churches in the valley areas about this and also alleged that I had a plan to make Albuquerque a center for Gay people. I had the support of many Gay organizations.

I was Mayor when the Metro Courthouse was in the planning stages. I had some serious differences with the administrator, Toby Martinez, because he kept insisting that the court house was going to leave downtown for the north I-25 corridor. Little did I know that he was going steal $2 million on the deal. In reading the indictment I noticed he invested it in a Casino Boat in the Gulf of Mexico. The Court House stayed downtown.

One hard thing to swallow in the indictments is Architect Mark Schiff's contention that he was forced into doing this by fear of losing contracts. His firm has built a lot of projects and understands politics too well for me to believe he was a victim.

Now, everything involving the firing of David Iglesias, the interference of Pete Domenici and Heather Wilson, and this case itself is all jumbled up. It is hard to make sense of it. I hope everyone will look at all of this corruption and then ask their legislators why no ethics and campaign reform bills have passed in Santa Fe. I am begging Senators Mike Sanchez and Linda Lopez, people I like a lot, to see the light. Get it passed. The Governor should keep calling Special Sessions until they do.