Illustrated Daily; 6028; Jim Baca Interview

10 days before Ken Schultz takes office as mayor of Albuquerque, a final look at the recent campaign with the man he narrowly defeated, Jim Baca, that exclusive interview next on the Illustrated Daily. The Illustrated Daily, managing editor Hal Rhodes. Even now there are those who argue with some degree of conviction that the recent run-off campaign for mayor in Albuquerque was less than the ideal Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he gave voice to this nation's democratic aspirations, and indeed it did have its flaws. The issues debated were not always lofty.

Rumor, innuendo, and whisper campaigns found a place in the process, questionable tactics played a role. But in the final analysis it was probably nothing more than a reflection of us, the people of this city, and what it revealed was an Albuquerque badly divided, torn both numerically and geographically almost right down the middle. On this coming Monday here at the Illustrated Daily, we will take a look at the transition underway down at Albuquerque City Hall, the transition from the administration of Mayor Harry Kinney to the administration of Ken Schultz. Tonight, however, given the narrow margin of Mr. Schultz's victory, a part of that transition which cannot be ignored, and that part involves the man Mr. Schultz defeated, state land commissioner Jim Baca. On the evening of Mr. Schultz's victory, Mr. Baca called upon his supporters to pull behind the city's new mayor-elect. But in politics, allegiances are not always that easily transferred. And tonight we probe that and other issues with Mr. Baca himself and Mr. Baca is nice to have you back at the Illustrated Daily. Well, thank you. I've rested a few days. I have my fishing tie on, although I haven't had time to go yet, and I'm more or less rested from the great battles.

You look more rested than the last time I saw you on this program. Commissioner Baca, as I just mentioned, on election night you urged your supporters to pull behind the new mayor-elect of Albuquerque, and in preparing for this program this evening, and the program we will be doing here at the Illustrated Daily on Monday on the Schultz transition. I have spoken to a number of those who work for your election, and quite frankly Commissioner Baca, they are not taking your advice. The campaign apparently left a lot of them. Angry things like your wife's choice of to retain her maiden name seems to have set badly with a lot as far as it's becoming a campaign issue. And they say quite frankly that Mr. Schultz cannot count on their support. What's it going to take for a mayor-elect Ken Schultz to pull these people behind him? Well, not a miracle quite, but I think that if he will just show that he is willing to surround himself with a more talented group of people and his campaign advisors, then I think people will get behind him.

It's important that they do, because it's for the good of the city that we must do this. Ken Schultz may rise to the occasion. I certainly hope he does, and he can do it. They feel surround himself with people who know city government, who care about the future of the city, and who have nothing to gain except living in a good city. Well, when you say that he has to surround himself with people other than those who were involved in his campaign. A lot of people are currently arguing that those were fairly remarkable people in and of themselves, that they snatched victory from the jaws of defeat when everybody else had you predicted as the winner. Well, the polls had as predicted as the winner, but once again, I think both my opponent and I were always saying that you shouldn't trust the polls. I don't trust polls, and I think I've just been born out by it.

I think that polls are to be used as tools and tools only, but anybody that would argue how that they don't have an effect on an election are not arguing reality, because they do have an effect. I know that during the last few days after the election, I just heard numerous people mention that they didn't go vote because they thought I had it in the bag. And they thought I had it in the bag because of those polls. Do you thought that was a problem on election day, I think, didn't you? Yes, I did, and I was especially upset when one of the TV stations released an exit poll at six o'clock during the time that most of my traditional voters would be getting home with the kids and then getting ready to go out and vote. They showed me 10% behind at six o'clock, and then just two hours later, just four% behind, that does have an effect. And anybody that says it doesn't, once again, just doesn't know what's really going on. Commissioner, this city is divided numerically, geographically.

You just need to take the election returns and put them on a map, and there it is. I've heard all kinds of explanation for what is going on and what went on here. Explanations from rather influential people, public officials, and others who say they don't want to talk about this publicly, they'll talk about it privately. And some of the explanations I've heard are very disquieting, including allegations of racism, direct and indirect, as one person put it, because he's short and because he's in Hispanic, and that is not a good thing to be these days. I think that did have an effect. I know in election day, I was traveling around a lot of the polls, and you could just see it up in the northeast heights. People actually told me that they just didn't need another anion, that's why they didn't vote for me. We ran a good race. We ran an excellent race. You know, we were in it for only 10 weeks.

When everybody else had been in it for a year in Ken Schultz's case, I think his first mayoral aspirations were just several months after he was elected to the city council. And so a lot of those people had a chance to put together a lot of strange coalitions. Lots of promises had to be made in order for support, which is something I never had to do, and I still got 49% of the vote, by just working like crazy for 10 weeks. I think in the final analysis that my supporters and I felt pretty good, even though we lost, because we were able to make such a great move. As far as tying me to the anion administration, which they did through some television ads, which were effective, we have to hand it to them. I've never seen such unfair and misleading tactics in my life as there was a lot of them from his campaign advisors. As a matter of fact, if anybody had been at the Ken Schultz headquarters that night, I was watching the TV tapes, they would have seen most of the anion supporters over his camp. People in his campaign were all anion supporters, people like Rosemary Garcia, who ran his organization in the valley when anion ran and stuff like that.

And so what they were doing was they were once skirting the truth, and two appealing to some sort of racist attitude when you really get down to it. And it's unfortunate because this city is divided enough. Now let me clarify that. I have never seen a candidate who was said or accused of being tied to an Anglo politician being asked to more or less divorce himself from that Anglo politician because he was an Anglo. So I don't know if I made myself clear, but I don't know why a Hispanic should lose just because a Hispanic elected official has done a less than good job in Santa Fe. I'm sure that if we had an Anglo politician running for mayor in Albuquerque, that they wouldn't try to tie him to a bad Anglo politician in Santa Fe, if you see what I mean. And so on their tactics, it was the correct thing to do, even though it wasn't true. And it was unfortunate because it did cost me votes.

How are we going to deal with this? I mean, if what you're talking about, here's an abiding problem in our municipal affairs. Mayor Schultz is going to have to deal with it, try to heal that it would seem to me if he wants a city united behind him. Well, he is. And, you know, if you look at the division of the city and the election, it's really not as clear a cut as you think it might be. I won District 5, a very traditional Northeast Heights area. District 6, I only lost by 30 votes, which is also a very House of Districts. Yeah, City Council Districts. And basically what I lost, okay, what I lost and where I lost the race was everything east of Wyoming or U Bank Boulevard. And my theory is that that's where a lot of new people have moved into. It's where a lot of people knew to New Mexico politics were voting and didn't really understand what the issues of the city were. Of course, there was a lot of old ones too. I'm not trying to say that there wasn't, but, you know, we have a lot of people moving into Albuquerque.

And they're moving away from other cities, hell, because those cities have problems. They get the Albuquerque and don't perceive the problems here. And they look at somebody like me who wants to tackle problems that are going to come up in the future and just feel that I'm barking up the wrong tree. Let's look at the auto emissions thing. Already, Mayor-elect Schultz is saying that he doesn't think we need it. And this was, surprisingly enough, not a real big issue, but it's going to be a real big cross for him to bear. He doesn't like this thing already. And what he's saying is, okay, let's do what Denver did and let's do what Phoenix did and let's just wait for everything to go to hell and then we'll do something. Well, we have a chance in Albuquerque if not having to do that. That was the message that I was trying to get across in my campaign. And it's a message that I tried to stick to throughout the campaign without getting down off the guber gutter into the mud. And when all these things were being thrown my way in the last five days, and I kept wanting to jump off the gutter, I thought, no, you don't need to do that.

You're looking into the future. Don't get down into these three or four day tactics where people are attacking you. And it was a mistake. A lot of people in your organization, and apparently from this program, tell me that I think that was your biggest mistake that you did not meet these issues head on. Well, you know, I thought people, you know, he was the one that was saying no mud slinging, remember the day after we got into the runoff. And then he was the one that truly slung the mud, and I just figured people would recognize that. And my mistake was not really dealing head on with my wife's last name for God's sakes. The police department thing where I refused to let politics get involved in the police department to further my candidacy. And he did. He got an endorsement and they turned it around to make it look like I was anti-law enforcement. These are things I probably should have attacked a little bit more head on. But I just felt that we were on the high road and there was no reason to switch down to the low road. And I covered every mayor's election in the city of Albuquerque since Charter Revision in 1974.

And actually, Commissioner Baca, I have never heard a more active rumor mill than in this most recent election. It was saying to tell you something that you're not going to believe. The well-known lobbyist from Santa Fe that works for various groups was actually told by Councillor Schultz that I was adopted and wasn't really Hispanic. It just so happens that I had grown up and went to school all my life with this guy and he knew that just wasn't true. And that was the kind of stuff that was being fed through the Hispanic community. And I did well in the Hispanic community. I mean, this thing cuts both ways. I should have done better. They bought the El Hisbano endorsement, the newspaper. They bought it. Well, it's traditional if you buy big ads in the newspaper, you get an endorsement. And on election day, there were handing out thousands of copies of this El Hisbano newspaper, Spanish language newspaper, at the polling places, where I questioned my wife's keeping her own name and where I questioned my motives for running from air because I just wanted a job that paid better.

The nastiest editorials I have ever seen in my life. Another thing that I probably should have attacked head on was the Lulac endorsement. And I really believe the reason the Lulac endorsement went to my opponent was because I'd worked very hard against the husband of one of the Lulac people who ran for Supreme Court. In the last election, I supported Dan Sosa. And this other fellow was running against him. And I didn't have any personal animosity. I just liked Dan Sosa. And his wife was head of Lulac. And I think that had a big deal to do with... And these are the kind of tactics that we don't need in the Mexico politics. But you have to give credit to them. Yeah, both ways. I mean, I heard my share of Ken Schultz was a bad businessman, had more lawsuits than anybody in the history of the Republic. Why all this negative stuff this time out? I don't know. I think the only thing I can figure was that I was sort of a surprise that I shouldn't have got into the runoff because I got in so late. And there was no way to deal with me from their perspective.

You know, I could have in those debates used some of this stuff on his business man background on the fact that he didn't have a lot of lawsuits and stuff. But once again, I didn't think it was an issue. I did not to attack his record as a businessman. What I tried to do was show his record as a city council because I thought that was germane. And I just did not feel that I had to... For a lot of reasons, get down in the gutter. I didn't want to hurt his family. His sons go to school with my nieces over at St. Pys, 10th High School. And I have no animosity towards them. And I'm not so sure really that it was... The Ken Schultz knew everything that was going on. There was a lot of this stuff from these old time alligators that he had working for him. And let's call it that. A lot of that stuff was being done probably without him knowing it. And he may have vetoed it if he had known about it. But just the same. It's no way to win an election. And there was only eight votes of precinct difference. And these little things can add up. And it's my fault. Nobody's but mine for not dealing with them head on, I suppose.

It hurt you, you've acknowledged that. It wasn't an endorsement, though. It was not an endorsement. We had a forum in which all eight mayoral candidates before the runoff were asked about gay rights. And everybody said, well, they didn't think anybody should be discriminated against because of sexual preference. I said that. Millie Santiago said it. She said she had a lot of gay people working for her in her stores. And that she always found them very, very dependable and all that sort of stuff. And she, but Ken Schult said that. And all of a sudden it becomes an issue. The people in the gay rights organization here did not really endorse me. They just recommended that I be elected because of my stand on civil rights. The big mistake was whoever in their organization sent out a newsletter that affect put my letter head on that newsletter, which I did not authorize. And so it was picked up by the Schultz people, altered with some writing on it and distributed to all the churches and at football games and high school football games and everything else. The weekend about 10 days before the election.

And boy, let me tell you, the phones lit up and I didn't feel that it would be wise to really comment on it because it would have made a big issue out of it. And so that underground campaign probably more than anything hurt me. Do you think that lost you the election? Yes, I do. I really do. You filed a complaint with the City Ethics Board. Didn't you, over that matter, you threatened to? I threatened to, but I decided it just wasn't worth the effort. It was unfair campaign practice. I'm sure Mr. Schultz must have known about it. It was just too big and going on too much. And when they put these leaflets out, they didn't even put a disclaimer on it as to who had paid for them. And that was the basis of maybe an ethics board's charge, but that's no way to run a campaign. If that's the way he wanted to do it, tactically it was good for him, I suppose. Because I really feel that it cost me the election. Endorsements, I've never seen so many endorsements in a mayoral election. Quite frankly, Mr. Bocken, my life, it seemed to me at times endorsements were being handed out as though they were votes. Where did they figure into this?

Well, I don't know. You know, the newspaper endorsements are something that I wanted. That's pretty tradition. The city counselors that endorsed me, you know, I did not go to them and asked them to do that. They asked me to come down to a meeting one day because they were very concerned that Ken was going to win for whatever their own reasons. They'd worked with them, I guess. And I said, well, you all do what you think you have to. And then they said, well, we want to have a news conference that endorsed you. And so I showed up and thanked them because I think it was a courageous thing to do. And every time I got an endorsement, Ken somehow managed to turn it around and some sort of diabolical thing. If he got an endorsement, I just sort of ignored it. You know, I mean, if people want to support him fine. And that was probably another mistake. He accused the city council of violating the charter that made us a city council mayor form of government when they came out and endorsed me. That would be like saying a legislator could never support a governor's candidate. You know, and yet he turned that around when Harry Kinney endorsed me, which I did not ask for.

And which I thought at the time he did it was probably way too late to have any effect anyway. So it didn't really matter to me. All of a sudden, he gets the same group of legislators and alligators together in attack Harry Kinney as being a liar and having no integrity. I think maybe those things probably hurt me because I did not react to them because I didn't think it was important to react to that kind of campaign tactics. But maybe what we're seeing in Albuquerque and New Mexico to a certain extent is a change in the kind of campaigns we've had. Usually, you know, our kind of campaigns in New Mexico have been politically fought. Now it looks like maybe they're going to go a step lower and get into this kind of stuff that you see in Cook County, Illinois, in New York City where the issues don't have much to do with anything. It's who can throw the biggest bucket of mud and stuff like that. And I hope that doesn't happen. And I don't know why it's occurring. Maybe we're just getting to be a big city. There are those who argue on the Mayor Kinney's endorsement.

There are those who argue that it hurt you. I've also heard people argue that, in fact, it probably froze some momentum going towards Schultz, which might have resulted in a bigger margin of victory for the Mayor-elect. Then was the case that the Mayor's endorsement was froze Schultz momentum and put a freeze on it for periods of time. Well, there's people who would like to think that. But I think probably Harry's endorsement didn't mean anything either way in the final analysis, except for their reaction to it. Because it was too late, he did it on the Friday before the election. And most people had made up their minds by that point. All right. Can we talk about the way we elect our mayors? Yeah, we can talk about that for a long time. I can't tell you the number of people. And I don't mean any offense to either you or Mr. Schultz. They didn't want either one of you. They never wanted either one of you. And they still want either one of you. Many Republicans, as you know, wanted a Republican for whom they could have voted. Others who have told me they would have preferred a longer run-off campaign period.

Sort of like the distance between a primary election and a general election and normal campaign. So that they could have reached judgments, pressed more to their liking. Is there a way and should we reform our campaigns in Albuquerque, our election laws? So as to address some of these? Well, I think we can certainly do some work on them. I think that probably the petition requirement should be up to even more so that we can get rid of some of the sort of fly-by-night candidates. And it's nice to have everybody be able to run. But when you have a political debate going, the more people you have debating, the less anybody's going to learn about a candidate's position. And so I think if we can whittle that down a little bit, it would be good. The number of candidates in the first election. I don't believe a partisan election is a good idea. I just don't. No, I don't.

Last time out, not this time. Last time out, Democrats were sorely pressed to make a decision what they wanted to do. They had Gordon Sanders, a Republican, or Harry Kinney, a Republican. I know Democrats had told me this time out. They were in vote last time because it didn't seem to us that we wanted either one of those fellows. You like to have somebody up in the mouth party. This time, and you know it as well as I do, Republicans have said the same thing after your forum. But Hal, you're talking to the people that are in the Run of the Mill Republican kind of organization. You're not talking to the people that are just out on the street. You're going to go vote for the best person anyway. They do it now in our statewide elections. We still are almost two to one, Democrat in this state, and yet we have many Republican elected officials. People who do vote quite often, the person they feel comfortable with, not the party. They really don't. And so I think the same thing would occur if you had a Democrat Republican race going here. So you had an interest in partisan elections? No, I'm not.

I think the ward chairs and the Ira Robinson's and John Himmler's and those kinds of people. The party functionaries. Yeah, the functionaries, exactly. They would like to see partisan politics because it gravitates more so-called power to them. But I don't think it would be good for the city as a whole. You ran for mayor, as I recall, pretty of about 90 days. You did remarkably well in 90 days. Darnier became the mayor, but she didn't. Should you have gotten into the race center? I don't know. You know, I didn't have time to put together those coalitions and stuff like that. But at the same time, I didn't have to make any promises. You know, I didn't make any promises. I hadn't promised any jobs. I hadn't made deals with any groups. I had made no promises with the labor unions in the city that are starting negotiations. I didn't go after the labor union endorsements at all because I thought it would be an improper thing to do. That's something that Shultz is going to have to deal with now because negotiations are starting.

And he's already going to have a problem with police chief leaving. I was very much chagrin that police department was getting involved in politics. These are our paramilitary force. The word was out. The Shultz had promised two or three of these deputy chiefs, the job of Hansen left. I would not say anything about who I would appoint police chief if I had been elected. Because I felt that there should be a nationwide search for the best possible person. Now Shultz is stuck with one or two or three guys inside that want the job. There will be more politics being played in there. And the person that finally does get elected is really unfair to him because the public at large and everybody else is never going to really know that he was the best person for the job. Because there was no real search done. And typically, when a metropolitan police force gets a new chief, you have the department of justice. You have the chief police association of America and a few other groups that put together panels to interview people from all over. Yes, but that police endorsement hurts you.

Shultz endorsement, the endorsement of Shultz hurts you. Yes, it did. But I was not willing to compromise myself by saying I would go with somebody just inside the police department. Because how there are problems in that police department. There are problems in the Robinson case. There are problems when officers come after attorneys because they don't like them. And there are some other things that occurred after that endorsement, which I'm not prepared to talk about right now, but will come out eventually about threats made against me. And that kind of stuff must stop in the police department. Politics has no business in the police department. And I think what's needed over there is a fresh approach. And if they don't do a nationwide search, they'll never get it. It's just, it's real regrettable. And it did hurt me because people thought I was anti-law enforcement. When I had worked in law enforcement, I'm in chief of a law enforcement agency. And I know how things work in a police department. Policemen are nothing, nothing really special compared to the rest of the population except for the fact that they risk their lives. But they have the same problems that any organization has.

There's good cops, there's bad cops. There's inner turmoil. And sometimes it's good to get somebody in from the outside as they did when Bird came in back in the 70s to cut away the clicks, to cut loose the politics, and get them back to their original mission of enforcing the laws and catching crooks. I'm almost out of time, Commissioner Baca. You've got a little over a year left in your term state land commissioner. Then what? I don't know, I think I'd like to try and make some money. Everybody always complains at me because I've been a land commissioner for four years and have never gotten a raise. But that does bother me because it's the only income our family has at this point. And also, I don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll stay in politics, maybe I won't, but I just like to make some money. It will be our task here at the Illustrated Data to find out what you're going to do. Thanks so much for talking by. Appreciate it a lot. That's it for tonight. Tomorrow on this time slot, executive news brief. And next week of the daily on Monday, the transition to the Shelts Administration in Albuquerque. Tuesday, a look at the proposed voucher system for parents and children who attend private schools.

Wednesday, on the eve of Thanksgiving, on location at the soon-to-open New Mexico Museum of Natural History. Thursday, an illustrated daily on-core, on location with the delightful composer, musician Pat Lysat at the Rio Grande Zoo's Tropical Rainforest. Meanwhile, thank you for joining us. I'm Hal Rhodes. Good night. Thank you very much.