Former NM Gov.: GOP Rep. Heather Wilson Under Investigation for Vote Buying

Posted by Jan Frel, AlterNet at 2:37 PM on March 6, 2008.

A respected New Mexico journalist has quit her job after her television network killed her report alleging Republican congresswoman Heather Wilson tried to buy votes at a party convention.

Bradblog has the story:

32-year award-winning news veteran and New Mexico's ABC field producer, Laura MacCallum, quit her job as afternoon anchor at Albuquerque's 50,000-watt blowtorch KKOB-AM 770, after she read an email from her News Director, Pat Allen, which said, among other things, "if there was anything to it the bloggers would have picked this up, let alone other news agencies."

Allen was referring to MacCallum's on-air investigative reports covering allegations of a vote-buying scheme by New Mexico's U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson at a recent Republican Delegate Convention. The 1st Congressional District Congresswoman is vying for her party's nomination to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated this year by outgoing Pete Domenici. MacCallum ran the stories about the charges on KKOB several times, in several different variations --- including several different interviews and sound bites from both the former Republican Governor of New Mexico, David Cargo, an eye-witness to the story, and a current spokesman for the state GOP, Scott Darnell.

Allen has now given different explanations for spiking MacCallum's reports. Bradblog summarizes the details of Wilson's vote buying efforts at a GOP party convention as related by former GOP Gov. Cargo:

[H]e was told by a number of attendees at the convention that registration fees had been purchased for them, and that people were being "paid $35 an hour" to attend on behalf of candidates Wilson, and Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White, who is vying for the Republican nomination to run for the Congressional seat that Rep. Wilson is vacating to run for the U.S. Senate.

Cargo explained that when he noticed the unusually large number of attendees in his ward --- there were 59 people there this year, when normally they have from 9 to 15 or so, almost all of whom he knows --- he asked everyone to write their contact details on a piece of paper for the record.

"I noticed that 50 of you people have never been here before," he announced. "I said 'I'm gonna pass around a tablet, to get your name and addresses,'" but the people he hadn't recognized demurred. They didn't want to give their contact information. "They said we're gonna be here for two hours and that's it. 'We're just here for these two hours'," they told him.

Later, he says, "there were about six people standing in the hallway talking. And I didn't know 'em. And I know everybody usually. They said 'What a convention', and I said, 'Yeah, what a mess!' and they [complained by saying] 'and we paid filing fees for these people.' And I said 'you did?,' and they said 'Yeah, why?' And I said 'because that would be a fourth degree felony! You can't pay for votes!' And then they scattered like a covey of quail."

"I thought that was pretty unusual that there was people on staff that didn't realize you couldn't pay people for this. You can't pay for votes. I wouldn't want them on my staff," the two-term Governor, first elected in 1966, added.

Later, he tells us, "Two kids, about twenty years old, said 'we were paid to come over here.'"

"I thought Jesus. This is really bizarre. I thought maybe they were staff members, just monitoring the vote, but they weren't! I thought this is the most peculiar thing I've ever heard of in my life!"

"When I spoke to other people, they were saying the same thing," he claimed. "They were saying that people were being paid $35 an hour and that they were paying their filing fees, as well."

He went on to say that he was told the radio station heard from someone at the state GOP who questioned why Cargo would make such a charge.

"They talked to a guy who works for the Republican state central committee, and they said Dave Cargo thinks there was some irregularities at the convention," and the official then said, according to Cargo, "How could he? We paid his way in!"

Read the rest at Bradblog.