In the fourth installment of a series looking at Albuquerque’s mayoral candidates, KUNM’s Daniel Montano spoke with former U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, Alex Uballez, who said his choice to run for mayor came from a desire to continue serving the public after leaving his position as the top federal prosecutor in the state.
KUNM: First off, let's get into why you decided to run and when that decision happened, and what's been happening since you first made that decision.
ALEX UBALLEZ: So, as you know, I was the United States Attorney here in the District of New Mexico, and before that, a career public servant who made his career in public safety. And so you know, when I was asked to leave the office back on Valentine's Day of this year, I was trying to find something where I can keep giving back to the community. Everything that I've done over my career, from when I began as a crimes against children prosecutor at the DA 's office, to being a cartel investigator at the U.S. Attorney's Office, to taking the helm of that office and serving the people of New Mexico in all law enforcement capacities federally, has been geared towards the maximum amount I can give back to the community. And for me, this decision was difficult. Former United States Attorneys have many options. If you look at my colleagues across the nation, many of them end up at large firms making lots of money, or leading nonprofits. There are hundreds of things that a U.S. attorney can do that's a lot less stressful, pays a lot more money, that’s a lot better for the work-life balance than running for mayor. But for me, like I said, every decision I've made has been towards the aim of doing the most good for the most people. And so while I've seen, you know, the criminal justice system, both in the state side and the federal side, where what you see there is, there are times when the criminal justice system is the right response. It is the right approach. There are really, you know, dangerous folk out there. There are people like the cartel leaders that we have targeted and charged who really make money off of the misery of other people. There are people who take advantage of our systems and exploit people like the cops in Albuquerque police who we took down when we investigated 30 years of corruption in their DWI unit.
And then there are a large number of people who end up in the criminal justice system, whether it's the state side or the federal side, and they're there because of poverty, or they're there because of addiction, or they're there because of mental health. And so for me, I saw that the tools that we had in the criminal justice system had become a stopgap for every other systemic failing all along the line before someone gets to criminal courts. Because if the issue is poverty or addiction or mental health, those are things we can solve. Those are things we have a responsibility as a community and a society to solve. Those are things that a mayor can solve. And so for me, in looking where I could best serve best I was looking for the role where I can best address those things, to, frankly, reduce the number of people who end up in the criminal justice system. The mayor can do that. The mayor of Albuquerque can do that. This is a city that is rich, both in resources and in people, and in drive and creativity, and this is the kind of place that can really turn it around for all of the people, whether they're on the streets or in our jail cells, and make it a society and a community that we all want to live in.
KUNM: You know,obviously you've mentioned this quite a bit, and this is a big part of your backend, your history, but public safety is a huge issue right now. I like the distinction that you just made — and this is something that you've even mentioned on your website and in other forums — but you've differentiated between public safety versus over-policing. You've mentioned that you want there to be a local defense fund and you want to stand up for the community. Can you kind of expand on that distinction and what plans you have in each area there?
UBALLEZ: Absolutely, and that's right. I think we need to open our aperture when we discuss things like public safety or policing. Really, you know, we have our budget broken down into various areas, and what we like to say about Albuquerque’s budget is 30% of it goes towards public safety. But when we talk about public safety, we have to remember that public safety is the end goal, and there are multiple ways to achieve it. Policing is one,right? Like I said, there are times, there are many scenarios, where we want somebody there with body armor and a gun to handle a very dangerous situation, to help us catch somebody who is a danger to the community and help — and the prosecutors in the back end — to help us hold that person accountable and take them out of our community so they can't hurt anymore people. However, public safety is a big and broad concept, and so there are those small numbers of people who are a direct threat to us in our community. Then there are people who we could help not be a threat to us in our community. And the better investment, the moral investment, and in fact, the cheaper investment is investing in keeping people who could be kept out of that system but for finances or some health disorder. Keep those people out of the system. And if we can do that on the front end, as a component of public safety, that serves us all
KUNM: When it comes to reaching those sorts of people, you know, there's a lot that goes into this, right? There's a lot that we can get into. So why don't we start with housing? I know that you have a few different ideas of what you'd like to address with housing as the mayor. Can we go into some of those details?
UBALLEZ: Housing is the bedrock, right? And so I think when thinking about approaches to the city, people, of course, first need to feel safe outside, but then they need somewhere to be, right? This is just a fundamental piece of being alive. If you look at the numbers of people who are on our streets, there is a significant portion of them who are on our streets because they simply can't find afford housing, right? And so that is a solvable problem, but our housing stock has remained stagnant over the past decade here. It's also reflected, if you look at the stats coming out of our planning department, and the number of permits that are issued, the length it takes to get inspections done. And so for me, prioritizing — on one side — the development our city by giving people affordable places to live. And when I say affordable, I'm not just talking about building affordable housing. I'm talking about building the whole spectrum of housing, because there's a large number of people who are living in affordable housing now, who could afford market rate, but it doesn't exist. And so when I say, you know, ‘make opportunities for affordable (housing),’ it means make all of the opportunities across the spectrum so that everybody has their needs met. That is number one. How we do that is important as well. So, creating smart density around our city centers and transit centers is what helps make places within our city where people can live, and walk, and work, and walk to eat, and walk to drink, and build an outdoor and vibrant and thriving community out(side) of buildings, outside in our spaces. That's one key way that we know drives down crime itself.
And then, of course, the transit system to connect each one of these, so that not everyone has to live downtown, but everyone should be able to benefit from it. And the way we can do that is by ensuring that everyone can get to it. So we both build a more robust, reliable and frequent transit system that connects our city, and that also helps those people who really like their cars, because it's fewer cars on the road. And so by creating these outdoor spaces that are live/work, mixed-use spaces, then we really create these communities and environments. So I think housing is number one. Housing is also the bedrock to addressing a lot of the issues that drive our homelessness crisis, that drive our quality-of-life crime crisis, because people need to feel supported first. They need a home base to live in before we can treat the issues that are plaguing them, whether that's addiction or mental health. And so I think regardless of where our focus is on the symptoms of the problem that we see in the streets, the bedrock principle needs to be that we need to grow and build and develop and create more housing. However, that's not the full answer.
We also need to make sure that we are investing in social service supports for those who are suffering from addiction, or are suffering from a mental health crisis. That is a long road, right? And so we've invested a lot of time and resources in treating day-one, night-one, right? So that's what we think about when you think about shelters, when we think about the Gateway Center. These are night-one responses. Someone's in crisis, someone's on the street, somebody needs help, and we take them to a night-one resource. That's important, but to truly bring people off of the streets, to truly bring people out of poverty, to truly treat addiction and mental health, to truly build people into full members of our community that many of them want to be, we need to be thinking beyond night one. We need to be thinking to year five. What that means is residential support outside of a shelter environment. That means, during that residential support we have a system of graduated levels of independence for people. That's that's paired with wraparound support from professionals who know how to treat the issues that they are going through and can help them get on their feet so they can get back into society, into work, into houses and fully and permanently off of the streets and out of our jails
KUNM: Along those same lines. Another thing that you've mentioned is you want to see better diversion and reentry programs. So obviously, as a U.S. Attorney, I'm sure you've seen a lot of this sort of stuff. Recidivism, obviously, is an issue. So what is your vision for diversion, violence intervention programs, reentry programs, that sort of stuff?
UBALLEZ: Yeah, I think preventing violence is always better than punishing it afterwards. So when it comes to diversion and intervention, all the work that we can do on the front end — and sometimes that work comes on the back end of a criminal sentence or of a prosecution — but all of the work that we can do to prevent the future crime, we should be doing, right? Because any day that that dollar for dollar investment is worth so much more than the life that will be lost down the road, right? I mean, it's just like we must be choosing things that make us safer, not that make us feel better about punishing someone who did something bad. We have to. And so those are both very important to me. When I was United States Attorney, we revisited our diversion program, we went into it and we looked at the things that are making it work and were not making it work. And over the years, we dramatically increased the number of people who were in our diversion program, recognizing that we could take a chance on some people who previously we thought maybe we couldn't, and that the outcomes were better when we did that. There was, I’ve forgotten what the success rate exactly was, but it was in the 90s, right? The people who went to the diversion program, the number of them who successfully completed their terms and then went on to live their lives as normal citizens, is an example of why we need to be thinking deeply about what we are doing in the criminal justice system on the back end, which is reentry, I think, just as a practical, legal, maybe even moral responsibility.
We as a society have decided if you do a thing, you have to do this many years, right? And that's fine, and the judge says, you know, this is your sentence, and that's what we've agreed needs to happen. But for almost all of those sentences, there is an end date, and practically, morally, what that means is at that end date, that person has repaid the debt that we said they needed to pay to society. At that point, it is our job to put them where they were before, so they can come back into our society, because they've done it, right? You know, the books are zeroed. We are good. And so now what we all benefit from is people coming back with enough support so they can reenter society. They can find housing, they can find work, they can be productive, they can be members of our community. And so many folks coming out of lockup want just that, and so it's our job to reduce the barriers to that. Because, again, reentry is also prevention. The more we change their perception of a system that has done them harm, rightly or wrongly, the more that they can come to believe in our society and our government again. Our government, this democracy, it depends on people believing in it for it to work. If people stop believing in this mutual agreement that we have, it won't work. A great example of that is our criminal justice system and the people coming out of it. The people coming out of it do not believe the system is just, rightly or wrongly. They do not believe the system is just. If we can show them that it is, if we can show them that they can depend on the system to get them back on their feet, if we can show them that this community is invested in them, they will be invested in this community. At the end of the day, like I said before, the point is public safety. The point is not retribution, right? And so while retribution, while punishment, plays a part in our criminal justice system, the goal is always public safety. And so any tool that we can use to get us there, we should use.
KUNM: You know, it's very interesting hearing that coming from somebody who used to be a prosecutor. What was it that happened, or what was it about your career doing that, that shaped your views the way that you have them now?
UBALLEZ: It's a couple things. I was a crimes-against-children prosecutor, and for the vast majority of those cases, the physical abuse cases against children, you heard, you saw, the same household. It was the same household. It was mom's boyfriend who was watching the kids, some that were his, some that were not. Mom was at work, working one, two minimum-wage jobs. They were living in an apartment or a house that they couldn't afford or barely afford. They didn’t have health care. They were struggling with addiction, maybe, or mental health, maybe, or just their own childhood trauma. They were young. They were struggling, they were stressed, they were scared. And it turns out parenting on its own is really difficult, and so in so many of these cases, it was a parent overwhelmed by their situation. They weren't all bad people. They were people overcome by a situation that they could not manage. I'm not saying they're all angels, right? I convicted three people for killing children, and sent them to prison for life before the age of 30. But if the goal is public safety, right? If the goal is to create a community and a society that we all want to live in together, then if we can remove those stressors from a parent's life, if we can make parenting easier, right? Parenting is hard enough as it is, if we can just not lump all these other stressors on people as they're doing this already incredibly hard thing. If we can give our kids support, we can save lives, and that is
the goal.
KUNM: So speaking of making things easier for people, I know that expanding the trades is something that you've been looking into. You also want to revitalize downtown and help small businesses flourish. There's that whole aspect of your campaign. Do you mind touching on that a little bit and explaining what your stances are there?
UBALLEZ: Yeah. I mean, it's all part of the same ecosystem, right? As I was describing that household where all of our crimes against children cases come out of, that's a household that wasn't developed in the trades. That's a household that wasn't developed, you know, in support for their entrepreneurial ideas. That's a household that wasn't involved in the economic development and growth of our city, right? And so these things are core pieces to an anti-crime public safety program: to reduce violence on our streets, to reduce drug use that comes from stress, to reduce the property crimes that plague us, we have to invest in our city and our people. Part of that is expanding the number of people in trades. We haven't really developed and built in this city for a long time. To do so, we're going to lead a whole lot more people who can do that. That's HVAC, that's lineman, that's all that broadband. It's the whole new suite of technology-centered, innovative approaches to how we grow and build. We need all of these things, and we need all of these skill sets. And I think, at least my generation, I'm a millennial, we were told, ‘go to college.’ That was the hard drive for many of us when we were in high school. College isn't for everybody, and school isn't for everybody, and traditional learning — we all learned all of the things in high school. And we all know that none of us use, maybe, any of them. Some of us, some of them. But I haven't used biology in a practical sense since I took a test in it in high school.
And what that means is we can be training our kids towards their skills, and we should be, and we should be doing that in high school. We should be opening these opportunities for kids who maybe sitting down taking a math test isn't the thing that excites them or they're good at, but maybe taking a car apart is. And so building in these opportunities early, catching on to early skill sets for our kids, and, of course, building the skill sets across the city, because there are so many people too, as we're talking about reentry, coming out of lockdown, looking for a profession, right? They were professional drug dealers. Now they're back on the streets. They've learned their lesson. They've done 10 years. They never want to sell drugs again. Let's give them a profession so they don't have to. These are all well-paid, well-paying professions. These are all desperately needed in our city. These will all be employed heavily as we grow and build and expand in a smart way across the city. And so I think it's worth investing in the potential of the people here.
KUNM: You know, a lot of the stuff that you're talking about doing, it's going to require — because obviously the mayor doesn't have unlimited power, right? Like, in order to start…
UBALLEZ: (laughing) What? I was told, I was told,
KUNM: Right? ‘Nevermind, I’m not running anymore!”
UBALLEZ: (Continues laughing) I was told that the mayor could do whatever he wanted!
KUNM: So, for example, with these trades programs: getting them into high schools, you're going to have to work with APS, right? Obviously, Mayor Keller has had a bit of a rocky relationship with the city council, but that's a relationship that's necessary to get things done. What is your experience with, and what is your plan to make sure that you have quality relationships with those necessary partners, and how are you going to make sure they continue on into the future that way?
UBALLEZ: Relationships are the bedrock of everything. No leader leads alone. Not only do they have the people on their team that they supervise, but they have the people in the world that they have to work with. Luckily, in our constitutional system, whether it's federal, state or local, we have multiple branches, and so it's a mayor's responsibility to work with the legislative branch of the city, the city council, to get things done. The way I see it, when I get elected, you will not be electing my feelings to office. You will be electing my judgment. And so I don't have any room to let my feelings about whatever we disagreed about yesterday interfere with the work that we are doing today. I believe that very strongly. As U.S. Attorney, I was the chief federal law enforcement officer for the district, which meant not only did I lead my office of 200 people and lead the operations and investigations of the three letter agencies — FBI, DEA, ATF, Marshal Service — across the state, but I also dealt with on a daily basis sovereigns across the state, right? And sovereigns like the City of Albuquerque, but also sovereigns like Picuris Pueblo, or the Navajo Nation, or Doña Ana’s Sheriff's Office, then the law enforcement community. We had to work across jurisdictions, across borders, and it could never be about anyone's feelings, because the things that we were responding to were deadly. They were dangerous, they were prescient, they were urgent. We had to figure it out together, otherwise people would get hurt. And so for me, being able to work with other people that I have no authority over was critical to accomplishing the mission of keeping people safe
KUNM: With these programs, how are you going to be paying for them? Do you have any ideas as far as what you're going to be doing for the budget?
UBALLEZ: Yeah, I have a few. I mean, I think there's a lot of things we can do. I'll first point out the amount that our budget has expanded over the past 10 years or so: I think by a measure of about 50%. I want to say in 2017 it was somewhere around $900 million. And now, of course, I think the most recent budget being passed is around $1.4 or $1.5 billion. There is a lot of money in the city to do things with. There's a lot of money in personnel that I think could be reallocated in a better way. I think taking a strong, hard look at what we are spending money on within the city will free up some funds on its own. I think there's other ways to look at this too. I think we've also been trying to save money in areas where — I think the term is Penny Smart, Pound Foolish. I look at the Planning Department, and I look at the fact that there's a lack of… Say an inspector, maybe an electrical inspector, might put an entire construction crew on pause for a day or a week, or however long it takes that inspector to get out there. Now, of course, we're saving money by not having more inspectors, but we're costing millions of dollars for whoever's building that thing when they have to wait for someone to do it. And so I think the cost benefit of how we're looking at things is off. We need to make sure that what we're doing is city government, makes sure that the city prospers, because when the city prospers, that increases revenue for our city government and for the people here. There's also smarter decisions we could be making. Peeling off a lot of these calls for service on the police side from our cops, and giving them to people who are properly trained to respond to whatever the crisis is, whether it's mental health or whether it's addiction, is cheaper. Social service providers are cheaper. And also it frees up police to be doing police work that we all desperately want them to be doing too, and so sort of cost, benefit, and a trade-off there. And finally, I think there's a lot of ways in which we can work innovatively, both with the private sector and developers, and with the lands that we currently own and lease, to generate income, right? So, we could be looking at agreements with people who lease areas of the city for a percentage of profit from, say, alcohol sales. We could be looking at giving incentives to developers or RIBs in order to build housing, say, here in the city, but also when they do that, requiring that a percentage of that profit goes into a social housing fund in the city itself. We could be looking at what we do with that money, and our development money and our building money, because if we build social housing and we make it green, say we put a micro-grid underneath it, and we do rain catchment, and we do solar panels on the top, the EPA has to pay us for every watt that we produce as a city, as a municipality. And so not only are we powering that social housing and maybe the housing and places around it on the micro-grid, but we're also bringing in federal dollars, and we're billing the federal government for it. So there's a lot of different ways that we can be building smart and building revenue.
KUNM: You had a focus on your website that you said that you wanted to expand after school programs. Can you talk a little bit about that and where it came from?
UBALLEZ: I'm a parent. I have three kids. They're 8, 6 and 3, and at the base of it, I want this to be a city that they grow up in and choose to live in. I want them to choose Albuquerque. For that to happen, we need to build the city that our kids will choose. Part of that is supporting them when they are children, right? Part of that is creating a safe environment for them to grow up in. And what that means is a common sense approach to the things that our kids need. They don't need parks open during the days — they're in school. They don't need community centers open during the days — they're in school. You know? They don't need the bus routes running during the days — they're in school. And of course, there's other people who use these services, and we're going to keep them open during the day. But we, if we are truly worried about our juvenile population, because there's been a lot of talk about juvenile crime, then we got to think about the safe alternatives we are giving to them. If we are not giving them safe alternatives, then we got to be thinking about what we're doing with our money. As I said, preventing the crime before it happens is worth so much more than having to punish someone after it does. That means kids need somewhere to go after school. Parents also, by the way, need somewhere for our kids to go after school. And as they grow into teenagers, they need safe things to do into the night so that they don't end up finding something dangerous to do into the night. This is a city's responsibility, and its ability to do — to create these safe spaces for people to be in so they don't get into trouble.
KUNM: Mayor Keller, what's your opinion of the job he's done so far? Is there anything that he's been working on or spearheading that you really appreciate and like, or anything that you think needs some drastic changes?
UBALLEZ: I've worked with the mayor a lot. As the United States Attorney, we worked on numerous initiatives together. Obviously, public safety has been front of mind for so many people for so long that we've always had a good conversation around it. And of course, we've partnered with Albuquerque Police over the years, and I've worked with the brave men and women of the police departments pretty much my whole career. And so there's a lot that I have done with the city, with the Police Department over the years, and a lot that I respect, which is one of the reasons why when we began the Violence Intervention Program in Albuquerque Police in, I wanna say, 2019, 2020, I was one of the founding people involved. There were folk from the city, social service providers, folk from APD, and that was an approach grounded in science, grounded in research on proven approaches from across the nation, that was based on the theory that when you intervene to prevent crime, it's better than having to respond to it. And it had a model that was proven and vetted that we tried to stand up. Later, this program gets folded into what is now Albuquerque Community Safety, a program that I also believe in. If you look on my website, you'll see a whole section about it, because I believe, as I said, it's about the smart response to the issues that we're facing. There are certainly times we should be sending cops, but there are certainly a whole lot of times where we shouldn't be. And so Albuquerque Community Safety is meant and built to address that need, but it's not resourced sufficiently. Albuquerque Community Safety has been talked about as the third branch of public safety, and that's a laudable goal, and people around the nation are looking at us, but it's funded at $18 million a year, and Albuquerque police is funded at $275 (million per year) and so if we look at the need of the community which is addressing so many of these issues and crimes, bounded in homelessness and mental illness and addiction, then we know that we need to make a real investment in these services in order for us to see any dividends from them.
KUNM: How would you encapsulate who you are in just a few brief sentences?
UBALLEZ: At heart, at base, I'm a working class kid who's walked in many spaces that people like me never get to walk in. I was the first and only attorney in my family. When I was appointed to be United States Attorney, I was the youngest in the nation. And so with that, I carry the responsibility of being in places that people like me were never meant to walk. I bear a responsibility to give back for the opportunities that I've gotten, to build a better world for all of us, and to secure a future for all of our children.
KUNM: You lived outside of New Mexico for a little while. Right when you were outside of the state. In what ways did you find that New Mexico was still with you, or still carried with you in some ways?
UBALEZ: So I was actually born in Oakland, California. Yeah, I was raised. I was raised up in the Bay Area, and I inevitably found myself here in New Mexico when I fell in love, at 19, with the girl from Albuquerque who is now my wife. This has always been home base since then. It has been the place that we travel to and from for Balloon Fiesta or for Christmas. It has been the traditions that we bring wherever we go, whether it be frying sopapillas in our college dorm in LA, or flying out frozen green chile to New York. And so this place has always been near and dear to my heart. And I think that's why this campaign, this job of mayor, means so much to me, because I just believe so strongly in this state and its city, in its culture, its vibrance, its heart, its grit, its ability to just persevere and push through impossible odds. I think we've got it here. We just got to have leadership that believes in us and lets us do our thing.
KUNM: I agree, you know, and hopefully your Bay Area upbringing will help with some of the public transportation issues that we have because…
UBALLEZ: I was a BART kid. I grew up on BART. I didn't actually drive till I was 18. I took BART to school. I remember, public transit is a great equalizer, and people don't — I think we think about it, sort of, in reverse. You know, having a car is a tax. It's really expensive. Cars are not cheap to buy or to upkeep. They take and they burn our most precious resource, which is our time. So we lived in L.A., obviously, and spending hours on the road, what seemed totally normal then, but now I would never do it, because it is such a tax on my time. And the most valuable resource I have, that we have, is our time. And imagine asking someone to waste two hours of their day every day. It's incredible. We need to be making the city accessible to everybody. We need to make transit accessible, you know, the downtown accessible. We need to be making a community that takes care of each other by making sure nobody is bounded by having to buy a car and live very, very far away, but everyone gets to enjoy living in Albuquerque. I got my feelings about the Rail Runner, but I studied for the New Mexico bar on the Rail Runner on my way to and from work in Santa Fe when I worked for the DA’s office, right? And I think the Rail Runner is that example that cuts both ways. I appreciated it at that time. But imagine if we had true high speed rail, and you could get to Santa Fe in 20 minutes. Imagine if you could get to Las Cruces in an hour. This place would change fundamentally. And these are not — when you put it in the frame of how that would change our community and society – they are really small investments to get that done. And not only that, we have the technology; we can do this. These problems are all solved. And so, we just need to be doing the smart investments to make this place better for everybody.
