In the fifth installment of our series taking a look at each Albuquerque mayoral candidate, we have an interview from our public media compatriot, New Mexico PBS. Host of New Mexico in Focus, Nash Jones, spoke with Louie Sanchez, an Albuquerque City Councillor representing District 1 on Albuquerque’s Westside, who is running for the top office.
You can view the full interview on NMPBS’s website.
KNME: City councilor. Louis Sanchez, thanks so much for joining us.
LOUIE SANCHEZ: Oh, thank you for having me. Nash, I really appreciate being here.
KNME: Well, so you've been a city councilor for District One on Albuquerque's West Side since 2021, but now you're running for citywide office. I'd like you to give our viewers a chance to get to know you a little bit more, and I'm going to ask you about your resume, but I'd like to start with you personally. So what about your life experience prepares you to be the mayor of Albuquerque?
SANCHEZ: Well, one of the things that I've done early on in life is I was a small business owner. I'm a small business owner right now, but before, growing up in Albuquerque was an amazing, amazing experience. We had just a great time growing up in Albuquerque. Of course, I grew up on the West Side where I was born and raised. I've never left Albuquerque. I've always been here my whole life, and I've always contributed to Albuquerque, and I think being raised on the West Side was just an amazing experience. And I'm so glad that I was able to meet so many people, and we've still remained friends and — very, very close ties on the West Side, which has been, which has been really good. I ended up becoming an Albuquerque City police officer after being a truck driver and a Teamsters Union member, believe it or not.
KNME: Yeah. So let's go to your professional background. You mentioned you're a small business owner, you were a long time police officer, how does your resume and you can expand upon what it includes, reflect your values?
SANCHEZ: Well, quick story. When I was a brand new rookie police officer, my very first day on the job, I pulled over a DWI offender with my training officer, and during that experience, the individual was drunk, so we took him to jail. I did all the paperwork. Of course, it took me hours, and then right after we did the paperwork, a month later, I showed up in court, and I could not believe what happened to me. My integrity was tested immediately. I was 22 years old, and the court clerk in that courtroom told me to dismiss the case. And I said, ‘Why are we dismissing this case?’ And he says, ‘Because I'm telling you to. I'm the clerk in this courtroom, and I'm telling you that you need to dismiss this case.’ And I said, ‘Why? Why are we dismissing this case?’ And he says, ‘Because that's the way it works. If I tell you to dismiss a case, you do it.’ And I says, ‘Well, I just took my oath of office one month ago, and I'm not jeopardizing that. So no, I will not dismiss this case and we will go to trial.’ And he says, ‘If you don't dismiss this case, you will never win a case in this courtroom ever again, and you will have trouble at APD.’ And I just could not believe what I was hearing. So right then — as a 22-year-old — I had to make a decision right then and there of a lifetime and say, ‘No, I will not be compromised, and I will make sure that I do the right thing my whole career.’ And so at that point, we went through with the trial, and I lost the trial, but I knew I would, based on the way — on the circumstances and then — but I kept my integrity and I did the right thing. And I have several instances of maintaining my integrity and doing the right thing many, many years at APD, and (I) influenced a lot of people to make sure that they did the right thing during their careers.
NMPBS: Okay. And while you serve in the city's legislative branch, you're a city councilor and you've run a business, how would you respond to folks who have concerns about you running something as large and complex as the City of Albuquerque?
SANCHEZ: Well, I've run very large and complex situations already. So when I rose through the ranks at APD, I was in charge of the Foothills Substation. So I rose through the ranks. I became a detective, a sergeant, a lieutenant, and then I was put on as acting commander of the Foothills Substation. And so I did. I ran a multi-million dollar budget with numerous officers there and tied straight in. Also, I had direct experience at a high level, working in the city government under Mayor Marty Chavez, where I was actually the head of his security detail. And at that location, I was able to work and operate and assist the administration at a very high level. And so I saw every single inner working of the system. I knew how the directors worked. I saw how the mayor has to work and how the mayor had to operate. And I saw that for six years, and I was very, very involved in the administration to the point where where some of my decisions actually came through
NMPBS: Both of these instances are — they're kind of subsections of the larger city. I mean, you look at the Albuquerque Police Department, several hundred officers, right around 1,000. I mean, we're talking a major metropolitan city.
SANCHEZ: And now I work as a city councilor, and do my very, very best to make sure that our cities run smoothly and that there is integrity and accountability within that rank.
NMPBS: When Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said that there is a perception among city residents that there's a crime crisis in this city, driven by news reports primarily, you wrote that, quote ‘This isn't just a perception. It is our reality.’ However, crime rates are dropping according to both APD and FBI data. Are you saying you don't buy that?
SANCHEZ: I don't buy that. I don't buy that at all. And the reason why I don't buy that is because when we as police officers would be out there working the streets, we used to give it what we call the grandmother test. If your grandmother doesn't feel safe, then the perception of safety is not there. So right now, currently, as a business owner, I can walk outside of the streets and see 40 to 60 drug deals a day. I watch prostitution happening every day. I call the police almost every day, and nothing changes for me. And I talked to several other business owners that are up and down Central Avenue as well. And all you have to do is drive up and down Central and see exactly what I'm talking about. You can drive down San Mateo, Louisiana, anything that offshoot — any major street that offshoots Central, like Coors — and you will see a large amount of drug dealing and criminal activity on the streets.
NMPBS: Is this the case, though, of perception lagging behind the data?
SANCHEZ: Well, we also have another issue is people are not calling the police because they know that nothing's going to happen. That person they get that they get called on — and I've done it myself. I've called the police and the police have not shown up. I've called the police in reference to, in my experience as a police officer, (what) should have been an arrest or a citation, and it's not being done.
NMPBS: So are you saying that may skew the data? Are you saying the data is inaccurate?
SANCHEZ: The data is inaccurate because the amount of police presence is not what we need, and then we need to make sure that we're accurately reporting the data. And basically, they can manipulate any numbers that they feel they need to.
NMPBS: Are you saying the city has manipulated their crime data or falsified those numbers?
SANCHEZ: There's a very, very good chance that they have, based on the fact of what we're seeing out on the streets and still witnessing,
NMPBS: Do you have any evidence that they have falsified the crime data?
SANCHEZ: I do know for a fact that people are not calling the police to get — so if the people aren't calling the police to report the crime because, because the police aren't showing up…
NMPBS: That's an accusation that the numbers are not necessarily representative of the amount of crime that's actually happened. That's different than falsifying data.
SANCHEZ: Okay? Well, if you say that, then if what I'm saying is that you can't get accurate data if you're not making the accurate amount of contacts with the public,
NMPBS: Okay, I think I understand what you're saying. You were an APD officer from 1988 to 2014 retiring the year the department went under the Department of Justice's oversight with that consent decree for its unconstitutional use of excessive force. You spent a good chunk of your APD service in the Special Investigations Division, which was a hotbed for some of the worst violations uncovered by the DOJ investigation. Did you ever see policing that bothered you at that time?
SANCHEZ: Yes, and I did report it. There was a point in time within APD where I saw some activity that was not correct, and at that point, I was threatened by certain supervisors that I was to leave the Special Investigations Division, or that I would be forced out, and not forced out of special investigations office, but forced out of the city. At that point, I responded by going straight to the chief of police and exposing the contact that took place and the things that were going on. And at that point, there was an investigation done, and there was a big cleaning house, and that you can talk to people that were in SID at the time, and what happened, in reference to that, after it all happened, there was people who were forced to retire, people who were demoted, people who were literally fired. And at that point, other officers came to me and said, ‘Louie, I'm so glad that you did what you did, because you saved my career. You know, I was dabbling in where I shouldn't have been, and I told the truth in the investigations,’- and I just so glad that I didn't get any deeper in this thing.’
NMPBS: Did you ever encounter any of that retribution that you were fearful of?
SANCHEZ: I did. I did. But you know, I'm I don't want to talk about that, because I have had some issues and and they're concerning to me.
NMPBS: Are the supervisors that you reported to still at the department?
SANCHEZ: The supervisors I reported to? No. They're long gone. They've all retired since
NMPBS: DOJ oversight ended this year, after 11 years. And we are also seeing at APD a fallout of a decades-long DWI corruption and bribery scandal. To date, seven APD officers have pleaded guilty to federal charges in that case. What would you do differently from previous mayors, including Mayor Tim Keller, to instill a culture of accountability at ADP?
SANCHEZ: And that's the thing, you have to have a culture of accountability. When I was a police sergeant, that was my first chance of actually being involved in a situation where I supervised people, and one of the main things that I did was make sure that I held everybody accountable. There was no drama in my squads, and everybody was treated the same, and also expectations were out there. What needs to happen now is we need to bring that kind of a culture back, and we need to make sure that these people understand, these officers and city employees understand, that we work for the citizens of Albuquerque.
NMPBS: How do you do that?
SANCHEZ: You basically instill the culture. I have a business, a small business right now, and having my small business, my employees, I can be here right now because I know that my employees are going to be handling my business just as I would, because I've instilled that culture. I've only if you can instill the right and correct culture — and that's a culture of having a conscience and doing the right things each and every day — then you can actually grow your department, you can grow your business, and you can grow your client base. And those are the kinds of things that we need to do at the city every day. Currently, right now, we have double standards on the police department. You mentioned the chief's accident. Anybody that watches that video knows that something is wrong with that situation.
NMPBS: I don't believe I did mention the chief's accident, but you have said that you would replace police chief Harold Medina.
SANCHEZ: Yes.
NMPBS: And so what would that look like? Who would you want to replace him?
SANCHEZ: Well, what I would do is I would replace them with a professional interim chief, who I already have an idea who I'm going to (have) do (it). Most of my cabinet, right now, is already built. I can't say the names all the folks, because it could — you know, if they're working other places, it could jeopardize their jobs as well. But what we're looking at is we're looking at bringing back institutional knowledge, which has been basically wiped out by political appointees in the city of Albuquerque administration currently,
NMPBS: Okay so somebody who has that institutional knowledge, who's been at the city, maybe even at the police department before?
SANCHEZ: That's correct,
NMPBS: Okay with APD, trust amongst the community in APD — damaged by some of these scandals that I've mentioned and the excessive use of force that the DOJ found. What would you say to a voter who has trust issues with you because of your long time association with the police department?
SANCHEZ: Well, every single time that I went to work, there was — working for the public. I was under a microscope, and most everybody is and it's hard, and you live in a glass bubble. You live in a glass bubble in your home, in your neighborhood. If you live in an apartment, everybody knows who you are. You take a police car home. So you live in that glass bubble each and every day. In order to hide that, it's got to take a huge amount of skill to hide something like that. My life's pretty much an open book. My family knows that, and it all starts with how you treat your family and your value system. And my value system has always been that of family and doing what's right for the community, and always working for the community. Right now, currently, as a business owner, I actually give back to the community every year in terms of scholarships for high school seniors who are moving on to college. I'm able to give back, you know, some of the things that happened in my career — I remember driving down the road one day and we saw an elderly man who actually tipped his lawn mower and himself over the curb, and the lawn mower was running, and I pulled up as a police officer, and I sat him on his front porch, and I cut his grass 10 more times until he didn't answer the door. So those are the kinds of things that good officers, good city employees do, and those are the value systems that we need to bring back to the community. Right now, we have all the institutional knowledge leaving and retiring, and some of them are ready to come back because they have been pushed into a closet and their 20, 30 years of institutional knowledge is not being recognized, and our number one function as city government is to make sure that the community is safe and that all city services are functioning properly and serving the community.
NMPBS: Now, you are looking to unseat two-term, going for three terms, Mayor Tim Keller. The city council and the mayor, I don't think it's any secret, have had a fairly contentious relationship since its balance shifted to the right the year that you were elected in 2021. You replaced a more progressive councilor in Lan Sena that year. You have called Keller's administration a failure. How so?
SANCHEZ: Well, if you look at the fact that we have the crime that we're seeing on the streets, I mean, every single person out here can literally drive down Central Avenue, drive down Coors, drive down Fourth Street, drive down Louisiana, drive down San Mateo, and they'll see the amount of drug dealing and encampments that are out there. Saturday, I went to an event downtown, and when I was walking through the parking structure at City Hall, I had to be careful not to step on human feces. Those kinds of things never happened in the past. They never happened n any other administration, except for this administration, when you have to be careful of where you step, and I saw needles there as well. So this drug dealing that we're seeing on the street is rampant, rampant. And if you see 40 drug deals in front of your business every single day, then something is definitely failing, and that is our city government and the current leadership councilor.
How will you be more effective? We need to instill the culture of doing the right thing and serving the public at City Hall, we need to instill a culture that we are going to back the police officers, and we need to trust and we need to gain that trust to the community back. The next thing we need to do is we need to have the officers start building the police department and enforce the laws at the lower levels. Currently, we're not seeing laws enforced like criminal trespass, we're not seeing drug trafficking. We're not seeing drug possession enforced. We're not seeing even jaywalking enforced. We have the highest number of fatalities, pedestrian fatalities in the nation, and it's because we are not enforcing the laws at the lower levels. Once we enforce the laws at the lower levels, then we get these people who actually are separated from their drug dealer. They're separated from the threat of not using drugs or not selling drugs from the cartel. And make no mistake, it's not the normal cartels that we used to see here. We're dealing with cartels from other countries, from Venezuela and other countries right here in Albuquerque who have a stronghold on the drug dealing that is going on right here. I mean, we've heard that in this fentanyl bust in the history of the United States happened right here in Albuquerque, right here in Albuquerque. So we need to address the laws at the lower level, get the people separated from the threat of use of drugs, and then at that point, then, just then, maybe we can start getting some people to raise their hand and say, ‘We need help.’ At that point, we get those directed services so that they are held accountable to make sure they complete their task. And we might have to do that two or three times, but in essence, we need to do something to make sure that our public and our citizens and our businesses are safe.
NMPBS: If your administration ramped up arrests, any concern about the jail filling up again?
SANCHEZ: The jail filling up is what the jail is for. The jail's for if somebody's committing a crime, then that's where you utilize the jail. I’m not worried about the jail filling up. I'm worried about the safety of the citizens of Albuquerque, the safety of the small businesses, the fact that we are .01% economic development (Note: According to a recent report, Albuquerque’s economic development was recently called amongst the best in the nation, ranking ninth overall.). We have no business growth. If we didn't have the base in Albuquerque, we'd be a dead city right now.
NMPBS: Yeah. As we're speaking about crime, and the perception of crime being central for voters this cycle — crime doesn't happen in a vacuum. You mentioned economic development. There can be a sense that you can find out in Albuquerque a lack of opportunity, a lack of even hope. What would you do to build the city's economy to create more of those opportunities for people?
SANCHEZ: Well, one of the things that we really need to do is we need to get a world class economic development director — who I feel that I may have ready to rock and roll — somebody that can come in and can bring billion dollar business back to Albuquerque, so we can get people working. And then what I want to do is I want to use our bonding status, our credit rating as a city, to incentivize small businesses opening up. I think if we go out there and somebody wants to open up a small business, they need some help. We'll have a small business office that's going to help them obtain some financial help and help subsidize it, and then also maybe have a little bit of clawbacks to make sure that they're a business that's going to succeed. And once this business does succeed, they'll be paying us back. And then at that point, they will have a free and clear business, and they will have had help on their startup. Also, if somebody wants to open up another location, they could use the same situation.
NMPBS: I don't suppose you want to tell us who that person is, your economic development director.
SANCHEZ: I can't.
NMPBS: The number of unhoused people that we're aware of, at least, has doubled over the last few years in Albuquerque, and the city remains far short of the number of housing units it needs to meet demand. How would your approach to homelessness and housing differ from the Keller administration?
SANCHEZ: Well, I mean, we've been doing the best to try to help the situation at City Council. We just passed an $80 million funding so that we can have more affordable housing in Albuquerque. And they gave us a list of all the direct AMI that we'll be helping. And it's also conventional. So it goes across the board. What we need to do in Albuquerque is we need to start…
NMPBS: AMI, median income, area median income.
SANCHEZ: Yeah. So once we deal with that, we continue building. When we build in Albuquerque, we will create jobs. When we build we'll create competition. Competition creates lower price. So if we start working organically to fulfill these obligations, then we're going to be in the right place.
NMPBS: And how does that differ from what Keller is pursuing?
SANCHEZ: Well, right now, we're just spending money from government. How is that sustainable? You know, one of these days, you know, there's going to be people that you know, everybody that's working, so we need to make sure that we're helping everybody, and that's all factions of people, not just individuals who who are taking money from the government, but we have to have those individuals making their positions better in life as well. So we need to be training them, teaching them so that, so that individuals can continue to make their position a little bit better and stop depending so much on on the help from the government.
NMPBS: So housing is one piece of what Albuquerque is seeing in terms of how many people are experiencing homelessness in this city. How else might you address that issue?
SANCHEZ: Well, we also tried to put through a job Connect. This is another crazy situation. There was two things that are right on my head right now. One of them is a bill to help, a resolution that we wanted to submit to help take guns out of the hands of teens in school. And the mayor said, ‘Hey, we're already doing that.’ And I'm like, ‘No, you're not.’ And they said, ‘Yes, we are.’ So they decided they wouldn't even look at my program. Then we also had another program that pretty much didn't get any activity at all. It was called the job Connect program that me and Renee grout sponsored. And what the job Connect program was was going to get the people that had directed services, who needed to get out there and find a job, and individuals who just wanted to come in and get a job. We would start out at a very basic $100 per day if you want to work. Here's some very, very basic tasks that you can do that will help better our city, clean it up and do some other things, and they would get $100. The next thing we would do is maybe direct them to a temporary service. That temporary service, once they've gained responsibility, and we're able to hold a decent amount of time with that temporary service, then maybe we could push them right into where we're lacking at the city government. So we were just looking at the first step, the hardest step, $100 a day. Second step was the temp agency or temporary assignment with the city and then hopefully full time and helping people again gain status and move up and leave that drug dealing and drug issue and addiction behind.
NMPBS: You mentioned earlier the encampments across the city. You boast on your campaign website that you took the lead on shutting down the Coronado Park encampment back in 2022 several people displaced by that effort, which included flooding the park, have sued the city, alleging constitutional rights violations, including cruel and unusual punishment, unlawful seizure of their property. Do you stand behind that move?
SANCHEZ: What I was seeing over there is — I was seeing studies they had done that you can take a shovel full of dirt and find urine and feces a foot down in that place. That means these people were living in an area that was totally inhumane. And the lawsuits, I mean, all you got to do is just show the individuals — how inhumane the living conditions were. There was disease spreading. There was — I don't know, numerous homicides there. There was even — get this. This is what I saw. That was crazy. When I first started going and checking that out, I would take walks over to that location and what I found out is they had two outhouses out there, right next to the fire department, and there was two people standing in front of that outhouse, and they were extorting the rest of the people from using the bathroom. They had to pay a fee to get into the bathroom
NMPBS: I believe it was two alleged homicides. But what about the tactic for shutting down the park?
SANCHEZ: The park was in an inhumane atmosphere.
NMPBS: But was that the right way to move the residents of the park?
SANCHEZ: What we needed to do was shut the park down because it was inhumane. It was inhumane the things that were going on down there, the drug dealing, the violence. There was even an individual who called himself the Mayor of Coronado Park, who actually had a hierarchy and was committing violence down the hierarchy so that people would stay in line. That is that very, very bad situation.
NMPBS: if part of the issue is moving folks who don't have anywhere else, where are they supposed to go?
SANCHEZ: The issue was safety. The issue was security. The issue was they were living in an inhumane environment, and so what the city has offered and offered over and over and over, and the sheriff just said it this week. He said that he's been out there talking to the folks on the street, and only 2% accept help. 2% of the amount of people that are out on the streets right now are accepting any type of help.
NMPBS: Why is that? And what can we do to change that?
SANCHEZ: Because they're they're stuck in they're stuck in their they're stuck in their in their threats. Most people need to realize that when drug dealing and drug sales are happening, there's a threat, a threat of their lives, by the cartel, by the individual who's selling the drugs and dealing the drugs. Most people don't realize that most of the individual people who die of overdoses are given a hot shot, and then that's just deemed away as just an overdose. But they are set up to set an example so that the other people can continue threatening the people who are using drugs, the people who are selling drugs. And that's the reality, is that we have a situation out there that is dealing with a crime element, and that's what's hurting and keeping us from moving forward on these homeless things we have to deal with getting rid of that drug threat. And that drug threat is what's keeping these people addicted. And the sheriff proved it again, because only 2% are looking for help.
NMPBS: Okay, moving on to immigration — Albuquerque has an immigrant friendly resolution that prevents the use of city resources to enforce federal immigration law. Mayor Keller reaffirmed and expanded that resolution with an executive order recently allowing Albuquerque police to confirm that it is in fact ICE (Immigrations and Customs enforcement) that is operating in a particular area upon request from the public. You have said that you're against so-called sanctuary cities…
SANCHEZ: What sanctuary cities do is they protect people who break the law, the criminals who are in our society. I mean, if you look at the definition of sanctuary city,
that's exactly what it says.
NMPBS: Are you saying Albuquerque is or is not a sanctuary city?
SANCHEZ: Albuquerque, by ordinance, is not a sanctuary city. They are not a sanctuary city at all, but by what's gone on with the rhetoric that we've seen now and then, the stepped-up order that Keller has put on, the federal government has stated, ‘you're a sanctuary city, by what we're seeing.’ And that is not the truth. Hess Yntema, a Republican, put this sanctuary city policy in place — I mean, not sanctuary city. Correction: put the immigrant friendly city in policy. And one of the things just the other day, I could bring up my phone, and there was a news article that said 10 immigrants were arrested in a situation just recently. And it says immigrants were arrested, (but) that news article failed to say whether they were illegal or legal immigrants. And so that's where we get some confusion — is we need to make sure that we understand that Albuquerque does not and is not a sanctuary for criminals,
NMPBS: But the US Department of Justice, as you mentioned, did list Albuquerque as one of their so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, and have threatened to bring litigation to eradicate these kinds of policies across the country. What would you do as mayor if the Trump administration, if Attorney General Pam Bondi, were to pursue litigation, were to pursue withholding funds from the city?
SANCHEZ: With withholding funds from the city, if I'm mayor, I'm going to make sure that I speak to our federal partners to find out exactly what's going on. We need to figure out what is making us from what they believe a sanctuary city. I think it's the mayor. 100% the mayor is the one that is instigating these things. When I hear the mayor talk — the mayor sounds like he's running against the President of the United States. You know, I don't agree on every single thing that the President does, but I am running for the citizens of Albuquerque, the safety and security of the citizens of Albuquerque. So what I will do is I will literally talk to the federal government, ask them and talk to them and see what's going on, because we can't afford to lose funding, and especially all the critical areas that they're talking about, because Albuquerque is a city that thrives on its diversity all day long, all day long. So what we need to do is we need to make sure to find out what is causing us to be in this sanctuary city status. And as mayor, I will make sure that I work with the government, to see what's going on and see what's happening, so that I can understand why we are placed on that list. Because we should not be placed on the list to lose funding.
NMPBS: If you did talk to the federal government and they they took issue with the existing policy, the existing resolution in Albuquerque, would you be open to changing it?
SANCHEZ: The existing resolution right now gives total control to — if you read it — total control to the mayor, or the sitting city council if we need to. We already know that the mayor can do what he wants, and the mayor has the most power. He has more power than every city council.
NMPBS: Well, if you were mayor, what would you want?
SANCHEZ: So if I was mayor, I would make sure that we are doing the right things for the citizens of Albuquerque. I would make sure that the crime and the safety is at the utmost. If there's individuals who are needing some expedited services to work on getting citizenship, and they are already working with, or need to work with our consulate and the federal government to become citizens, then we're going to try to do everything we Can.
NMPBS: But I wanna be clear for voters who support the immigrant friendly resolution and for those who would like to see it changed or abolished. Are you open to changing it?
SANCHEZ: I am opening, open to really looking at it and analyzing it. Because right now, the way it sets it's interpretation — and right now there's a line in there that says ‘otherwise required by law.’ So if the law requires it, then we need to do it. And there's a line on there, a stipulation line that states that after every whereas clause, and you need to read that so that way you can see that that's what makes it we can enforce the laws and we can do what needs to be done.
NMPBS: You gave qualifying for public financing a go, and like all of your fellow candidates, except for incumbent Mayor Tim Keller, you didn't hit the mark. What happened there?
SANCHEZ: Well, basically it's a system that each and every one of us that didn't make it has a massive mountain to climb. It's really easy for an incumbent, because all he has to do is say as a condition of your employment here, go out and get me 10 names and get me and get me and get me 10 signatures and 10 five dollar bills.
NMPBS: Well, non-incumbents have qualified before.
SANCHEZ: Well, it depends on the situation this year. And every year that there's an election, you have a different dynamic within the public. And right now within the public, nobody, I mean, nobody carries a $5 bill. And most of the seniors right now that are out there don't have they have their they have a tough time with technology, and can't just get into their phones and type it
in there.
NMPBS: And to clarify about the $5 bill reference, that that's what you need to qualify. You need 1% of the city to give you $5 donation.
SANCHEZ: That's correct. Yeah.
NMPBS: And so would you like to see that system change?
SANCHEZ: That system definitely needs to be changed, because right now, it's specifically 100% 100% favors the incumbent.
NMPBS: In a statement, Keller said that, quote, ‘complaining that public financing doesn't work is like blaming the ref because you can't hit your free throws. It's not the system's fault that you're falling short. The real issue is a lack of grassroots support, campaign credibility and the organizational strength to lead.’ Your response to that?
SANCHEZ: Right now we have a city clerk who is 100% appointed by the mayor. That means the city clerk does the mayor's bidding. So all these rules and all these regulations were 100% put in, put in force by the city clerk, who is actually
NMPBS: So are you saying there’s some kind of malfeasance going on there.
SANCHEZ: So what I'm saying is that the city clerk needs to be an elected position instead of an appointed position from the mayor's office.
NMPBS: Are we talking about the perception of unfairness because they're appointed by the mayor, or are you saying there's something wrong going on?
SANCHEZ: It's obvious. If you're appointed to the mayor's — if you're an appointee of the mayor, you do what the mayor says, or you're fired. That's the bottom line. So of course, 100% it's a bad situation for the mayor to appoint the city clerk who is in charge of municipal elections 100%.
NMPBS: Are you saying that Keller told the city clerk to fudge the numbers.
SANCHEZ: I am saying that the city clerk should be an elected position, not an appointed position.
NMPBS: So it sounds like a perception thing, rather than the reality of — you're accusing…
SANCHEZ: We don't know what goes on behind closed doors.
NMPBS: Okay. While the city's campaign finance system shows that you have raised the most of any privately — you switched from public when you didn't qualify to privately financing your campaign — you were shown to have raised the most money of any privately financed candidate. However, a good two-thirds of that is your own money. You loaned your campaign $150,000 in June. City Desk ABQ has raised some questions about what assets back that loan, finding that you didn't report them in your financial disclosures. So to just clear up any transparency questions for the voters, how were you able to make such a substantial loan to your campaign?
SANCHEZ: So I actually have a home equity line of credit. I was looking to buy a house and make an investment, and instead, I decided to invest in Albuquerque, just like any business owner would do, just like any large corporation would do. I believe in Albuquerque. Albuquerque has been my home forever, and I'm not leaving Albuquerque, and I'm not going to click my heels and be gone anytime soon. This is where I've been fighting to make sure that Albuquerque is a better place for each and every one of us. So I have invested my own resources into Albuquerque, and I want Albuquerque to be a thriving city. I take a pay cut when I become a mayor, more than likely, and what that means is that we need to do what we need to do to invest in Albuquerque, to make Albuquerque a more economic friendly place, a better place for small businesses, a safer place for our family and our children to grow up in, and to make sure that we are moving forward as a city instead of moving backwards. And I feel like we're moving backwards. Right now, we have the 100th anniversary of the mother road route — Route 66 — going to start next year, and if anybody wants to drive up and down the street, route 66? We have the longest stretch in the United States. And if you drive up and down that historical road, it is in bad shape. There's hundreds of boarded up businesses, there's homeless and trash all up and down the street. There's rapid drug dealing everywhere, and for us to be in that position is just unacceptable, unacceptable. And Mayor Keller has had eight years to fix this situation, and what is he going to do in four more years that he hasn't done in eight? And me, as being a city councilor, I can go on and on over all the list of projects that he started and did and did press releases on that haven't even come to fruition. I mean, we have $300 million spent on a Gateway Center that is not functional. He says 1000 people are there. You walk in there, and what you're going to see is you're going to see a lavish, unbelievable place that is nicer than a custom house. It's been way over built, way over customized. And it's just amazing that that place isn't just full of people.
And the reason why it isn't full of people is because last year, Mayor Keller received a prediction report — a prediction report from his risk manager, and his risk manager sent an email. I never saw the email, but I know it existed, and it had to have existed. Because that person was fired. That person stated that there is no way that Albuquerque could handle that liability on their own. Having that place to full status, the liability will just submerge the city, and I'm so concerned about that.
NMPBS: What will you do about gateway if elected?
SANCHEZ: Well, if Gateway is still there, then Gateway needs to be really looked at. Every single asset, every single thing needs to be audited to see what's going on. And that's another thing. When you talk about Gateway, there is a lot of programs that are out there that are very, very trendy, and I say ‘trendy’ because they're not vetted. We have contracts who come into the city to do service providing. And I hear on the background, ‘oh, I have a non-profit with Mayor Keller, and Mayor Keller just bought me a Corvette.’ That's unacceptable. We shouldn't hear that. What we should be hearing. And another thing we hear is we hear the service providers who are very, very, very adamant about doing their service correctly, submit all of their audit reports, do everything they're supposed to do, and get everything done on time and in right fashion, and then they actually invite us in to see the progress that they're doing. And we have other service providers who do none of that. There's no audits. They're built into the contract. But there's nobody doing the audits, so we don't know exactly what's going on and how our money is being serviced.
NMPBS: as a candidate, have you tried to chase down some of those allegations?
SANCHEZ: I've been trying. I've been trying. And when I try to chase down those allegations, you run into roadblocks when you're asking the city administration.
NMPBS: Any final thoughts for Albuquerque voters?
SANCHEZ: I just want Albuquerque voters to understand that I want to make sure that I work well with all the city councilors. Right now, they're my colleagues. I have no problem walking from the ninth floor now. No problem being on the ninth floor, but never have I seen Mayor Keller walk into our offices on the ninth floor, shake our hands and ask us how we can make Albuquerque a better place. The reason why you have a $1.5 billion budget, and then he had City Council squabbling over $15 million or 1% so. What that showed me is the mayor realizes that he has a ton of power, 99% power over the city, while nine city councilors have 1%. And it's just really, really sad that the mayor can't just reach out and talk to us and work with us and see if his ideas are going to be beneficial to the community. It's so important that when I'm mayor, that I will be working with every single city councilor to make sure that we are doing the right things for the citizens of Albuquerque. And currently, I'm the one city councilor who doesn't — and I don't know there might be a couple others — but I know for a fact that I have a very, very difficult time when I'm sitting on the dais and amendments or other resolutions come across my desk and they're handed to me while I'm sitting at the dais, and the public has not had a chance to see it. That is very disturbing to me. I think it's so important that every single person in the city of Albuquerque has some sort of voice so that we can make the best decisions possible. And that's what I'll bring to Albuquerque: a mayor who is going to work for win/win solutions with every single dynamic that we have in Albuquerque, and make sure that we're doing the right things for a safe Albuquerque — an economic, growing Albuquerque, a small business Albuquerque and making sure that our grandmothers are safe, because that will show that Albuquerque is doing the right things.
NMPBS: Louie Sanchez, thank you.
SANCHEZ: Appreciate it.
