Spread of vote-buying rumors on Internet is shameful

Posted 3/05/2008 04:51:00 PM

For days, rumors have been spreading across the Internet about an alleged vote-buying scheme at the recent Bernalillo County GOP convention. I’ve been asked repeatedly why I haven’t written about the allegations.

The answer: I haven’t found a story worth writing about.

Until now. The rumors – and, at least at this point, that’s all they are – that the campaigns of Heather Wilson and Darren White paid people to attend the convention and vote for their delegates, and that doing so is a felony violation of the state election code, have gained traction to the point that they are appearing on national liberal blogs and have become the subject of a news release sent out today by the Democratic Party of New Mexico.

Democrats hate when baseless allegations circulate on conservative talk radio to the point that they get picked up by the mainstream media. Bloggers – most of them openly liberal – and the state Democratic Party are now doing the same thing, and that shameful action is, in my view, the story.

So here’s the allegation, and then I’m going to tell you, in detail, why I haven’t written about it, and why I believe the actions of those who have are disgraceful.

Former governor alleges vote-buying

The rumors started gaining traction when a reporter for KKOB radio in Albuquerque, Laura MacCallum, aired the allegations on the radio. In a conversation with me, she cited former Gov. Dave Cargo as a source. When the Wilson campaign complained that it hadn’t been given an opportunity to comment, and argued that there was no vote-buying by the Wilson campaign, the station’s news director pulled the story.

So MacCallum quit.

Since then, an Albuquerque journalist who hosts two TV shows, Dennis Domrzalski, published a story on his blog about the allegations citing MacCallum, Cargo and state Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones as sources. Arnold-Jones was quoted in the story as backing up Cargo’s assertion that people said they were being paid.

That caused the story to spread across the New Mexico liberal blogosphere and into the national liberal blogosphere. Today one national blog ran the headline “Rep. Heather Wilson Accused of Felony Vote-Buying in New Mexico; Reporter Quits After News Director Scrubs Story.”

That prompted the state Democratic Party to strike.

“Once again, Heather Wilson is caught in an ethically compromising situation in which she faces allegations of manipulating the system to come out ahead in an election,” Democratic Party Chairman Brian Colón said today in a news release. “This time, she refuses to directly answer the charge that she bought delegate votes, and her silence on such a serious charge is incriminating.”

A non-story

The spread of these rumors, Colón’s inaccurate claim that Wilson has refused to answer the charges and numerous e-mails asking me why I wasn’t covering this issue prompted me to write this article.

My investigation began a week ago, after MacCallum first contacted me. I interviewed Cargo, who told me there was illegal vote-buying at the convention. During the interview, he contradicted statements Domrzalski and MacCallum quoted him as making and implicated a third candidate in the alleged illegal activity. I won’t repeat the contradictions here or name the third candidate, because I don’t want to spread rumors any more than they have already travelled.

I also spoke with Arnold-Jones, who told me the Domrzalski story doesn’t quote her accurately. She said she is concerned that vote-buying might have happened but she doesn’t know whether it did and isn’t sure whether that would be illegal even if it happened.

I spoke with the Wilson campaign, which flatly denied that it had paid anyone to attend the convention and vote for delegates who support the congresswoman. That, to my knowledge, is the second time Wilson has answered the charges. The first was when the campaign spoke with KKOB’s news director.

Wilson campaign spokeswoman Whitney Cheshire told me the campaign did pay the $30 entrance fee into the convention for five people “for whom paying party fees was a hardship. That is traditionally done and is allowed under the rules.”

I spoke with a source close to the White campaign, who also denied the allegations. I asked Cargo and MacCallum for names of people who said they were paid to attend. They provided none.

I have twice asked the attorney general whether there is an investigation. Last week, I was told there was none. This morning, in response to a second inquiry, a spokesman said the AG’s policy is “to examine almost any complaint that comes into our office. As a matter of course, such complaints are analyzed by appropriate personnel to determine if there is reason for the office to proceed further.” The AG’s spokesman also said the attorney general had personally spoken with White’s opponent in the First Congressional District primary, Joe Carraro.

That isn’t a very strong statement, and seems to imply that the AG’s office is checking or has checked into whether there’s any reason for it to investigate these allegations.

I asked the state Republican Party whether Cargo or anyone else had filed a complaint with the party about vote-buying. None have.

I spoke with law-enforcement sources who told me that, even if the allegations were true, they don’t believe the law was violated. The statute that prohibits vote buying applies to actual votes at the polls, the sources said, not votes on sending delegates to a state party convention. The political parties’ delegate-selection processes are governed by their own rules, not state law. That’s why the state didn’t have grounds to investigate problems with the Feb. 5 Democratic Party presidential caucus.

So I had a former governor making allegations that contradicted what he had been quoted as saying elsewhere, and he hadn’t filed formal complaint and didn’t provide the names of anyone who he believed was paid to be at the convention. This is also a guy who is admittedly upset that he didn’t get selected as a delegate at the convention.

That’s not enough for a story.

This is why blogging doesn’t get any respect

Some of the liberal bloggers who have written about this have referred to Domrzalski as a reputable, 27-year journalist in spreading his article across the Internet. But his blog includes a posting headlined “What Naked Men Shouldn’t do in the Locker Room” and two online polls that ask, “Should naked men blow dry their crotches in health club locker rooms?” and “Would you refuse to fondle an implanted female breast?”

This is not a reputable journalistic site.

As for MacCallum: I give her credit for going after a story she believed to be true and following her heart, at the expense of her job, when she felt her boss was doing something unethical. But she has made assumptions in her reporting that she should not. An example: When I asked her how she knew the vote-buying statutes would apply to this situation, she replied by writing in an e-mail, “If they didn’t apply, why would the SOS (Secretary of State) spend any time investigating it?”

That’s not an assumption that, as a trained journalist, I’m willing to make.

I won’t say there’s no story here. I will say that a journalist’s job is to investigate rumors and allegations and determine what’s true and what is not. For now, this one remains solidly in the rumor category.

This whole situation is an example of why the blogosphere doesn’t get any respect. As a journalist who is working hard to try to bring some integrity to the blogosphere, it makes me furious. Whatever their motives, those who have spread this rumor as though it’s fact should be ashamed.

Good journalism is about facts, not assumptions. It’s about asking hard questions, verifying claims and understanding all angles of a story.

By the way, if you’re wondering why I haven’t linked to any of the blog postings in question or the Democratic Party’s news release, it’s because I won’t spread these rumors any further unless I find facts worth reporting.

A prior version of this posting incorrectly stated that Domrzalski is a reporter for KOB-TV in Albuquerque. He isn’t. He’s co-host of the Eye on New Mexico talk show on KOB-TV.