New Mexico Attorney General Gary King has been lax on investigating corruption at the New Mexico Secretary of State’s office. This is according to Rudy Martin, attorney for New Mexico Secretary of State whisteblower Manny Vildasol who has gone public with 190 pages of documentation showing SOS employees campaigning on state time and also political favoritism in contracts and etc.

Mr. Martin is quoted in a news article in the Rio Grande Sun newspaper saying the following: (http://www.riograndesun.com/articles/2010/09/02/news/doc4c7e903ddbd07443807233.txt(

“Besides accusations against Herrera, Martin has also accused state Attorney General Gary King of neglecting to properly investigate allegations against Herrera, including those made by Salazar more than six months ago. Both King and Herrera are Democrats, and both are up for re-election this year. Martin said Salazar was interviewed after he resigned by attorneys at the Attorney General’s Office, but nothing had been communicated to Salazar since about the investigation. He did say Flores was contacted by King’s office about the allegations, but not until Monday. King confirmed Monday his office has indeed opened an investigation into Salazar’s claims about wrongdoing in the Secretary of State’s office. But King was quick to emphasize that just because an investigation has begun does not mean Herrera has done anything illegal. Instead, he said the investigation will proceed as normal, and there will be no time line imposed because of the November general election in which both King and Herrera are seeking re-election. “If voters think I’m not pursuing this aggressively enough, they can vote for my opponent,” King said. “That’s how our system works.” Rank-and-file lawyers and investigators in the Attorney General’s office often aren’t replaced with a change in administration, so the investigators working on the Herrera case won’t be influenced by politics, according to King. Even if investigators hand over to King what they say is a complete case file, it’s not uncommon for King or other attorneys working on the case to raise further questions that require further investigation, King said.

King’s poor record speaks for itself. There has been no progress on now exposed Richardson administration corruption even though other states, like New York, and the federal government are moving forward with prosecutions. There has been no progress on corruption with the state investment council. There has been no progress…period.

Gary King…sees nothing, hears nothing.

Finally, Gary King was recently caught on video defending giving New Mexico drivers licenses to illegal aliens. Take a look:

Gary King…wrong on the issues and wrong for New Mexico.

New Mexico Attorney General Gary King favors illegal aliens in New Mexico having official New Mexico drivers licenses.

On a June 24th radio interview with Bob Clark at 770 KKOB AM, Gary King stated that New Mexico’s drivers license law is “one that we use to make sure that everybody who is on the road has some basic competency to be on the road”. Gary King went on to state that the following, “If we don’t encourage people to go through those exams and get that competency to be on the road than maybe we are just forcing people to drive without us ever seeing if they can drive or not and that might cause fatal accidents on the road”.

It appears that Gary King is not worried that New Mexico, due our allowing illegal aliens to have drivers licenses, will soon be in violation of the federal REAL ID Act which will make it where New Mexico drivers licenses will not be considered a valid form of identification anywhere else in the United States.

Also, Gary King fails to see that by giving illegal aliens drivers licenses New Mexico has made itself a haven for illegal aliens and border crime as well.

There is also the issue of how many of these illegal aliens with New Mexico drivers licenses are registered to vote illegally in New Mexico. This is an issue of which Gary King has been very, very silent on. Interesting.

Gary King…too left-wing for New Mexico.

New Mexico Attorney General Gary King supports ‘pay-to-sue’. What is ‘pay-to-sue’? Pay-to-sue is the practice of giving no-bid contracts to sue on behalf of a state to certain trial lawyers who wrote big checks for campaign contributions. It’s a pay-to-play practice.

According to an April 16, 2009 Wall Street Journal article ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123984994639523745.html) Governor Ed Rendell, D-PA, was involved in a pay-to play scheme with Houston trial lawyer F. Kenneth Bailey. Mr. Bailey received no-bid, contingency-fee contracts to sue private companies on behalf of the state of Pennsylvania. Mr. Bailey used Governor Rendell because the Attorney General of Pennsylvania rebuffed Mr. Bailey. Mr. Bailey was a major campaign contributor to Governor Rendell’s campaign.

BUT, there’s more….

The Wall Street Journal article also found that Mr. Bailey was running a nationwide ’pay-to-sue’ operation involving several Democrat state attorney generals. The article cited campaign records that showed that Mr. Bailey or his law firm donated large contributions to several Democrat state attorney generals. They are as follows:

1. $75,000 to Mississippi AG Jim Hood;

2. $50,000 to NEW MEXICO AG GARY KING;

3.$20,000 to a political action committee in Louisiana that ran ads for Attorney General Buddy Caldwell.

4. $60,000 to the Arkansas Democratic Party, in two $30,000 installments; (Note: In September 2007, Arkansas Democrat Attorney General McDaniel announced that Mr. Bailey’s firm would represent Arkansas on a contingency-fee basis in a lawsuit against the Janssen drug company and two other drug firms.)

According to the article, Mr. Bailey also gave about $85,000 to the Democratic Attorneys General Association, which gave campaign contributions to several Democrat state attorney generals including $63,000 to NEW MEXICO ATTORNEY GENERAL GARY KING.

Pay-to-sue operates in that the lawyers hired by the state are paid from 15% to 25% of any judgment or settlement. They get nothing if the state loses. The problem is that by suing private companies on behalf of multiple states they increase the odds that those companies being sued will settle rather than pay for multiple trials in multiple states.  Both the lawyers involved and the state governments get large settlements of cash.

The New Mexico Independent reported on Gary King’s connection to F. Kenneth Bailey in an article from April 28, 2009 ( http://newmexicoindependent.com/26103/timing-of-ag’s-contracts-with-law-firm-raises-questions). In fact, the New Mexico Independent’s article shows that New Mexico Attorney General Gary King did sign two contracts with F. Kenneth Bailey’s law firm. The first contract expired June 30th of 2008 but the second contract didn’t take effect until late November of 2008.

In a follow up interview with the Wall Street Journal from April 29, 2009 ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124087457455161273.html) King told the Wall Street Journal that the original contract with Bailey’s law firm was arranged by his predecessor, Patricia Madrid. Bailey’s firm gave $25,000 to Patricia Madrid in 2005 by the way. However, Gary King STILL RENEWED the contract in 2007 without soliciting bids. When asked this, Gary King replied that the automatic renewal was done for ‘continuity’.

Looks like New Mexico now has a twin to play-to-play run rampant in Santa Fe…it’s called pay-to-sue.

Current New Mexico Attorney General Gary King is busy. Is he busy fighting government corruption which runs rampant in New Mexico? Not really. Is he busy prosecuting New Mexico’s violent drug gangs? Sometimes. Is he busy fighting the unfunded mandates and unprecedented power grab by the federal government due to Obamacare? Nope.

So what IS Gary King doing? He’s fighting to make sure an unelected and unaccountable state bureaucratic board can implement and enforce stringent, job killing regulations and taxes on New Mexico businesses helping to kill jobs. What a guy.

Hate to say it but it’s true. Instead of being our state’s top prosecutor and crime fighter, Gary King is acting like a lawmaker instead.

New Mexico has an Environmental Improvement Board (EIB) and it’s members are not elected nor do they answer to the legislature nor the people. They have been preparing to implement a new bureaucratic nightmare upon New Mexico that is going to kill jobs and make New Mexico even more business unfriendly. This new bureaucratic nightmare is under the guise of ‘capping’ greenhouse gas emissions. It’s our own version of Cap & Trade.

PNM, New Mexico business groups and five state legislators filed a motion to get an injunction to halt the EIB’s power to implement their new ‘grand scheme’ with a district court judge, a Democrat, in Lovington, New Mexico. The judge granted the injunction. But, the EIB went to the New Mexico Supreme Court to have the injunction lifted. What public official petitioned the high court for an extraordinary writ to have the District Court injunction dissolved? GARY KING!

Why is it that New Mexico’s Attorney General has time to get involved in helping an unelected and unaccountable government bureaucracy implement new regulations on businesses and families but he can’t seem to find the time to prosecute government corruption or defends our state’s 10th amendment rights against unfunded federal mandates? That’s a good question.

You can read about King’s involvement in helping the EIB bureaucracy at http://newmexicoindependent.com/56650/nm-supreme-court-rules-state-may-continue-work-on-greenhouse-gas-emissions-cap.

Gary King….WHAT DOES HE DO?!