Eye on NM: Interview with Martin Chavez

good morpg and thank you for joining us on eye us on eye on new mexico once again i m nicole brady and i thank you for joining us we re doing something a little different this week my co-host stuart dyson has taken the week off and i m joined by my co anchor tom joles who did a fascinating interview with outgoing mayor martin chavez we want everybody to see that interview first on having me on eye on new mexico after 22 years i ve finally been invited t s a thrill we ll try to make it a habit in the future one of the things as you talked to outgoing
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08 02 am mayor martin which he was he ll be leaving tomorrow yes where has he been since the election i don t know why he s been since the election he s been in germany for a climate change conference after he leaves office he ll be going to cope hey again for a climate change conference one in which president obama is going to be we talked about how much he loved the camera in the news room it was a joke with us and for him to sort of disappear and kind of take a backseat like that was very weird yeah once he became the lame duck he did disappear scoring an interview with him was not that difficulty considered a giant victory in any way i found his answers when we called it the farewell interview i found his answers very interesting and i think that s true in part because i was able to ask him some
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08 03 am questions i might not have been able to if he was still the mayor protecting his reputation whatever he seemed a little more open about a number of things including some personal quiz i asked him i asked him questions about topical events but we also got into his very public divorce and whether being mayor adversely affected his children in any way and the idea that his ex-wife was possibly going to run against him at one point as mayor very pe very personal stuff he didn t set any any conditions for this interview is that right no not at all he said he was going to set aside an hour to chat with me and he said we could talk about whatever i wanted to i said i ll pbably have a few personal questions for you but they won t be meanspirited at all i would like to learn a little bit more about you a part of you that we don t know a whole lot about it was good once in awhile i got
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08 04 am the look from that have you ever seen the look yeah we know that look i think well i ve seen the look throughout the mayor s career my career and i really saw it during the debate in september there was one time when richard romero said something and i looked over at mayor chavez is he looked like he wanted to rip romero s head off gave him a look but what s interesting he didn t rebut what romero said he moved on i think he has a good capacity to control his emotions but sometimes his face gives him away our viewers are going to get to see that did he ever want to rip into you do you think you tell me if you see the look he gave me the look a couple of times but for the most part i thought he was quite generous and civil and the answered the
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08 05 am question in a pretty straightforward honest way and you thought he had a good sense of humor the way he answered the questions you re going to hear me ask him why he lost and i think it was the second question in the interview and his response is pretty good he s drirks but he can be quite funny in the interview he talks about how much he likes being around people with good senses of humor we won t delay any longer let s let you see the farewell interview with albuquerque mayor martin chavez are you over the loss yet absolutely at least i think so certainly started looking forward to what it is i want to accomplish in the next year the next five years the next 10 years and they don t involve the mayor s office any longer and that s good now that you ve had a chance to think about it do you understand why you lost yeah it s very technical but
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08 06 am specifically i didn t get as many votes as the mayor elect and how did richard romero figure into all this do you harbor resentment i ve known richard since he was in the state senate politic is a contact sport in america and it is what it is i ll leave it for others to analyze i had three great terms as mayor that s more than anybody has ever had the opportunity in this new form of government and so what s there to say it s been a great run richard berry got more votes than you is there something you did that you reare gret that you did an area where you might have failed as a politician as a leader as a mayoral candidate i felt get more votes tom there s a national trend and it s particularly among republicans who are angry who are
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08 07 am consolidated they re doing the tea parties around the country they certainly consolidated in what is normally a modrall normally a moderately nonpartisan race into a partisan wedge this time it was unstoppable again that s for others to analyze and look what i know is i m moving on why did you wait so long to announce your candidacy this time around and do you think that possibly hurt you i wanted to spare albuquerqueance from the eternal campaigns the problems of city city hall are always enormous done well you re putting out fires you re also setting vision trying to set the agenda for the long term and i felt that by announcing early that would cause everything we were doing that was of substantive policy importance to be viewed through the lens of politics when it ought
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08 08 am not to be the issues are too important what it is it about being mayor that people don t understand what is it about the job ms bratton i think it s the most difficulty job next to being president people watch you all the time no body can tell you what the governor did or the u s senator did today but they know exactly what the mayor is doing if you re not offending somebody at some point you re probably not doing the job well mayors have impact people in a very personal way in their lives i how thick is your design right now i ve got really thick skin it doesn t mean the barbs don t hurt you get up in the morning and keep going that s the only way to survive tell me about the 37 000 workers
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08 09 am compensation claim why do you think you should get that money why do you think you should get treatment the rest of your lifen our dime inch it was my dime too tom very simply i received a very serious on the job filed a claim as required by the law to file i had a ruptured disc at l4-5 with radiculopathy it was as clear-cut as i could be i took the conservative root and took less than i m entitled i don t think as a city employee i have to be treated any different it s something in ni back it s something i ll carry the rest of my life and i m entitled you seem to alienate some people along the way including some skounls do you think you might have been to pushy i think had i not been the type of mayor i had been albuquerque
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08 10 am would not be the kind of city it is today we re on all the right lists wve moved forward i think more than at any time in modern history of the city for those who are looking for a mayor to sing and hold hands i say they don t under understand our kharlter which — charter which has two conflicting branches by design i think i ve worked well when it s important to move the public agenda forward but i know when it s time to say okay it s time to get it done we wouldn t have the montano bridge we wouldn t have paseo del norte we wouldn t have san juan-chama today had it been one large hand holding exercise where we all said look we got along but did we get anything done is it possible if you got along with some of these other city leaders a little more you could have accomplished more
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08 11 am i think we ve done well i think we ve agreed on 9 5 96 of what was accomplished there were things where we did have disagreements montano paseo del norte where examples where — is a perfect example i think they re entitled they re entitled growth i wanted to expand our economy to bring these new companies in there are people who are a are against mesa del sol which houses fidelity schott great employers they are people that are against tingly against the balloon museum grassing in our balloon field you work with therjs you have the disagreement be respectful but at the end of the day you have to make the decision and move forward what advice do you have for the man who
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08 12 am beat you for richard berry i ve known r j for for awhileings and we tried to work well with him he and i have spent a fair amount of quality time he doesn t need my advice he won the election and he ll take over in a matter of days and i m sure he ll do a good job he ll do the mistakes of the head not the heart i think he truly cares for albuquerque and the advice would be similar to what i ve told you here in this interview and you work with people you reach it out people but at some point mayors make the final decision and you ve got to make those decisions and live with the consequences if richard berry falls flat on his face would you consider running again i learned some time back never back never to say never but it is not where i m pointed i m really looking
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08 13 am forward to doing a lot of work on the national level international level around climate change around alternative technologies albuquerque is a different city than it was just 10 years ago we have 100 000 more people than we did 10 years ago with different economic opportunities and i m looking forward to working in those areas where new technology is going to be extraordinarily important in whether or not we re actually going to save the planet you re not entirely out of polits i don t think you ever totally get out of politics i ve been an agent of change all my life i ve been an activist it s part of my dna if you will it doesn t have to be expressed in elected office it can be expressed in a whole host of ways if you were to drive me — if you were to drive me around albuquerque and show me everything that you ve done that you re proud of that has made a significant impact in
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08 14 am your mind what would you show me i would show you a lot of people working even in a very difficulty economy working in jobs that were only dreams when i was growg up whether it s the film industry whether it s these new companies like fidelity and schott these new technologies that are here i would show you a city that is virtually graffiti free one of the tochbl ones in the world i d show you new landscape that has new amenities a bio park tingling a science museum for children i d show you a dramatically different city what wouldn t you show me because you didn t get it done i wouldn t show you a modern rail system we can t continue to be one of the cities in the world that doesn t have a completed transportation portfolio i wouldn t show you an event center and i m
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08 15 am concerned if we don t make the right decisions in the next couple of years we d be looking at that marvelous new facilities at the sovereign nations that ring the city and continue to drain money from the economy here all in all as i look barks i see a city with a sustainable water future a city with a diverse economy with economic opportunities for kids again that were just dreams when i was growing up what s the biggest mistake that you made as mayor i think the biggest mistake i made is associated with our water utility we shouldn t have lost it and this probably is subject material for a short book someday the politics that occurred in santa fe with senator aragon and others who conspired to take the utility and i think we suffered for it because we now have a water utility and
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08 16 am that s our most precious natural resource in a system where there s no accountability you get mad at it there s no one to fire why did you insist on holding so many news conferences and do you think that made some voters and even the medithink that they were possibly being worked and manipulated by you well i think that anybody that has any understanding of modern government of modern policymaking means you have to communicate and i worked really hard and i had a great team at city hall that assisted me in that it s not just a matter of what you do but how you articulate what you re dng when i was first elected and we found out that we were running out of water i went straight to the media electronic and pript and said here s the challenge and you have a role to play to help me community the gravity of the situation not to be the spokesperson for the mayor s office
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08 17 am that s the mayor s job but to communicate the facts so i worked very hard with the media to make sure that you had the information i always assume that reporters are individuals of good will i ve been wrong enough to know there were some that weren t one or two two in the rt minority so we worked really aggressively to put the fac put the facts out there and then i had no complaints about the treatment so those people who would say the mayor loved being in the spotlight he was a deplore hog your response i don t know who said that and it s hard to comment on anonymous folks what i work to do was to communicate my vision for the city of albuquerque the goals i wanted to set and how we were going to get there i followed an individual into office who i thought was a marvelous gentleman
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08 18 am former mayor saavedra and he was an extraordinary intellect a gentleman who simply did not communicate and i think he was hampered in his ability to accomplish things by that unwillingness to utilize the technology to communicate with people and if you look over the years the technology has changed it s not just what s in the morning paper or on the evening news there s all of the internet and twitter and face book and face book and many many ways for policymakers and others to communicate ideas and vision after you lost you gave some of your high level people raises in retrospect do you think that was a good idea no i only gave one person a raise and that was my administrative assistant who had been working as chief of staff for six months when my chief of staff left to be the statewide director for setor udall we
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08 19 am didn t fill the position my administrative assistant filled that position without pay and i simply said for the last month guess what you re going to get the title that you actually deserve and you ll get pay that you deserve for the job you re actually doing i can t figure out your relationship with governor richardson can you describe it for me bill and i have known each otherince we were staffers on the hill when i was in law school in washington and in many regards we re different and other regards we re the same we very aggressive strong leaders and overall the i relationship has been very positive we ve certainly butted heads on occasion but they ve generally been — the natural dynamic that goes on between the mayor and the governor of the state i ve known people a long time as well but it doesn t mean i like thim and get along with them you re suggesting you you and governor
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08 20 am richardson like each other and respect each other i like bill a lot and we work well over the years the big i landscape which the previou governor was against doing vetoed it city kournls tried to get it done in the past couldn t get it done bill richardson and i got it done together it was one of those that at the beginning there s a lot of critics but once it s done everybody loves it i ve gotten no complaints it elevates the whole state of new mexico some yes nor questions if you would like to elaborate go ahead healthy ego i think the city needs to go in the future division strong the skin is thick and if you don t have confidence in what you re doing you ought not to be in the job but i ve also surrounded myself consistently with really good talented
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08 21 am people a lot of career folks and i encourage them to tell me no so healthy so healthy ego yes i have a good healthy ego i m certain of myself but i ve always been willing to listen to the others particularly internally inside city hall the directors we have very very good die loss and they re not timid about telling me no this is wrong one of the things i do insist on is you can tell me no but don t just tell me why it can t be done tell me some other ideas that we can get it done if this is the wrong way let s find the way to accomplish the end that s what i was elected to do fiercely competitive sometimes to a fault yes or no i m absolutely he competitive when i make a campaign prome i do everything in my power to get it done and if i don t succeed on the first try i ll
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08 22 am keep coming back and coming back and coming back i m like a junkyard dog in that regard that s how you move the city forward cities are difficulty and they are living and dynamic decree tours and if you don t push really hard they don t move cities either move forward or they move backward they can they can t stay static yes or no much smarter than the average person i think if i m smarter than folks particularly enabling position it s because i ve done i ve done it for awhile experience does help you learn things and he i like to think i haven t repeated my mistake more than once there s probably some i have but if you re learning from your mistakes that s about what you can expect from people in public life or private life hard to live with a i m an easy guy to work with i said live with live with well we ll get dukes is pretty happy
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08 23 am dukes is a dog i have a wonderful relationship with my children and a good set of friends friends that i ve had since grade school igh school i think i ve got a great sense of humor i love to laugh i love to be around people that love to laugh particularly in a job like this if you re not laughing from time to time you re hard to work for hard to work foyfts that is the truth i demand the very best and i demand long hours from those who work for me nothing that i don t do myself one of the things i told my directors we re not here just to get along we re here to accomp to accomplish an agenda a promisehat was made during an election and each one of us moves on at some point in our careers and when you look back do you want to look back and go gee we got along look wh
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08 24 am look what we got done i drove my directors really really hard and i told them if you re expecting to come in here with a dark brown hair and leave without leave without some gray you re probably in the wrong office i d like to ask you a couple of quick personal questions do you think being mayor hurt your children i think that there s a plus and minus to it certainly we never injected our kids into the office you didn t see them on the campaigns and — because they re entitled to their privacy there are some benefits they got to meet presidents and do things that other kids don t normally get to do but at the same time any mistake is scrutinized and that s hard that s hard did being mayor hurt your marriage oh who knows what dynamic goes on in america in a marriage there are at least one of out of every two fail mine failed
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08 25 am and those are reasons that i ll ponder for many years to come what is it like going through a divorce in such a public spotlight i ve never heard anybody say they enjoyed going through a divorce if you want to do it in public that s multiplied times 10 what did you think when your ex-wife was talking about running against you for mayor my ex and i have a good relationship particularly when it comes to our children and she comes from a political family and she s always had aspirations and i think she d make an excellent elected official i ve always told folks and e and encouraged everyone run for office we re getting ready to say good-bye finally and formally to one of our great governs bruce king he had a expression good people run for office you never pulled margaret aside and said margaret don t do it
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08 26 am telling exes is what to do — some folks try to do that for me there are more productive times it wochbt be long before you stroll out of that place in for the last time have you taken that walk in your mind and how do you feel there are still things that need to be done city council has passed the climate action plan a couple of the stimulus projects that s mayoral business that has to get done but beyond that i m serm working for december january and february in the balance of my sgleer you answered that in a very cerebral way what s it going to feel like when you walk out of the place i don t have to get the crime reports anymore which only the mayor and a handful of law enforcement officials get tremendous weight
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08 27 am lifted i took every crime personally and any mayor worth his or her salt takes them personally i m looking forward to that i m looking forward to not havin not having to do combat if you will with the council because again that is by design two branches that are in natural conflict and i m also looking forward to getting to have impact on issues that i care deeply about in a nongovernmental way and i m also looking forward to making some money are you going to shed a tear when you walk out are you going to walk out and s to walk out and sha to walk out and sha it s over i doubt i will ever look back i get so much pleasure driving around town whether it s driving across montano or watching the lights light up under the big
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08 28 am i at night watching the landscape around the city of albuquerque the museums that have been built and that will comfort me and saish yait whatever appetite i might have for city hall i think it s a job well done a great run and now it s time to move on good luck mayor thank you so much