Richardson's Private Investigator

(An update, with an explanantion of what Corwin does, is here.)New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson challenged his opponents in February to sign a pledge to run a clean campaign. And he's apparently hired a private investigator to enforce it.

A rival campaign noticed and sent along a line from his second quarter disbursement schedule showing a payment of $12,500 to one Michael Corwin, a PI from Albuquerque.

It's fairly unusual for a campaign to hire a licensed PI for its research team. Judd Legum, Devorah Adler and Christina Reynolds are the research directors of the Clinton, Obama and Edwards campaigns respectively. Difference is: you can't hire them if you want to find out whether a spouse is cheating.

Most opposition research these days is done by lap-top and involves the occasional trip to a courthouse or state records warehouse.

Comments

"New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson challenged his opponents in February to sign a pledge to run a clean campaign. And he's apparently hired a private investigator to enforce it."

Now that's some tasty snark.

Posted by Petey | July 19, 2007 9:32 AM

And it looks like we now have unmoderated comments!

Good for you, Marc. Welcome to the blogosphere. Ignore 90% of the criticism and take 10% of the criticism to heart.

Posted by Petey | July 19, 2007 9:36 AM

The other possibility is that he's hired a PI to investigate himself. Maybe he wants to know what others might find out if they start digging around.

Posted by Brian | July 19, 2007 10:07 AM

I think you're being unjustifiably harsh on Richardson. Your stereotype of PI's is a bit dated. Fewer and fewer are hanging outside hotel rooms with long-lensed cameras. A lot of them are doing research work, and a lot of them are doing investigations by laptop -- which makes sense, because they know as much or more about public records as most people. If you want to find out who owns a piece of property, for example, who better than a PI?

Having said that, though, opposition research is opposition research, and if you think that's antithetical to a "clean campaign," then it doesn't really matter whether it's being done by a PI or a political hack.

Posted by Daniel L. | July 19, 2007 10:24 AM

Marc, and everyone else here, should remember that it's common AND intelligent practice for campaigning politicians to do EXTENSIVE opposition research on themselves, as much or more than on their opponents. I'm just saying, this is a fun, juicy post and everything, but no one here actually knows what's going on, and we shouldn't pretend we do. It might be something "unclean" going on, and it might not be. Saying one way or the other is guessing, and nothing more -- and shouldn't be treated as anything more.

Posted by Alison | July 19, 2007 12:57 PM

Hmmm - interesting in the context of the Albuquerque Journal front page story of 7/11/2007!e.g., Richardson shaking down his own state University for campaign contributions.

Posted by Deep Throat | July 20, 2007 12:09 PM

I'd like to weigh in on this subject of hiring a PI. Over the years information has become more accessible, collected in large measures and digitized. We are an "information heavy" society. PI's know where to search, how to find information and if necessary when to conduct their own information collection efforts. We are valuable to society and uniquely positioned to render factual based leads for a sundry of reasons. We are ethical, professional and knowledgeable making Richardson's choice a wise one. I started in this business four decades ago. Be careful what you post on the world wide "spider" web.

Posted by Bill Mitchell, Seven-Day Detective | July 20, 2007 1:37 PM

Bill Richardson has been known to take a personal interest in his detractors. Rather than investigating himself, perhaps Richardson wants to know the identities of bloggers who occasionally say such unpleasant things about him. More than one campaign will have hired hands working incognito at the upcoming YearlyKos convention in Chicago. While hiring a P.I. is unusual (and clumsy) for a campaign, in this case it's just not very surprising, at least to my jaundiced eyes.

Posted by jean therapy | July 20, 2007 1:43 PM

Big Bill is as sleazy as they come. Since the state of NM has no limits on campaign contributions in amounts or sources, he hasn't broken any laws. After 5 years in office he is finally pushing for limits and strict ethics rules that will not affect him at all but will allow him to brag about what HE has done,

Our state government has been sold in bits and pieces to high bidders -- uh campaign donors, e.g. his chief for the Dept. of Transportation was an over $100K donor. Bill has issued an edict that in his push for "universal healthcare" the INSURANCE COMPANIES must be included. Common Cause NM has a report on the health industries donations over time.

And yes, he does try to track down and get even with every critic. A PI! Wonder what he focusing on.

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