Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Home Stretch Questions for Gary Johnson, #3

Former Governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson spe...
Former Governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Wikipedia)
Governor Johnson,

Most governors and other high public officials with significant wealth put that wealth in "blind trust" while in office. This involves liquidating known assets and having a trustee invest and manage wealth without the official knowing the details.

Your "blind trust" was a little different: It involved retaining ownership of your construction company, Big J, turning putative management of that company over to your campaign treasurer, allowing the company to bid on state projects run by your administration while claiming that it didn't, attempting to remove two New Mexico Tech regents who had the gall and temerity to choose another contractor over Big J for a state-funded project, and hiring Big J's former president on a no-bid contract under which he was paid $20,000 to write a ten-page report suggesting that you be more "bold" and "dramatic" as governor.

That record, combined with your 2012 presidential campaign's dishonest finance reporting, its outstanding debt of between $1.5 million and $1.9 million, and its tendency to function more as an instrument for the care and feeding of "political consultants" than as an actual campaign, raises two questions:

First, was your problem from 1995-2012 that you were ethically challenged, or that you were not a very competent executive, or both?

Second, is there any reason to believe that you've become more honest and/or more competent since 2012, especially given that your current campaign is once again spending the bulk of its money on the same "political consultants," operating from the same address, only under a new company name?

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