Meet Patrick J. Rogers:  Counsel to NM GOP, attorney for U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, legislative fund director of the [badly misnamed] American Center for Voting Rights, professional "voter fraud" hysteric, U.S. Attorney-wannabe, informal consigliere to all interests Bush and Rove in NM, and Mickey’s co-architect in Iglesias’s ouster.

Despite the fact that Mickey Barnett is also an attorney - and an attorney to Bush’s campaign, no less - his role as lawyer has always been subordinate to his role as GOP fixer.  Rogers, on the other hand, seems to have been the dyed-in-the-wool counselor to the NM GOP.  In recent years, his clientele has clearly expanded to include the interests of "loyal Bushies," and he has just as clearly worked hard to ensure that he himself is regarded as a "loyal Bushie."

Biographical Data:  Patrick J. Rogers is listed as a "shareholder" with the Albuquerque law firm of Modrall Sperling.  According to his bio on the firm’s Web site, he graduated from UNM and the Georgetown Law Center (which the site misnames as "Georgetown Law School"), and began his political career as a legislative assistant to NM’s Republican former U.S. Sen. (and former astronaut) Harrison "Jack" Schmitt.  From the brief bio, it appears that Our Pat jumped straight from Schmitt’s office into the waiting arms of Modrall Sperling, which would, presumably, have been sometime in the mid- to late ’80s.  Among his "professional activities," it lists membership on the Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) Board of Litigation, a right-wing nonprofit that bills itself as "a nonprofit, public interest law firm dedicated to individual liberty, the right to own and use property, limited and ethical government and the free enterprise system."  MSLF expends a great deal of energy and resources battling "tree-huggers" and others who presume to try to limit the capitalist efforts of the oil and gas industry and other such corporate lobbies.  John Dendahl (surprise!) is an "emeritus" member of the MSLF board of directors.

Our Pat is also a founding member of the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), and serves [served?] on the board of directors of its Legislative Fund - which is a misleading appellation.  The "Legislative Fund" is actually the American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund, a separate entity organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code; it serves as ACVR’s lobbying arm.  (More about the ACVR below.)

"Block the Vote":  Otherwise known as the "2004 election," which saw the nadir of Rethug vote suppression tactics.  Not only was little old New Mexico not exempt from such tactics, but it was, in many ways, ground zero for a nationwide effort to suppress the vote under the guise of "preventing voter fraud."  And little old New Mexico was ably represented in that endeavor by . . . you guessed it.  Our Pat.  of course, the MSM got it all wrong, parroting the GOP line:

[L]ocal attorney Pat Rogers said he is working with some individuals who support the voter ID law. Rogers was one of attorney representing a group of Republicans that, prior to the November 2004 Presidential election, wanted Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron to comply with state law governing voter registration.

Got that?  Vigil-Giron (a Democrat) wasn’t "comply[ing] with state law."  How does our intrepid reporter know this?  Well, because Our Pat said so! 

Time to call bullshit.  The state law was, admittedly, a horror show of drafting, with seemingly conflicting subsections.  However, I was intimately familiar with the statute in question, because I was working on the issue locally at the time.  The Rethug argument was a classic example of ripping one snippet (the most confused one, of course) of the statute completely out of context and trying to force it to stand alone.  No dice.  [In a future post, I’ll dig up the text of the statute, as well as the NM Supreme Court’s ruling, and walk through them step by step.]

But drive-by slander of the Secretary of State wasn’t enough for Our Pat; he had to break out the Privileged White Boy Whine:

"I just don’t think it’s appropriate to raise the racial angle every time the ID matter comes up," Rogers said. "I don’t know, and certainly they haven’t shown me, this impacts Hispanics more than any other group or so on. It’s real easy to make that claim but it’s somewhat poisonous to the debate."

Again, time to call bullshit.  It’s been shown over and over again, in stte after stte, and Hispanics are one of the most affected demographics.  In New Mexico, the only demographic more affected in this context has been Native Americans.  It’s not that "they haven’t shown" you, Pat; it’s that every time "they" do, you close your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears and then announce, "I’ve never seen or heard anything . . . ."  And, Pat, let me tell you what’s "poisonous to the debate" (hint:  It ain’t talking about race):  What’s "poisonous to the debate" is the systematic campaign waged by you and your BFFs, Barnett and Adair and Foley and Co., pasty privileged white boys all, to deprive entire classes of voters of their most fundamental of American rights on the basis of race.  That’s "poisonous to the debate," you slimy Rovian tool.

Not content with suppressing the Democratic vote, Pat and his buddy Rod Adair also went to great pains to try to dilute it.  Some of you may remember that we had another ugly courtroom battle of ballot access in 2004:  this one involving access not for voters, but for candidates.  Or, rather, for one particular candidate, who wasn’t even able to drum up enough support to get himself on the ballot legitimately.  So who was this idiot?

Who else?  Ralph Nader.

Nader, in his overweening hubris, miscalculated, and couldn’t collect enough legitimate petition signatures to get on the Reform Party ballot in New Mexico.  (This despite Rod Adair actually collecting petition signatures for Nader - from Republicans!)  So, in an ugly foreshadowing of Holy Joe Lieberman 2006, Nader demanded to be put on New Mexico’s ballot as an "Independent."  Never mind that he hadn’t collected petition signatures as an Independent; never mind that doing so effectively flipped off the entire NM Reform Party (demonstrating once and for all that Ralph’s loyalty to them and their causes extended precisely as far as they were useful to him); never mind that (as with Holy Joe) there was no mechanism in state law to allow him to do so.  As soon as he was denied, he pulled a classic Ralph:  press conferences filled with incessant whining about Democrats fearing him and trying to destroy him, followed by ominous threats to sue.

And into this breach steps none other than our Pat (with a little help from Adair).  Pat offered to represent Nader pro bono, because - get this - he thought the trial court judge "gave too much credence to the argument by the Democrats to ‘protect’ the poor, dumb New Mexican voters from the ideas that Ralph Nader was trying to convey in other states."  As opposed to, say, trying to "’protect’ the poor dumb New Mexican voters" from actually voting while brown/red/black/[insert ethnic minority designation here], a legal immigrant, a student, a person with a disability, a senior citizen, etc., etc.  Sadly for the entire planet, Pat’s boy won.

Our Pat was busy, busy, busy in the fall of 2004.  Not content with helping Ralph "Messiah Complex" Nader get on the ballot illegitimately, he also filed an amicus brief on behalf of the American Center for Voting Rights in the infamous voter ID lawsuit, urging the court to dismiss the plaintiffs’ case and uphold the [nonexistent] law demanding photo ID.  Here’s the opening salvo in the brief’s argument:

"Opponents of the Albuquerque voter ID law were not successful before the City Council or the voters of Albuquerque.  They have come to this Court invoking the Fist Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment and the specter of the ‘poll tax’ to convince this Court that the ‘burden’ on the Constitutional rights of many persons (none of whom can actually be located) must be  vindicated and the law overturned.  Summary Judgment in favor of the Defendant is warranted because the Albuquerque voter ID law is a step in the right direction to prevent fraud and to provide public confidence in the voting process."

[Sigh . . . .]  I thought lawyers who knowingly submitted false statements in pleadings to the court were subject to sanction.  (IOKIYAR, I suppose.)  There’s so much wrong with this one paragraph that it’s going to take a bit of unpacking.  What kills me is that Rogers also knew that at least one statement in this graf was false when he wrote it - i.e., the "none of whom can actually be located" parenthetical - since, as his affidavit of service at the end of the brief shows, he sent a copy to one James Scarantino, Esq., who was counsel to a Hispanic woman who had been denied the right to vote.

Post-’04 Propaganda:  Also during the 2004 election, then-House Administrative Committee Chair Bob Ney (yes, that Bob Ney, now doing time for his corruption shenanigans with Jack Abramoff) convened hearings on "voting problems in Ohio."  Ney invited exactly one entity to testify as an "election expert" at the hearings.  You guessed it - ACVR.  But it gets better; at the time that ACVR delivered its supposedly "expert" testimony, the group had been in existence for five days - and one of the group’s founders was Mark F. "Thor" Hearne, II, who had most recently been the "national general counsel" to Bush-Cheney ‘04.  [Ed. note:  "Thor?"  Out of "Mark F.," he gets "Thor?!"  How utterly emblematic of these people’s pathologies.]  In 2006, Our Pat took on Thor’s role, testifying on behalf of ACVR before the Committee on House Administration to the lurking danger to the Republic represented by "voter fraud" (a/k/a letting scary brown people vote for Democrats). 

It’s especially interesting that the American Center for Voting Rights apparently had a Web site right up until March 17, 2007.  Going to its URL now brings up this message:

"americancenterforvotingrights.com expired on 03/17/2007 and is pending renewal or deletion."

That same year, Our Pat was also a "participant" at a Santa Fe conference hosted by the Atlas Foundation, a conservative org that with delusions of international grandeur that describes its vision as follows:   "To achieve a society of free and responsible individuals, based upon private property rights, limited government under the rule of law and the market order."  He also represented Mike McEntee, a former federal employee candidate for Albuquerque mayor - who ran in that nonpartisan election as a Republican - in his failed suit against the Merit Systems Protection Board over his suspension for violating the Hatch Act.

2006’s Fraud Frenzy:  Rogers was not merely counsel to NM GOP.  He was also Heather Wilson’s attorney - the attorney who represented her post-election, while the ballots were still being tabbed.  And while those ballots were being tabbed, where was Our Pat?  All over NM’s media, agitating for audits and an open canvass, threatening lawsuits, and taking credit for then-Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron’s hiring of an outside auditor. 

Election Day 2006 in New Mexico was a massive, bleating GOP hypocrisy-fest.  The same people who had spent the entire election season duplicating their ‘04 campaign to suppress Democratic votes indulged in an embarrassing public display of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth with regard to supposed Dem efforts to disenfranchise Rethug voters.  (Or, rather, it would have been embarrassing if these people had any shame, which they don’t.  It was still embarrassing to the rest of us ordinary, civilized, law-abiding folks.)

The day began with Heather Wilson throwing a tantrum because, she alleged, amid dark insinuations of deliberate and malign intent, the [Democratic] Bernalillo County clerk had not provided enough ballots for voters in one GOP-dominant precinct.  Pete Domenici called a press conference to urge oppressed Republicans to refuse to give up their places in line.  And note the photo in that link:  Who’s that standing in the background while Pete monpolizes the microphone?  Why, yes, indeedy.  That’s Our Pat.  [More about Heather and Pete in upcoming posts.] 

And Our Pat did, of course, weigh in on the supposed crisis:

Republican Party attorney Pat Rogers also said no provisional ballots were available at the precinct _ a violation of federal law. Provisional ballots let voters vote when there’s a problem.

Okay, let’s leave aside the reporter’s mischaracterization of "provisional ballots."  What I want to know is this:  Where was Our Pat when all those [ethnic minority] Democratic voters in precincts all across the state were being denied provisional ballots that were available?  Talk about your violations of federal law . . . .  Oh, silly me - IOKIYAR.

Of course, Our Pat’s concerns about vote suppression and vote fraud didn’t extend to supporting New Mexico’s ‘06 change to paper ballots:

Last week The Associated Press quoted Republican lawyer Pat Rogers of Albuquerque saying paper ballots can be manipulated through "low-tech fraud." For example, unscrupulous county clerk employees could mark in empty ovals on the ballots, Rogers said.

As the entire country now knows, Wilson eventually "won" (I use that term advisedly, since I and countless other New Mexicans believe that it occurred only via successful Rethug efforts to disqualify legitimate Democratic voters) by fewer than 700 votes.  Of course, with this bunch, there’s no such thing as a gracious winner, or good sportsmanship during the contest:

GOP attorney Pat Rogers accused the Democrats of dirty tricks because their party’s executive director was a vote-counter, while a spokesman for Wilson’s campaign complained about the slow pace of the work since Tuesday’s election.

"If there is honest and open accounting, Heather Wilson is going to be re-elected,'’ Rogers predicted, basing his assertion on Wilson’s continuing lead. "If there is not an honest and open count, we have concerns.'’

New Mexico Democratic Party chairman John Wertheim angrily countered that it was too early to declare victory and said a recount is likely. Democrats also alleged a Wilson congressional staffer had registered to vote as a Democrat and was taking part in the count — a claim Rogers denied.

Mm-hmm.  ‘Cause, you know, Wilson would never stoop to ethically questionable behavior. 

Destroying David Iglesias:  Of course, we now know that Our Pat, along with his BFF Mickey Barnett, were two of the GOP operatives who eld the campaign to oust Iglesias last year.  McClatchy Newspapers reported on an exclusive, 9-guest, $5K-a-plate luncheon with Karl Rove on September 30, 2006  at the home of NMGOP chair Allen Weh.  Former NM Supreme Court justice and current GOP adviser and strategist Paul Kennedy attended, but wants us to believe that he never so much as discussed with Rove his desire to get rid of Iglesias.  Our Pat, on the other hand, has suffered an unusually convenient memory lapse:  He wants us to believe not only that he never discussed his desire to be rid of Iglesias with either Rove or Bush, but that he can’t remember whether he attended the Rove luncheon or not.  Um, Pat - a hint:  Break out your checkbook.  Did you write a check for five grand on or around 09/30/06?  I know that having divested myself of $5K for a lousy lunch would jog my memory, but that’s just me.

However, the memory lapse didn’t get Our Pat off the hook.  Thanks to the doggedness of McClatchy’s reporters, Pat has had to acknowledge that he was indeed one of the state operatives agitating for Iglesias’s removal:  

But between then and the election, at least three backers of the courthouse corruption case - Wilson, Domenici, and Rogers - acknowledged they were on the phone to Iglesias to inquire about the status of the investigations. Rogers represented Wilson after she won re-election by less than 900 votes.

Rogers said he asked Iglesias before the election to talk about the case. When they finally met for lunch, Rogers said he told Iglesias, "David, in my mind, the failure to bring appropriate changes and proceed on a corruption case because of the pending election is as bad as ignoring it entirely."

"I don’t know whether anyone talked to Rove or President Bush about David at any time, but complaints about David would track way back to before the election of 2004," Rogers said. "It was not a secret, the unhappiness with David."

Besides, Our Pat’s memory lapse with regard to the Rove luncheon is frankly moot:  We already know that he and Mickey Barnett met directly with Monica "Pleading the Fifth" Goodling on June 21 (more than three months prior) specifically to complain about Iglesias.

I’ve heard through the proverbial grapevine for quite some time that Our Pat felt that he should’ve been made New Mexico’s USA - if not in Bush’s first term, at least in the second, since he was such a "loyal Bushie."  But after all of Rogers’s hard work up to and including the 2004 election to help suppress the Democratic vote on Bush’s behalf, those administration ingrates allowed Iglesias, that unqualified token of a "diversity hire," to remain in his cushy sinecure, even though he hadn’t distinguished himself as a sufficiently "loyal Bushie" by persecuting prosecuting all those evil, corrupt Democrats.  And, indeed, when Iglesias’s "resignation" was announced and Pete Domenici forwarded his short list of four nominees, among those four names was that of Our Pat.

Rogers, being no dummy, immediately realized that his short-listing gave him a glaring conflict of interest, and disavowed any interest whatsoever in the position.  At least, that’s the official version:

Rogers said he didn’t ask to be nominated for U.S. attorney, and he took himself out of the running after the Justice Department contacted him to set up an interview earlier this winter. He says he told Goodling that he was not interested in the job, and that he lodged complaints about Iglesias ‘’because I’m concerned about the U.S. attorney’s office.'’

Domenici had for years wanted Rogers to be U.S. attorney in part because of his experience with touchy political issues, but Rogers had turned him down, Domenici’s chief of staff, Steve Bell, said Monday. Domenici recommended Rogers again this year in hopes he might take the job, Bell said.

‘’He’s just done an awful lot of stuff for the state,'’ Bell said. ‘’Our state — especially with the history (of corruption) we’ve had — we need to have somebody with a fair amount of courage.'’

Right.  I don’t know anyone who actually thinks that Our Pat "was not interested in the job."  He may indeed have "[taken] himself out of the running," but given this administration’s history of hanging its allies out to dry, it’s probably at least as likely that he was advised that, in the aftermath of press reports of his role in the firing fuckup, he had zero chance of actually getting the nomination, much less Senate confirmation.  However, Steve Bell is right about one thing:  Our Pat has "just done an awful lot of stuff for the state" - all of it detrimental to democracy and civil rights.

In fact, immediately after David Iglesias went public with the real circumstances surrounding his "resignation," Our Pat hit back, hard and low:  He published an OpEd in the March 28 edition of the Albuquerque Journal that bore the catty headline "Iglesias a Made-for-TV Man."  The entire piece is nasty, spiteful, and redolant of sour grapes.  An especially choice passage rips Iglesias’s military service completely out of context:

For someone preoccupied with his own travel to exotic foreign lands in lieu of hiring more prosecutors, his demands seem very misguided.

Because service in the Naval Reserve, especially during wars being fought on two separate fronts, is the functional equivalent of a luxury cruise.  I particularly love that "exotic foreign lands" bit - Our Pat makes it sound as though Iglesias was spending time at various sunny ports-of-call lounging on the beach, sipping mai tais in the company of dusky, doe-eyed beauties who fed him peeled grapes and attended to his every - um - need.

Our pat also takes the opportunity to flog his own work-ethic bona fides:

I acknowledge a bias for hard work and timely, appropriate prosecutions over the formation of government task forces favored by Mr. Iglesias. His government task force— like many government task forces— was to borrow a phrase "nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people." 

Yes, Pat - and this gratuitous slam was nothing less than a not-so-subtle attempt to show all of us poor benighted New Mexicans what a loss we’re suffering now that you’ve so generously taken yourself "out of the running" as David’s prospective successor. 

But Our Pat’s cattiness knows no bounds.  In a particularly snotty little passage, he writes:

I do agree with Mr. Iglesias, but not about the need for a book on his life story or the dramatic made-for-TV movie that certainly must follow. Rather, I agree that appointment of the next U.S. Attorney for New Mexico is important.

The chief federal law enforcement official for New Mexico must be tough enough to deal with murderers, possible terrorists and the occasional phone call that ends without a "good-bye."

The next U.S. Attorney should not need the help of the Democratic Senate campaign chairman, Chuck Schumer, The New York Times or a literary agent to help recover a three-month-old memory of feeling "violated" by a phone call.

Because non-Democrat-pursuing, nonexistent-voter-fraud-ignoring, exotic-land-junketing, jumped-up little "diversity hires" are a bunsh of pussies who can’t be relied upon to protect the Bush administration America from the terrible threats posed by Democratic voters murderers and terrorists.

Our Pat concludes his snotty little screed:

So, what is next for Mr. Iglesias? I am not sure whether there are many opportunities in New Mexico for lawyers in private practice specializing in the formation of government task forces, but we need not worry about Mr. Iglesias …. We can also count on Mr. Iglesias appearing regularly in the media, at least through the 2008 election. The Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senate campaign chief Chuck Schumer, and Hollywood "are not done with him yet."

And what about, O Fair New Mexico?  [Ed. note:  Nice comma splice, Pat.  Thought you were supposed to be smarter than that, you putz.]  Perhaps the United States Attorney’s Office, without an absentee manager, can now reconsider its priorities and soon find the ability, the will and the resources to properly pursue appropriate public corruption and election fraud cases on a timely basis.

Of course, Our Pat’s not done slandering his former fellow foot soldier.  (In fact, he probably won’t be done for some time; he’s too busy nursing his own petty sense of injury and the fact that now he’ll never get to be USA.)  Never one to let an opportunity slip past, Our Pat used last month’s federal indictments in the Albuquerque courthouse construction case to slam Iglesias yet again:

Pat Rogers, an attorney for the Republican Party of New Mexico and one of the nominees as a possible replacement for Iglesias, said Iglesias’ claims of vindication were "hard to understand."

"This isn’t about David Iglesias today," he said. "This is about public corruption, and it’s a sad day for New Mexico."

Rogers said it is well known within the legal community that other projects, including the construction of the state District Courthouse, were also part of the federal corruption investigation.

Iglesias’ failure to move more quickly with the case could jeopardize other parts of the investigation because of statute of limitations issues, Rogers said.

"(Iglesias’) failure to promptly attend to and proceed with indictments will cause significant problems with crimes committed by some of these same people prior to 2002, of which he is aware," Rogers said.

Yeah.  Just like those "exotic junkets," huh, Pat?