The appearance of impropriety.

Governor Richardson claims he was sound asleep at 5:30 in the afternoon, three minutes before he planned to be in his vehicle and high tailing it away from the cruise on Elephant Butte Lake. He claims wasn't there, when his Chief of Staff plowed into other boats that were tied up at the marina.

If anyone thought that Brian Condit was under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the crash, their concern could have been addressed, had the Governor and his Chief of Staff decided to hang around and deal with the consequences of the calamity that they had caused. That was not their choice however, and now no one will ever know for sure if the man at the wheel was BUI.

According to Trip Jennings' piece on NMI, link, one of the unlucky boat owners in the target rich environment of the marina on a Labor Day weekend, Carl Shaw, saw the events unfurl from his boat.

“It was like they tucked their heads and said see ya,”
“That’s the question, why?“The officers were there.
So why weren’t they there,”
“Typically when you have an accident you stick around.
You don’t leave the scene,” Shaw said.

Then why did they run away?

Interestingly, conveniently, fleeing the scene of a boat wreck, even before the debris has finished raining down from the sky, is "perfectly legal". "Legal" of course is a far different thing than the "right thing" to do. According to Shaw, they didn't even hang around long enough to see if they had hurt anybody.

And the "I didn't do it, no one saw me do it, you can't prove I did it" Governor dodges yet another bullet.

They need to explain why they ran away. Again, according to
Jennings' very comprehensive report;

Mr. Condit stated that he had not been drinking alcohol
and was not under the influence of alcohol prior to or
during operation” of the “Bloody Mary.”

All we have to believe here is that these folks spent a day on the lake in a party boat called the Bloody Mary, and nobody had anything to drink. It bears noting, that he carefully(?) stated that he was not under the influence of "alcohol", and not that he wasn't intoxicated at all.

The Journal coverage on the debacle, link, makes no mention of the Richardson party leaving without finding out if anyone was hurt. It was pointed out twice in the article; that Richardson "was not involved". Well yeah, he was! And so were two State Police Officers who were on board and who are not scheduled to give sworn testimony, or write any reports regarding Condit's sobriety and, his representation that he had not taken even one drink while spending the day on the 81 foot long floating bar.

As far as I can tell, the two State Police Officers names do not appear on the list of passengers on the boat when it came to rest in the back of the Floating Irish.

Can we not at least call into question the man' s judgment?

Can he not be held accountable
for the knee jerk,
"let's get the hell out of here"
response in time of crisis?

Can he not be held accountable
for yielding to that impulse?

... for two days!






photo Mark Bralley