New Mexico most corrupt state?

Does New Mexico have the nation's most crooked politicians? For several years, I have made the case that New Mexico has only about an average number of crooks in office. But that argument is getting more difficult to make. The shift began a few years ago when two state treasurers went to prison for demanding payoffs. One of them was quoted as saying, "That's the way the game is played in New Mexico." Then the powerful leader of the New Mexico Senate went to prison along with a list of accomplices for demanding kickbacks from an Albuquerque courthouse construction project. Then came indictments of an affordable housing director, a father-son team of public utility commissioners and a former three-term secretary of state. More recently, we have had Albuquerque's chief criminal judge arrested on sex charges, a Las Cruces judge charged in a bribery scandal, an appeals court judge resign after being arrested for drunken driving and local judges in serious trouble. Law enforcement also has been hit. Albuquerque has had numerous police shootings of unarmed civilians and one officer is charged with killing his wife to cover up his involvement in a car theft ring. And a former Santa Fe sheriff has pleaded guilty to embezzlement. We thought it could only happen in New Jersey but in the tiny border town of Columbus, the mayor, police chief and a village trustee were accused of helping smuggle hundreds of guns into Mexico. If this doesn't sound like the Wild West, I don't know what does. It is the sort of thing that kept New Mexico from being invited into the union for 66 years...more