Uballez running for mayor, touts experience

Former U.S. Attorney Alex Uballez says his experience as a prosecutor on the state and federal level will help him be an effective mayor in Albuquerque.

Uballez spoke to City Desk ABQ Friday about his campaign for mayor, as one of nine candidates seeking the position this fall.

His main reason for running for mayor is for his kids, who are 3, 6 and 8 years-old.

“I figure that I have about ten years to make this into a city that they want to stay in — or if they go to college that they can come back to,” he said.

Uballez cited public safety as the main concern people have when they speak to him about how to improve the city.

“Public safety is the thing that is beneath all of the other things. We can’t have economic prosperity, we can’t have a prospering downtown if people don’t feel safe going outside.”

Uballez spoke about his time as a prosecutor, particularly as the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico, as preparing him for leading the city.

“It’s really a big docket of things to be responsible for,” he said. 

Uballez said the U.S. Attorney in each district not only prosecutes cases through the office, but runs investigations into things like cartels or crimes involving public integrity.

As the U.S. Attorney, he managed 200 people across two offices, but also managed federal law enforcement operations with FBI, DEA, ATF and U.S. Marshals Service.

The biggest thing he said he learned from his time as U.S. Attorney that would help as mayor is how to identify talents among the workforce. 

“The biggest job of a mayor is to find good people to run all of these departments then to trust them to do it,” he said.

As conversations about the future of Albuquerque tend to go, it wound its way back to public safety.

Uballez said the recent news that Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham would send members of the National Guard to Albuquerque to assist the Albuquerque Police Department showed that resources were being misallocated.

“They said they were going to put them in polo shirts and take their guns away to do non-cop things that cops were doing,” he said. “What is that? That’s a failure of resource allocation that should make people ask the question, ‘Why do we have people with guns at places?’”

The number of unhoused people is a problem nationwide, one that mayors in cities large and small have had a hard time dealing with. Uballez said that a key part of addressing the issue is building more housing. He cited a recent study that found Albuquerque, and New Mexico each have a large housing deficit.

“ We need to build, we need to make places for people to live,” Uballez said.

He acknowledged that not all homelessness is caused by the same thing, but that addressing a lack of housing for the nearly one-third of those who recently lost housing would then allow them to address the more difficult populations, who have addiction or mental health problems.

“ If we address addiction with punishments, all we know is that we’re gonna pay a lot of money and put people in dangerous situations to put people in public housing—which is exactly what the jail is—and not solve any of the problems,” he said. “Instead, we can invest in solutions for those people that address the issue.”

Addressing public safety would make the city a more desirable place, he said.

“We have to make a city that’s not just safe for people to go outside, but a city where people want to live and be outside and to do things together as a community,” he said. 

He wants to “foster spaces where we can spend time together.” 

“While we are making the streets safe, we need to get out of the way of development so that people and mall businesses, entertainment venues, restaurants, bars and affordable housing for people to live near all of those things can exist here in Albuquerque so we can keep people here, so we can draw people here.”