SAEN: DNC finance chair Munoz’s career marred by fiscal debacle
The San Antonio Express-News has a story today by columnist Gilbert Garcia about Munoz’s experience in handling a project called Museo Alameda. (Garcia, you may recall, wrote a well-received book about the 1976 presidential primary in Texas called Reagan’s Comeback.) I don’t think Obama would be cheered by the headline for the story: MUSEO PROVED MUNOZ WAS BETTER AT RAISING THAN HANDLING FUNDS. A quick excerpt:
As the founding director of the Museo, Muñoz collected $12 million from public and private sources (including $500,000 from the city, and much larger contributions from AT&T and Ford Motor Co.) to open the museum with considerable fanfare in April 2007. He threw a glittery, three-night christening bash. He brought in Linda Ronstadt to sing mariachi. He boasted that the museum’s opening signified “the realization of an American dream.”
While he was picking out snappy guayaberas to wear at the pachangas, however, Muñoz seemed to pay little mind to the pesky detail of making the museum financially and creatively viable.
A New York Times review the week after the opening couldn’t help but note the puzzling incoherence of a museum that purported to tell the story of the “Latino experience in America” by exhibiting a purse belonging to Laura Bush and a brooch owned by Lady Bird Johnson.
Muñoz wasted large sums on furniture and lavish parties, according to sources close to the museum. He put ill-equipped people in key staff positions, and grew bored when budgets were discussed. He allowed a $1 million grant from the Henry Ford Learning Institute, specifically earmarked for the Ford-affiliated Alameda School for Art & Design, to be diverted to the museum. In 2009, with the museum foundering, he walked away.
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Did Obama do his due diligence before naming Henry Munoz III the new finance chair of the Democratic National Committee? I thought it was a promising appointment, until I called a well-connected Democratic consultant earlier this week after I had heard the news of Obama’s choice of Munoz. His immediate reaction was, “Oh, no.”
Pri-ista says:
This is all Castro(s).
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t mcauliffe says:
We Democrats know how to look after a fellow crony capitalist
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Ginger says:
P
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Alan says:
So basically he’s made a name for himself by throwing parties and squandering other people’s money. Why is he at the DNC and not on one of the Real Housewives shows?
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SusieFatGurlBankston Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 7:59 pm
Because thats what dems are good at.
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JohnBernardBooks says:
Sowhat if he misused some money? Can he lie under oath like a Clinton? Hillary passed the final test democrats use for their presidential candidates, lying under oath.
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Anonymous says:
Obama’s press secretary implied this week that his boss really has as one of his second-term goals to revitalize the GOPers nationally. In order for this plan to be effective, Texas has to remain red.
Any objective observer would admit by now that Obama is not the caricature the Tea Party’s bumbling artists came up with. Ideologically, he is to the right of Dwight Eisenhower, the last truly sane GOPer president.
Obama reminds me of senior Bush, who used to call the two-party system “sacred.” Seen from this perspective, Obama’s moves make sense. The political elites always want the two (and there can only ever be two – see Carroll Quigley’s book, Tragedy and Hope, published in 1966) parties to be roughly in balance with each other. You wouldn’t want to have a one-party system. Then outside critics could call you undemocratic. However, you don’t REALLY want to allow a democratic system. It’s not good for business. Thus, you stop at two “choices.”
Quigley wrote, “The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy.”
Also: “It is increasingly clear that, in the twentieth century, the expert will replace … the democratic voter in control of the political system. Hopefully, the elements of choice and freedom may survive for the ordinary individual in that he may be free to make a choice between two opposing political groups (even if these groups have little policy choice within the parameters of policy established by the experts) and he may have the choice to switch his economic support from one large unit to another. But, in general, his freedom and choice will be controlled within very narrow alternatives by the fact that he will be numbered from birth and followed, as a number, through his educational training, his required military or other public service, his tax contributions, his health and medical requirements, and his final retirement and death benefits.” (Tragedy and Hope: 866)
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Anonymous says:
Well, the Democrats have done a better job of raising campaign funds and no misspending them over the last couple of presidential election cycles than the Republican National Committee, so Munoz doesn’t fit as well there. But his ability to raise gobs of cash and then toss it down a rat hole does fit right in with the party’s national legislative efforts of the past four years.
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The Mustache That Dare Not Speak Its Name says:
Wow. Didn’t take long for the knives to come out. Sounds like Paul’s consultant friend wants to help prove what Will Rogers said about the Democratic Party.
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Smokin says:
I’ve known Henry for 25+ years. He’s a smart guy, heart’s in the right place, but he’s not a “details” person. Look back to his service on the Texas Department of Transportation Board. Full of promise, he couldn’t fulfill his duties — he ended up embarrassing Gov. Richards with his lavish trips to Mexico City billed to TxDOT. He had to resign, at her urging, because of his exploits.
Again, I like him personally, but he’s just not the person you want, unless surfing him with a team of lawyers with very good judgment.
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Smokin says:
Surfing? It should read “surrounding” …
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Anonymous Reply:
January 26th, 2013 at 5:44 pm
It’s really differentiated some rinds trying to Quito on your iPhone or iPad.
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JohnBernardBooks says:
Hillary said Obama was incompetent, before he said “out-of-control spending doesn’t add to the nation’s debt.” But was she lying?
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Texian Politico says:
Obama has been reelected. Does he care about the DNC now?
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Blue Dogs Reply:
January 28th, 2013 at 11:15 am
Obama should be concerned about pushing immigration reform into law and the Second Term Curse, which has doomed Presidents like Bush Jr., Clinton, Reagan, Nixon, FDR.
Truman doesn’t count because he only was elected to one full four-year term and served out three years of FDR’s term.
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Texian Politico says:
Truman should count. When he left office in 1952 he had the lowest approval ratings of any president in American history. That holds true today. They were in the 20s, even lower than when Nixon resigned. In fact, it was so bad that the Dems got destroyed in many of the 1950 races and the phrase LSMFT – Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco was changed by many in a popular joke as Lord, Save Me From Truman.
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