Page 101 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

THE LESSONS

kept his word when I was a Fellow, and he keeps his word now, and I try
to practice that too in all areas of my life, whether it’s to my wife, children,
and colleagues or to the oath I took to support and defend the Constitution.”
After Iglesias’s Fellowship ended, he went to work as an attorney in
New Mexico’s state government. A Republican, he was defeated narrowly
by the Democrat Patricia Madrid when he ran for state attorney general in
1998. He became an associate in an Albuquerque law firm and continued
his work as a Commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve Judge Advocate Gen-
eral Corps. In 2001, President Bush appointed him to serve as U.S. Attor-
ney for the District of New Mexico. Iglesias’s star continued to rise, and
he was considered by many to be on a fast track to high public office. The
state’s Republican leaders were thrilled with the appointment since there
hadn’t been a Republican U.S. attorney in the district for ten years, and
they were counting on Iglesias to get to the bottom of what they believed
was pervasive voter fraud by New Mexico Democrats. However, after inves-
tigating the accusations, Iglesias determined that there was insufficient evi-
dence to support the allegations of wrongdoing and declined to file charges.
Although he knew it would not endear him to the Republican leadership,
he continued to prosecute cases without regard for politics, as he had sworn
he would do. Throughout his term, he earned one positive performance
evaluation after another from the Department of Justice.
In October 2006, Iglesias received a phone call from someone he con-
sidered a friend, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representa-
tives who asked him for the status of sealed indictments in a high-profile
corruption case involving key New Mexico Democrats. The caller was
running for reelection against Patricia Madrid, the woman who had beaten
Iglesias in his bid to become attorney general back in 1998, and according
to Iglesias wanted him to issue the indictments against the Democrats
before the November election. “This person wanted to use the federal
indictment as a club over the head of opponent Patricia Madrid, who had
not filed any state corruption cases in her eight years in office,” Iglesias
explained. Since prosecutors are barred from talking about indictments, he
declined to discuss the matter with the legislator.
It wasn’t long before Iglesias received another phone call, this one at his
home, from another Republican friend, the U.S. senator who had
recommended him to President Bush for the U.S. attorney appointment.
“He wanted to know if I was going to file the corruption charges before

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