FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Sept.

16, 2013

Dinelli: Junket Saved Me Money Dinelli holds painful press conference that further implicates himself in scandal
ALBUQUERQUE, NM Pete Dinelli held a painful 40-minute press conference today where he struggled to defend his risky record and actually made matters worse for his campaign, further implicating himself in a scandal that resulted in a foreign corporation being selected to provide the District Attorney's office furniture after he took a junket to Canada and stayed in accommodations provided by the corporation referred to as a "castle." The highlight of the press conference: In a moment reminiscent of Patricia Madrid saying she only takes money from lobbyists to give them "access," Dinelli told reporters that he saw no problem with a foreign corporation wining, dining and lodging him because it saved him money, personally. Reporter: "Is it appropriate for public employees to stay at a vendor's accommodation or should they have stayed a different hotel?" Dinelli: "I didn't see anything wrong with it. Again they (the foreign corporation) picked up the uh as far as the accommodation, it was a corporate-owned facility that saved us individually money..." "It is undeniable that Pete Dinelli got caught taking a junket to Canada and was put up in a 'castle' by a foreign corporation that was later picked to provide furniture for Dinelli's office, even though a local business had a lower price. Pete Dinelli wants you to trust his 'recollections' about various aspects of the trip, but he's beginning to find out that it's really difficult to convince voters to trust his word against the documented record of numerous media outlets, including the Albuquerque Journal," said Chris Sanchez, a spokesman for the campaign. "His 'recollections' didn't fool the media today. But his press conference did confirm one thing: He's too risky to be mayor of Albuquerque." BACKGROUND When Dinelli was Chief Deputy District Attorney, he took a junket to Calgary, Canada, with county officials. A Canadian Corporation, SMED, paid for Dinelli and the delegation to stay four days at a high-priced resort that was described as a "castle" by a critic in an Albuquerque Journal article. Then the Bernalillo County District Attorney's Office picked the same Canadian corporation over a local business to provide furniture for the DA's office. The local business had

offered a lower price. The selection of the Canadian corporation created an enormous controversy. Dinelli personally defended the selection of the Canadian corporation by saying the less-expensive furniture from the local business was "dated" and apparently not up to Dinelli's standards. The local business disputed that notion, saying they were offering the same furniture and that Dinelli's office never even looked at it. In the last several days, Pete Dinelli has struggled to defend his risky record. On Friday, Dinelli's campaign released a bizarre and nonsensical "fact check" of Mayor Berry's new ad, "Canada." Instead of owning up to his massive ethical mistake, he has his campaign send out a "fact-check" that ignores the charges in the commercial (and Journal editorial and local TV news coverage) and tries to knock-down a straw man. ###