Tim Keller attack ad on Darren White proven false

In one of the most brazen displays of political dishonesty in recent memory, Mayor Tim Keller has unveiled an attack ad against former Bernalillo County Sheriff and former Albuquerque Public Safety Director Darren White — an ad so flagrantly false that even a basic Google search exposes it as fabricated nonsense.

The ad claims White wants to “let Donald Trump round up innocent people” and implies he would bring federal immigration agents (ICE) into Albuquerque to “check everyone in the city.” 

Keller’s team clipped a single sentence from an interview — “ICE will come in and they will look at everybody” — stripping it of all context in a desperate attempt to manufacture fear.

In reality, White was clearly referring to individuals already arrested and booked into Albuquerque’s prisoner transport unit. His position has been consistent for years: if criminals are in custody for breaking the law, ICE should be allowed to check their immigration status. Keller’s team surgically removed every word around the clip to deceive voters — a move critics have called “political malpractice” and “intentionally dishonest.”

But the ad gets even worse.

Keller goes on to declare that White “was forced to resign” due to police shootings of “innocent people.” This is not just misleading — it is demonstrably false, and Keller undoubtedly knows it.

White did not resign because of police shootings. He voluntarily stepped down in 2011 so an investigation could proceed into whether he improperly interfered in the police response to his wife’s car accident. And that investigation didn’t harm him — it cleared him completely.

Not one, but two independent investigations exonerated White:

• The Independent Review Office (IRO) found that White did not interfere in the investigation and did not misuse his authority.
  
• The City Council-ordered Inspector General investigation came to the exact same conclusion.

Even Democratic City Council President Ken Sanchez stated publicly at the time:
“Darren White did no wrong, and we can put the issue behind us and move on as a city.”

KOAT 7 News — hardly a right-wing outlet — reported that White was “completely cleared” and that his resignation had nothing to do with police shootings. Keller’s claim reverses that reality entirely, inventing a scandal out of whole cloth.

Political observers say Keller’s attack speaks more loudly about his own sinking record than about White’s decades of law-enforcement leadership. With rampant crime, a demoralized police department, repeated ethics controversies, and cratering public confidence, Keller appears to be grasping for any line of attack — even lies that can be debunked in seconds.

White’s campaign described Keller’s meltdown accurately: a desperate incumbent willing to “say anything to win,” including suggesting that local police “murdered innocent people” — a reckless smear that insults the entire department.

As voters move deeper into election season, the contrast is becoming stark. Keller is leaning into distortion, fear-mongering, and fabricated narratives. White, meanwhile, stands on a documented, factual record: his comments on ICE were about jailed offenders, not law-abiding residents, and he was fully exonerated from the manufactured scandal Keller now tries to resurrect.

Keller’s ad may go down as one of the boldest political lies in Albuquerque history — but in the age of instant fact-checking, it may also cost him more than he bargained for.