Fact Check: Tim Keller and Darren White's attack ads

As the mayoral runoff election nears, campaign attack ads are upping the ante.

But what’s true and what’s fiction?

White’s campaign began running an ad Tuesday, claiming that there have been more than 750 homicides in Albuquerque in the past eight years and that “tent cities are everywhere.”

Incumbent Mayor Tim Keller’s campaign aired a television ad Thursday claiming that challenger Darren White would “round up innocent people” and resigned from his post as public safety chief due to rampant police shootings.

The Journal fact-checked both ads’ claims ahead of the Dec. 9 runoff election.

White’s ad

Claim: “Tim Keller’s record? Over 750 homicides.”

Context: The Albuquerque Police Department reported 784 homicides between January 2018 and November 2025, according to Journal reporting and information provided by APD.

From 2010 through 2017, APD reported half as many homicides at 357.

Claim: “Homeless tent cities everywhere.”

Context: While the rise in homelessness has led to unhoused people inhabiting a larger swath of Albuquerque, the largest number of encampments are on East Central.

Since the pandemic, the number of homeless people has doubled in Albuquerque, according to point-in-time counts. It appears to follow a national trend, as homelessness — both sheltered and unsheltered — is on the rise nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Though numbers started ticking up around 2015, since the pandemic the amount of unsheltered homeless people has grown to more than 274,200, according to HUD statistics. Those who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness are living on the streets, or otherwise outside without emergency housing or shelter.

Keller’s ad

Claim: “Darren White would let Donald Trump round up innocent people in Albuquerque.”

The ad then cuts to a clip of White saying “ICE will come in and they will look at everybody.”

Context: The quote was clipped mid-sentence from a lengthier conversation between White and host Diane Kinderwater on the Christian television channel KCHF-TV last month.

The full quote references Immigration and Customs Enforcement involvement at the Prisoner Transport Center, an Albuquerque Police Department substation used to detain people after arrest before they’re transferred to the Metropolitan Detention Center.

“We’ll turn the arrest data over and let them decide who they need to look at further,” White said in an Oct. 1 interview. “And actually the way that it works, Diane. It’s pretty simple, ICE will come in and they will look at everybody and if they see somebody that they think may be in the country illegally, they will check their records in the database. If they determine that person is here illegally, all they do is they put a detainer, it’s a hold on that person.”

A detainer flags a person for ICE, marking them for potential deportation once that person has left the criminal justice system, whether they were exonerated or have finished their sentence.

Claim: “Darren White’s chaos led to the shootings of innocent people, costing taxpayers millions — he was forced to resign.”

Context: White was the city’s Public Safety director under Mayor Richard Berry from 2010 to 2011. At that time, the police chief was Ray Schultz, who would retire in 2013.

In the wake of several high-profile police shootings, the U.S. Department of Justice released a letter in 2014 stating that the Albuquerque Police Department used “unconstitutional” and excessive force in incidents that they analyzed from 2009 to 2013.

White did not resign due to police shootings. He stepped down after a different controversy in July 2011 when he went to the scene of his wife’s car crash and took her to the hospital in a city-owned vehicle before sobriety tests could be conducted.

Two city investigations, one by the Police Oversight Commission and another by the Office of the Inspector General, cleared White, saying that his behavior was intimidating to paramedics and officers on-scene, but not improper.

With no sobriety tests administered, investigations couldn’t determine whether his wife’s use of prescription drugs had caused the crash.

Claim: Darren White’s approach to the homeless is “cruel and illegal.”

Context: White has promised to remove all homeless encampments across the city on “day one,” but the legality of such an operation is unclear. Whether White’s proposed approach to homeless people is legal, could in part depend on the outcome of a lawsuit leveled against the city under Keller.

The city has been sued by several homeless people in a lawsuit that alleges that the city’s encampment sweeps violated their Eighth Amendment right and constituted a “cruel and unusual punishment.” The lawsuit argues that city policy doesn’t allow homeless people to exist in public spaces and that the city failed to offer a suitable alternative.

There are an estimated 2,740 people living without shelter in Albuquerque, according to last year’s point-in-time count, and approximately 1,300 shelter beds, according to a city database.

That lawsuit is scheduled to go to court in October 2026 and the case’s implications could have a lasting effect on future city policy surrounding homeless people, regardless of who’s in office.

Claim: “It’s all why the police endorse Tim Keller.”

Context: In a news release announcing its endorsement of Keller, the Albuquerque Police Officers’ Association criticized White for “undermin(ing) public safety,” overseeing “significant pay cuts” and “historically low officer morale” in his tenure as director.

The release did not mention police shootings or other claims made in Keller’s ad as reasons for their criticism.

In an interview with the Journal, APOA President Shaun Willoughby pointed to pay hikes for officers as a primary reason for the union’s endorsement of Keller.

“(Keller) did what he said he was going to do; he took care of rank and file,” Willoughby said.

Campaigns respond

White’s campaign called Keller’s ad “brazenly false” in a statement Thursday.

“Tim Keller’s record is so riddled with failures that all he can do is resort to desperate lies about Darren White,” said Erin Thompson, Darren White’s campaign manager. “From outright falsehoods to making reckless accusations that police officers murdered innocent people, Keller is showing complete desperation and a willingness to say anything to win.”

Keller’s campaign manager, Neri Holguin, said in a statement Friday that their campaign’s ad was truthful.

“Of course Darren White doesn’t want the ad to be true — but it is,” Holguin said. “For eight months, he’s said whatever he wants about Mayor Tim Keller. Now that voters are hearing the truth about his record, he’s crying ‘unfair.’ Hardly. The facts are indisputable — and just because he doesn’t like his own biography doesn’t mean he can rewrite it.”