Mike Santullo, local broadcaster and political personality, dies at age 77

Scanning through radio stations while on the way to work, you might have heard the voice of Michael Santullo.

Santullo spent a lifetime on air, whether you first heard him during his career as a radio news journalist, on one of his numerous talk shows, or as a guest DJ on KUNM playing oldies. Santullo’s “first love” was always the radio, according to an obituary published by the funeral home.

Santullo died Aug. 14, 2024, at age 77. No cause was given.

Santullo is survived by his husband and partner of 35 years, Daniel Gonzales.

“Every time we went to a restaurant, he didn’t have to say his name,” Gonzales said. “They already said, ‘Oh you’re Mike Santullo, aren’t you?’ They knew him by voice. I was always freaking out with that because I was very shy when we met.”

Originally from New York, Santullo moved to Albuquerque in the 1970s and brought his skill and experience as a talk radio host in America’s biggest city to Albuquerque.

“Mike had a very quick wit and a big heart,” said Jay Howard Deme, whose family owned the radio station, KZIA, where Santullo worked.

“He had a voracious appetite for news, the ability to ad-lib endlessly and an opinion on everything under the sun. How could his talk shows not be compelling?”

Beyond radio, Santullo also had political aspirations. He ran for mayor of Albuquerque in 1974, as well as Bernalillo County treasurer and state representative. In 1985, Santullo served as the city’s communications director.

In 1989, Gonzales and Santullo met through friends and had been together ever since. Though neither believed in the institution of marriage, they married in 2023.

“We said, ‘What the heck, it’s legal now,’” said Gonzales.

Santullo also lent his time as the director of the Newsline for the Blind program at the New Mexico Commission for the Blind, an organization that narrated and recorded the daily newspaper so that the visually impaired could stay up to date with the day’s headlines.

“(Santullo) repeatedly challenged the city’s establishment, including the newspaper and Chamber of Commerce,” his obituary reads. “But he loved his adopted city and state and strove to make them better.”