As a young man with working class parents beginning his college journey in Claremont, Alex Uballez ’08 was unsure how he could change the world.
Pomona, he says, promised to show him the way.
On a campus of critical thinkers from all walks of life, Uballez says his professors recognized his ambition and challenged him to find solutions to the inequities families such as his faced daily.
Michael J. Green, professor of philosophy, recalls Uballez’s senior thesis on green consumerism and sustainable development being one of the two best theses he read that year.
“It had really interesting discussions of abstract and social theory and a lot of historical research about environmentalism,” Green says. “That’s when I got the idea he could change the world.”
Rigorous as Pomona was, Uballez says the College “showed me what was possible as citizens of humanity.”
Uballez, a former U.S. attorney for the District of New Mexico, is running for mayor of Albuquerque on the promise of renewing people’s faith in government. Transparency and accountability go a long way in doing that, he says, as does delivering results.
As one of several declared candidates for the November 4 mayoral election, Uballez is optimistic his years of public service in New Mexico—first as a state prosecutor, then as U.S. attorney—and his tireless community work in Albuquerque will reach voters who want solutions to such civic issues as business development, crime and homelessness.
“We have to deliver for the people,” Uballez says. “That is our highest order.”
A Sixth Street start
Uballez met his wife, Gabrielle, at Pomona—the respective politics, philosophy and economics (PPE) and art majors hitting it off their first year on campus. It was Gabrielle, in fact, who convinced her significant other to apply to law school.
“As a working-class kid,” Uballez says. “I was unsure what paths out of college actually looked like.”
Uballez—his mother a Chinese immigrant, his father a Latino raised in public housing—credits the Chicano Latino Student Affairs office for helping him navigate the application process, and much to the surprise of his younger self, he got into Columbia Law School and graduated in 2011.
He and his wife moved to her native Albuquerque shortly thereafter, and Uballez started his career as a state prosecutor specializing in crimes against children. In 2016, he became a federal prosecutor focusing on drug trafficking cartels in the U.S. and south of the border.
On January 26, 2022, President Joe Biden nominated Uballez to serve as U.S. attorney for the District of New Mexico. The Pomona alumnus was confirmed by the Senate and sworn in that May.
At the time, Uballez was the youngest U.S. attorney in the nation, and he led an agency of 180 federal prosecutors and staff that thought beyond investigations and prosecutions to effect change.
“We thought about how to intervene and prevent,” he says. “How to see public safety through a broader lens than the court system.”
Not only did Uballez lead the investigation that would become the largest fentanyl bust in DEA history, he also created Albuquerque’s Violence Intervention Program. His office uncovered 30 years of public corruption in the Albuquerque Police Department’s DWI Unit, and also established New Mexico’s first Federal Reentry Program for people returning home after incarceration.
“My vision,” he says, “was to focus our law enforcement resources on those truly profiting off of the misery of others and undermining the trust and faith in our institutions and also [to] invest in intervention and prevention to make our community safer.”
Uballez resigned from his post in February at the request of President Donald Trump. Two months later, he announced his candidacy for the top executive position in Albuquerque.
Both he and Jersey City Councilman James Solomon ’06 are running for mayor of their respective cities this November.
From ABQ City Hall, Uballez hopes to build New Mexico’s most populous city into the place his three young children decide to spend their best years.
“A city that they’re proud of,” he says. “A city where they know they can be safe and have opportunity.”
Opportunity Uballez—like all alumni—found at Pomona.
“For folks like me,” he says, “the chances taken on us by institutions like Pomona have changed the trajectory of our families forever.”