A handful of legal challenges could strip a few candidates off of New Mexicans’ ballots ahead of the June 2 primary election.
Already, two challenges disqualified candidates from the primary election, and another two are pending in court. When a candidate files to run for office, they must turn in a minimum number of signatures showing they qualify to be on the ballot — for a seat in the state House of Representatives, it’s a percentage of the total votes cast by that political party in the district over the last several years. Candidates have a chance to challenge the legitimacy of their opponents’ collected signatures.
The New Mexico Supreme Court on Friday upheld a lower court’s decision to disqualify political newcomer Frankie McQuerry after incumbent District 24 Rep. Elizabeth “Liz” Thomson (D-Albuquerque) alleged that McQuerry collected signatures from people who either did not reside in the district or were not registered Democrats.
McQuerry’s attorney, former state Sen. Jacob Candelaria, told Source NM he believed that the court’s decision ran contrary to the state’s new semi-open primary model, which will allow “decline to state” voters who don’t belong to a major political party to vote in this year’s primary election for the first time.
“I fail to see…what legitimate government interest the state has — or could possibly have — in saying decline-to-state voters could show up in the primary…but have absolutely no right whatsoever to participate in the nominating process,” he said. “It’s an unconstitutional and, frankly, an irrational infringement on the rights of decline-to-state voters.”
Thomson told Source NM that it’s “an interesting point that I think requires some thoughtful discussion,” but said the law currently calls for nominating signatures to be based on the percentage of a given party’s votes in recent years. Suddenly adding independent voters to the mix, she said, would “throw a monkey wrench” into the nominating process.
“You can’t say, ‘I don’t like it so I’m not going to follow it,’” she said.
Incumbent disqualified
Further south in New Mexico, as Source NM previously reported, a judge knocked incumbent state Rep. Rebecca Dow (R-Elephant Butte) off the ballot after ruling that she inappropriately filed screenshots of nominating petitions in her reelection bid.
Democrat Tara Jaramillo, who briefly held Dow’s District 38 seat while Dow launched an unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign in 2022, filed the challenge in court and prevailed when a judge early Wednesday issued an amended order that disqualified Dow from the ballot. In a statement, Dow said she plans to appeal the decision.
Pending cases
Two other cases were pending in court as of Wednesday afternoon.
Rebekah Proper, an Albuquerque attorney, lost a challenge against Democrat Veronica Mireles, who’s running against incumbent state Rep. E. Diane Torres-Velásquez (D-Albuquerque) for District 30. Proper alleged that when Mireles filed 13 pages of signatures to run for office, she neglected to write her name at the top of all but one of them. Proper also alleged that Mireles seemingly switched her political affiliation from Republican to Democrat in January of this year.
A judge, however, found that Mireles had collected more than enough valid signatures to qualify. Proper subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court, where the case is pending.
Mireles told Source NM that she had been an independent voter since 2020 and registered as a Democrat earlier this year. She said her opponents seemed to take issue with the fact that her middle name — Veronica Nadine Mireles — did not appear on all of her nomination paperwork.
“It’s all about my middle name not being on some of the petitions. [But] the statute itself does not say that,” she said. “My name is Veronica Mireles. That is what’s on my voter registration.”
Another dispute between two Democratic candidates for San Juan County magistrate court judges is also pending before the state Supreme Court
Incumbent judge Stanley King filed a challenge over his opponent Michael Blount’s signatures and alleged that all but one of them fell short of state law requirements. In each of those cases, King argued that the people who signed Blount’s nominating petition did not actually reside within their judicial division.
A judge agreed with King and ordered that Blount’s name not appear on the June 2 ballot. Blount appealed to the Supreme Court, where the case was still pending as of Wednesday afternoon.
